Phuket 2

Moved from the Westin to the Ban Karanburi Resort, The Westin catered to all nationalities, the BKR is a Thai resort with very few English speaking people.  This resort is located on Karon beach.  The predominate nationality visiting in and around Karon beach is Russians.   The AC doesn’t work that well in my room and it is effing hot and muggy. 

Dive 8 was at Anemone reef and we became familiar with a fish called a striped Remora.  These fish can be seen on sharks as they attached to the backs of sharks using their sucking mouth.  Disturbing to have these suckers trying to swim up my shorts while 20 meters under water. 

Dive 9(Shark point)  Large colorful fans, a giant Moray eel, lionfish and pilot jacks. 

Dive 10 (Koh Doc Mai) Leopard shark, huge sea turtles and a sea snake.  The sea snake is striped like a zebra, rather small but very deadly.  As Sergey, my divemaster, says one bite and 5 minutes later you are dead.  This increased my air consumption a little bit I assume.

Dive 11 (Koh Bida Nok) Lemon shark, the damned striped remora trying to suck on my junk again but the prettiest of all the dives I did and will do while in Phuket.

Dive 12 (Shark point 1 and 2) Another shark but it was swimming fast away from our group and I couldn’t tell what type it was. 

Skipped a day of diving to sightsee and allow my blisters on my toes, caused by my scuba fins to scab up.  I headed to a snake show, an elephant farm and Patong.  First, I hate snakes and felt very uncomfortable being so close to king cobras and many other snakes that could kill me very quickly.  What was I thinking going to this show, I will never know but I’ve been to one and no need to attend any of them EVERagain.  I wanted to get my picture on top of an elephant but after haggling over prices, they wouldn’t let me just get up on one, I had to purchase an hour trek through the jungle, that I had no desire to do, I decided to walk around the farm and that would have to be good enough.  This decision not to spend any money at the elephant farm changed the agreement and upset my tuk tuk driver for the day.  I agreed upon 500 bht to have the driver for the day take me to four or five different places.  At first, he was wonderfully accommodating, happy and friendly.  After refusing to pay for the elephant trek(which was a tourist rip off) he no longer talked to me and drove me to my next location and told me he would no longer be able to be my tour guide.  They get kick backs from the businesses based on where the drivers take you and I guess he was no longer making money off of me.  I paid him 200 bht and we parted ways. 

Patong:  Shops of fake DVD’s, clothing, hats, handbags, sunglasses, hell everything is a fake knock off.  Women soliciting their bodies for cheap, everywhere. 

Sunday July 29^th was back to diving:

Dive 13 (Koh Doc May)

Dive 14 (Koh Bida Nok)

Dive 15 (Maya Bay)

Sea turtles, fast currents and lots of colorful fishies. 

Dive Asia was an awesome outfit to dive with.

Back in Bangkok for a week.   

Eat more chicken