Lucky to be safe and sound

Scary stuff... been reading about the tidal waves in SE Asia and really shocked by the devastation and loss of life. Strange to think that all those places that we visited in the last couple of months were so badly affected and may never be the same again.

Really lucky I guess that the earthquake was not a few days earlier else we would have been caught in all the turmoil... even luckier that it wasn't a few hours eariler else the all the guys would have been caught...

Dived out!

Got back last night from 2 days of solid diving and am absolutely knackered. I swear I can still feel everything swaying!

Getting to our dive boat was a major mission. About 1.5 hours on a minvan to the port, then 1.5 on a really bumpy speedboat before we got to the dive boat. The boat itself was really nice, we had our own double room at the front of the boat, which later turned out to be a bad idea as that is where the boat rocks the most! Ellen had trouble sleeping (as usual) and skipped a dive due to lack of sleep.

One really cool thing was doing a night dive, i.e. diving in pitch black with only a little torch to show you the way. Actually thats not quite true as there were a couple of pro divers who had massive halogen lamps that seemed to light up the whole seabed! Night diving wasn't as scarey as I thought it might be and we were able to see loads of nocturnal marine life such as crabs, lobsters and moray eels.

Highlight of the trip for me was seeing so many sharks. Fantastic beautiful creatures, though I did get a bit nervous as one swam right at me! Luckily that only resulted in me getting a good photo, I only hope the photos develop!

Only 6 days to go now till we go to Malaysia for Holam's 2nd wedding. Gonna be really fun and possibly very messy....

Scuba heaven

Been out scuba diving more recently and finally had my first proper experience of meeting a shark close up. This was a Leopard Shark and it swam up pretty close to where we were diving, perhaps not more than 5 metres away. This animal was so beautiful. It was about 1.5 metres long, a glorious champagne colour, a long flowing tail and wonderfully chissled head (much like the Z4's!).

Haven't been doing much in the last couple of days, just chilling on the beach, watching the sunset, then drinking under the stars to the sounds of Nirvana and Bon Jovi....

Tomorrow we are going on a 2 day liveaboard on a dive boat. 6 dives in the day and also one in the night, I just hope I don't bump into anything unexpected!