Back in Phi Phi again!

Our sea kayak
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What can i say, i just can't get enough of this place. Maybe its the 70:30% split of hot women to guys on the island who are largely from Sweden or maybe its the crystal clear bath-warm like water and the pumping nightlife - its hard to pin it down!!

To be honest this time round it just got better still with my discovery of the joys of Scuba diving. Sara and I were keen to get at least PADI qualified and with vis here at 20-30 meters it was really great. We signed up almost as soon as we arrived without figuring on there being a Half Moon party that evening...needless to say we were still partying hard at 7am practicing backflips off a floating pier near the Hippies Bar, which stays open 24hr :) So we had to postpone our start a little but managed to cram it all in before we had to leave for the Gulf of Thailand.

Maybe its the 70:30% split of hot women to guys on the island who are largely from Sweden or maybe its the crystal clear bath-warm like water and the pumping nightlife

Back on Monkey Beach with Soz
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We paid around 12,000 baht for 4 dives and the associated tutoring, videos and exam which seems the going rate on the Andaman. Having never worn flippers before i felt like a complete spaz out of the water but really appreciated them once we started swimming. The intro we did in the harbour at 3m with really poor vis which was very disconcerting and quite claustraphobic - such that the following morning both Sara and I were less than keen to be going for our first dive. The first dive, however, was great fun and we saw a few turtles and scorpion fish - but by far the most impressive thing was the coral and the shoals of multicoloured fish that swim almost directly at you enveloping you - 3D snorkeling as Toby calls it!

This is the life :)
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We were just 2 to a dive instructor which gave us plenty of needed attention, whereas in Koh Tao where it costs half as much groups can be as large as 15-20!! There were around 20 skills we needed to practice both on the surface and underwater and suprisingly i found those on the surface the most daunting, especially taking the BCD off/on again for fear of letting go of it and the 9 lead weights dragging me to the sea floor!

Hopefully we will be able to go for a few more dives to practice the whole breathing/bouyancy skills so that we can last a lil longer than 50minutes on 200bar. I must say there wasn't as much to see at 18m as there was at 10-12m so goin down much further seems a tad pointless unless we're checkin out wrecks - but reckon a night dive is high on travel agenda now!