Back from the sea

It’s official, Sebastian the crab was right: being under the sea is awesome and once you’re there you don’t wanna go back up anymore. 

Our first dive was a real eye-opener: you leave behind the loud and busy world and drop into a quite wonderland where you get to see things you wouldn’t even have dreamt of. You float in the water and see colorful corals and anemones beneath and next to you that are inhabited by beautiful fish, funny little snails, majestic rays, grumpy morays, spiky sea urchins, giant turtles and the like.  

You turn around and find yourself in a massive school of mackerels that suddenly bursts when the huge barracuda swims by on his silent hunt. And the closer you look, the more you see; the well camouflaged puffer fish, the tiny pairs of goby fish and goby crab that share their sandy apartment in symbiosis, the Christmas tree worms that contract their colourful, Christmas tree-shaped rears when you swim by and if you get lucky you see a sea cucumber move. And all you hear is your own steady breath that calms you down so you fully concentrate on the strange new world around you. 

Here we come

When we successfully finished our Open Water course on Thursday, we were infected with the dive-virus so we signed up for the Advanced Open Water Course that took two more days and meant 5 great more dives. We went for a deep dive, an underwater navigation dive where I got lost while Jens had all the orientation, a buoyancy dive where I hit ground or my head a couple of times while Jens was floating around like a pro, a wreck dive where we got to see an old, sunken battleship that suddenly appeared before our eyes and last but not least we did an underwater naturalist dive where we didn’t dive nude like some would think but had to identify all the underwater wildlife we crossed. We had the best time. 

Mameow, Madmee and Peter

Peter had already left us on Thursday to go back to his friends in Chakkarat, as he preferred to spend some more time with them. So, Sunday night we followed him and left beautiful Koh Tao with the night ferry to Chumpon to get back to the mainland. We spend a whole 24 hours to get to Chakkarat, from boarding the night ferry to finally getting off the Minivan at our final destination. We took a ferry, a songtaew, a coach, a taxi, a minivan and were finally picked up by Peter to make our last meters on a motorbike, before we set foot into what has become our home away from home for the last couple of days: Yaem’s house. 

Hanging out in the backyard

We met Peter’s beautiful and funny girlfriend Mameow, her gentle, smart and welcoming mom Yaem and her cute little baby niece, Madmee. They cooked great dinner for us (Yaem is a chef and runs a restaurant on the ground floor of the house while living on the first floor – sounds familiar at all?!) and then showed us our place to sleep, our own little space that they prepared for us with so much love. We were very thankful, especially after the long journey, and went to bed early.

Enjoying Korean BBQ with Yaem, Mameow and Dog Lung

 During the last couple of days, Peter has showed us around his little town, and it has been great fun. We visited his old school a couple of times and could witness his rock-star-status with all the teachers and students, took some English tests, helped record an English screenplay and collected great gifts. We checked out his old house and the surroundings. We spent a great afternoon and night at Korat that we finished up with a very yummy 80 minutes at the Japanese Buffett.We blended into the local culture when taking our laundry to a shop – the three of us on one small motorbike. 

In Korat

 We watched the hospital sports day, where Mameow played great games of volleyball and soccer and we cheered on her team (“Allez les bleus”) along with a cool group of nurse-cheerleaders. We tried out awesome Thai food, prepared by Mameow and Yaem or at the local markets. We had a wonderful evening trying one of Peter’s favorites, the Korean BBQ, after which we shared both, Thai and German tongue twister. We went to a Thai wedding celebration with tons of good food in Yaem’s parents’ home village, where we went to on the loading space of an old pick-up. And while we were sitting there, driving through the dark and warm night, feeling the wind on our faces and watching the night sky, we felt very thankful and privileged to be there and be able to share all this with Peter and his Thai family. In the end, this week has taught us so much about the great hospitality of Thai people and we want to say thank you to all our new Thai friends and to Peter who took us here. 

Now we are off to Bangkok to stay there for a couple of days before Peter will leave Thailand and our ways part.