Working hard as normal

The conservation gang at the Happy Snapper Bar in Khao Lak
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Well my weeks of extremely hard work continue, only had one day off this week telling you it's tiring!!!!!!.  Well as normal had 3 days of diving this week went to King Cruiser at the begining of the week which is a large shipwreck between Phucket and Phi Phi.  It is a car ferry that sank.  It was great we were learning how to do fish ID and recognise all the different families of the fish using hand signals.  We got to swim through the wreck and into different rooms absolutley brillant.  After that we went to Shark Point again which is lovely but still did not get to see any sharks but only time will tell.  We have been learning alot of the conservation jobs of diving now that I am a qualified advanced scuba diver.  So we have been doing coral surveys and seeing what percentage is alive and which is dead and learning the different species.  Same with the fish id you have to learn all the hand signals for the different families and be able to spot them and make surveys.  Its still quite difficult at the moment but really interesting, have mastered the fish id but coral is really hard.  We also went diving at Maya Bay this week which was great getting to dive were they filmed the beach.  We had to do some navigation and buoyancy work just to make sure we can find our way back to the boat if we get lost - so quite useful really luckily can manage to read a compass ok.

Boat washed in shore in village on edge of Khao Lak
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For the last 3 days we have been in Khao Lak a town 3hours north of Ao Nang it was one of the areas hit worst by the Tsunami.  They have really built up the town quickly but some areas are still clear of the huge impact it had on the town and surrounding area.  We were staying in a guest house which had survived but all the hotels in front of it had been distroyed.  We were there to clear up different beaches in the local area.  After first beach clean up on the Thursday we went to this local village that originally had a population of 2000 but was left with only 200.  All the village had been totally rebuilt but there was still a lot of evidence of the Tsunami, there where large fishing boats just stranded next to houses really sad and strange to see it hard to image what it was like.  On the Friday went to a river on the edge of the largest Rainforest in Thailand to doing some cleanup work there, luckily not that messy so after about 30mins all just swimming and messing about in the river which was crystal clear great.  On the final day after working all morning we went to see another Tsunami site of a Police navy boat that had been washed 3km in land and was just standed in the middle of a field.

Police Navy boat
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Khoa Lak is a great town and so friendly considering what it had been though we had been out to a live music bar one night and when it closed the bar man gave us all a lift home - now how often would you get that at home after a night on the beer.  Well thats about it for this week oh and you'll be glad to know that even though its still hot the weather has been awful this week really dull and raining for the last couple of days, but hopefully this will be the last of it now.