Finally arrived in Thailand after many months of preparation. Eva air contrived to make us miss our bus down to see Wayne, but fortunately that too was late running so we made it after a slightly mad dash through the (nice new) BKK airport!
Our first hotel of the trip is pretty good, though there's a slight cock-up re: our room, but it's resolved fairly painlessly. Hotel is set back from the main area which is good, though Wayne, a 6-year resident of Pattaya, has trouble finding it :-) See Wayne for the first time in 5 years, he hasn't changed at all! Head down to Beach Road for beers and a bite with Wayne and his girlfriend Nok.
Pattaya can best be described as 'colourful' - it's the sort of place that has given Thailand something of it's party reputation, and some parts of it - particularly the infamous Walking Street - are a sight to behold. Fortunately we head north rather than south and find somewhere a bit less mad on a Saturday night. 250 baht (~£5) for a 3 litre tower of Chang seems reasonable to me! Nok, being Thai, is very handy to have around when there are language problems, particularly when trying to sort some veggies food - LInda toys with the idea of packing her in our bag for the rest of the trip - not infeasible given how tiny she is ;-)
Tiredness finally kicks in, we head back and sleep for an eternity. Well, til the next afternoon anyway! Wander round Pattaya for a bit - away from the crazy areas, it's like most other south east Asian cities - utterly mental from an outsider's perspective, but actually completely organic and definitely interesting. I think we'll see more places like this over the next few weeks. Meet with Wayne and sort diving for the morning, then head back to his place for a few beers and some catching up. Wayne's place is tiny but very south east Asian - practical, and great 4th floor views over the local markets and bars. I'd just stand at the kitchen window and watch the world go by if I lived there.
We've not dived for a couple of years, so there was some nervousness on Linda's part, but that was soon resolved. This time of year there are strong northerly winds, so we look to head to a dive site called Hat Nuan which is sheltered from the winds, but conditions look favourable on the journey and we head further south instead. Bad idea - once out of the shelter of the island the winds properly hit the boat and we start properly listing, rolling madly on the waves. Linda is sat on a (non lashed) deckchair which is sliding across the boat with each wave - she doesn't look happy and mentions something about the Titanic... The captain decides to turn around, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief as we head back to Hat Nuan.
We finally kit up and hit the water - we're both testing out new lightweight kit (BCD and regs) for the first time, and it's great - no drop in performance at all. The first dive goes pretty well considering it's been a couple of years, though the swell and current is kicking up the silt so visibility is pretty poor (< 5m). Still, even the worst day diving is better than the best day in the office ;-) We move further north to the second dive site (Koh Kroc) and this is slightly better - vis is stil poor but the currents are less noticable and there's more wildlife, notably loads of anenome (clown) fish, dwelling in some beautiful blue anenome, a good-sized scorpion fish, some small eels, and Linda even saw a boxfish. Not a bad dive, ending slightly early when Wayne got too cold as he decided he was too cool for his wetsuit ;-) (The water temp was 28 degrees C - Wayne has obviously lost his northern roots via 6 years in Thailand!)
Then mostly sleep, which is not such a problem when you know you've got 10 more weeks off! For those who are unaware, diving is surprisingly knackering (it's a very calorific activity despite seeming sedate) so sleep tends to follow dives! Right now we're looking at the overland border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia which we'll be making in 4 days - the "worst Thailand flooding in decades (C)BBC" looks like it might have affected the roads around the border and over in Cambodia too, so we'll need to do more research over the next couple of days. Worse case we have to travel to BKK and fly to Siem Reap. I'm loathe to do this for 2 reasons: it's stupidly expensive for the very short hop; but also, because the overland crossing at Poipet is legendary and I'd hate to miss out :-)
We'll see what tomorrow brings...
