No more snorkelling for this girl

Just spent the day underwater in day 2 of my open water dive course. It was incredible. Started off a little rocky as breathing underwater is a lot stranger than I imagined it to be. On the 2nd dive of the day the water was really choppy and we had to jump off the boat into some serious waves. I got slammed a few times with waves, drank some salt water and started to freak out a little. But my instructor was great, got me down to the bottom and calmed me right down.

It is such a different world down there. Feel like I should have done this a long time ago. Saw so many things down there. We saw turtles, barracuda's, black tipped sharks (who are vegetarians so they didn't scare me as much as I thought they would), Nemo the clown fish who I personally found so cute, puffer fish, etc.

We swam through this cave and it was filled with fish. Just to be able to swim through them all, look up at the water above you and see nothing but the bubbles from your tank and thousands of fish. For a girl who swims underwater almost more than she is above the water it was great.

My only fear now is that I will become addicted and have a very expensive sport to support. Now I am looking forward to the next leg of my trip (Indonesia) so that I can do some diving there as well.

Have really been loving this past week as Deb and I have gone our separate ways for a bit. Everyone knows how much I love her...but I gotta be honest, after 10 months of being pretty much connected at the hip I was experiencing some technical difficulties. But for the past 6 days I have been swinging single and it has been great. Met some great people on Phi Phi...did the dive course with Amit from England. We had loads of laughs...some of them underwater which is a little complicated.

Sure doesn't feel like Christmas here. There are xmas trees up and stuff but I am just not feeling very festive. I think the most festive I have felt was underwater on my dive today this guy swam past wearing a Santa hat. It was hilarious to see Santa underwater and made me feel pretty Christmasy.

Just ate at my favourite restaurant on the island called Papaya. It was closed when I got here for the first 3 days so I was starting to have heart palpatations that it was going to be closed for the entire time I am here...but it opened yesterday (yahoo). Had the shrimp panang curry with just the right amount of spice. Nummies.

Oh...and there is a rat in my room eating my soap. The guy at the front desk says he will hunt it and kill it so maybe it will be rat for xmas dinner instead of turkey:)