Mostly somewhere else

Bangkok

Thursday 16 February
Arrival in Bangkok

After much dragging through the Bangkok airport, looking for the bus to take us to the hotel, etc, we finally checked in at the Royal Orchid Sheraton, a nice hotel by any standard & certainly the nicest on this trip.

During lunch I saw a pamphlet about using your Sheraton points for an instant reward of merchandise, room upgrade, or … spa services! I decided to go for a steam bath & facial. The spa was very elegant – sounds of trickling water, delicate & soothing Oriental music, soft lighting, the room I was in overlooking the river. So I had a good time, more-or-less free.

While I was spa-ing, Ann, Jess, and Cheryl went to be fitted for tailored clothes. Bangkok kinda specializes in this sort of thing. You go to a shop, where they measure you 30 different ways, choose the material you want, go through catalogs to select the style of clothing, then miraculously a day later the clothes are ready for a “final” fitting. Jess wanted a couple of safari-type suits & they didn’t have any examples, but the fellow sketched it out for him – how many pockets, where, epaulets, etc. It turns out that the way they perform this miracle is having a group of about 300 tailors/seamstresses working around the clock. The prices are quite good, especially considering they mostly use Thai silk, which is quite elegant.

Tomorrow we do some serious sightseeing.

Friday 17 February
Bangkok tour

Our tour guide in Bangkok is named Apirat, which he pronounces Apilat, with that whole Asian R-L confusion thing. His name means “very important person in the national government” or something, but he has to admit that the name hasn’t been prophetic – yet. He is very professional and takes very good care of us.

First we visited Wat Pho, a large temple complex next to the royal palace. The main chapel here is essentially a storage place that barely contains an immense gold-leafed reclining Buddha. “As long as a football field” is extreme, but this guy is really huge – over 150 ft long & 50 ft high. Massive but cool, he’s stretched out with stiff legs but head propped up on his elbow, his other arm draped casually across his chest - this type of image represents the death of Buddha, but he looks like he’s lounging at a picnic or chilling in front of the TV. See pictures in the album. People who want blessings come in & do the usual incense, etc, but also can drop a small coin into each of 108 bowls that stand for all the good characteristics of the Buddha – which by the way are expressed by images on the bottom of his feet, inlaid in mother-of-pearl.

We wandered around the temple area, which was quite beautiful, full of buildings covered in colorful ceramic birds leaves & flowers. These decorations reminded me of some of the flowery reliefs in Mexican churches. This area is also the historic center of education in Thai massage techniques (hooray!), with a building that shows techniques, important areas of the body, etc.

Next, the Royal Palace. Again, a huge complex that could take days to visit thoroughly. The most interesting bits were actually the more decorative ones, probably easier for a foreigner to latch onto cuz they’re cool looking and don’t require a lot of deep understanding. I was particularly taken with the golden imaginary combo creatures – bird women, deer men, chicken people. Also the demon figures holding up a tall conical shaped edifice, maybe a stupa (monument holding important Buddhist relics). Each had on a different mask & was dressed in a unique costume, all covered with colored mirrors.

Aside from the throne room (no photos allowed!) where Thai kings have their coronations, the most significant building was Wat Phra Si Rattanasasadaram (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, also no photos allowed). The Emeral Buddha is very interesting historically, probably more than in appearance since he’s on a throne WAY above your head AND at a distance, and isn’t that big, only about 2 feet high. If you squint you can almost make him out! Here’s some info on him:

He was discovered in Chiang Rai province in 1434 when lightning struck a pagoda and revealed a small stucco Buddha image. When the plaster began to crumble, the jade image inside was revealed. The King of Chiang Mai sent elephants to get the image, but they refused to go back to Chiang Mai & headed south to Lampang, where the Buddha was placed. A royal Thai-Laotian marriage sent him to Laos for a few hundred years, but he was retrieved by the future King Rama I in 1778. He was installed in his current home when the Thai capital moved to Bangkok in the 1780s. He’s an important symbol of Thai nationhood, probably the most important Buddha image in the country. He has three gold outfits, for summer winter & the rainy season, and the king himself changes the clothes in a special ceremony.

Next we took a ride on the canals. The river Mae Nam Chao Phraya runs through Bangkok, right by our hotel, and we felt pretty much at home seeing barges and tugboats, speedboats, tourist boats, public people ferries (like buses only on the water), and even shallow canoes shaped a bit like pirogues (or bass boats!), although the other vessels were a bit different for us. Particularly interesting is the long-tail boat, Thailand’s traditional transportation. This long narrow boat has an outboard motor mounted on the back, with a drive train down to the propeller that is almost as long as the boat. This gives the boat a very shallow draft to get around the rivers & canals easily, and makes it very very fast.

Although it’s a modern city (10 million people!) with apartments and freeways and metros and buses, a lot of people in Bangkok still live on the canals. Some of the houses are like mini-mansions, but they will be next to tiny shacks, and both will have a dock & shallow boat available for getting around.

At the end of the day we visited the Jim Thompson House Museum. He was an American who during WW2 served in the OSS in Thailand and decided to stay here when he got out. He was very artsy & especially interested in Thai silk, which he saw to be a dying art. He threw himself into Thai culture & society, and in the process worked hard & successfully to bring the silk to international attention. He mysteriously disappeared in 1967, but the silk empire lives on.

His house is a traditional Thai teak house on a canal, and it’s full of Asian art. The tour was a bit weird to me. It was all in hushed tones as if you were in a church (although the delicate Thai girls doing the tours probably wouldn’t be loud under any circumstances), and it reminded me of a visit I had to Jeff Davis’s house in Montgomery, with solemn comments like “Here is the chair Mr Davis sat in to read his Bible,” etc. something like visiting a place with saint’s relics.

Afterwards the clothes buyers went back for their first fitting (less than 24 hours after placing their orders, amazing!) and the rest of us went back to the hotel to crash. We had only about an hour to rest up for the night’s activity – a traditional Thai dinner & dance show at the historic Oriental Hotel’s Sala Rim Naam restaurant.

The dancers did several numbers, mostly highly stylized movements telling stories. Like a fight between the kings & demons (and monkeys?), or the plucky Thai guy who saved the country from invasion by the Chinese. The characters are distinguished by the masks or headdresses they wear. The costumes are quite beautiful and the dancers are by turns graceful & athletic, with the women specializing in graceful! But all the dancing is highly controlled. An amazing part of it is how the dancers can bend their fingers up, arching them about halfway back to their wrist. Kinda scary.

I read a bit & found out that the dances originally were performed only in the palace as offerings to the gods, & only gradually allowed in public, which explain why they are so stylized and elaborate. The dancers hold their bodies upright & stiff from the neck to the hips, moving up and down using only their knees, with their arms and hands held in curves at different levels and angles. The beauty of the dance depends on how well these curves and angles are maintained in relation to the whole body. As you can imagine, it’s more controlled than exuberant. Hard to understand but interesting to watch.

Saturday 18 February
Floating market

Today we left early to get to the floating market at Damnoensaduak. It’s kinda a combo thing, with local people bringing their produce and handicrafts to exchange with each other, but with a strong tourist component of being picturesque and a chance to buy souvenirs. The tourists outnumber the locals by a large margin, so it’s evolved into something largely put on for them I think. There is so much going on it’s a bit hard to put an interpretation on it.

People come via the canals, their boats loaded with fruits & veggies, cooking utensils, touristy items like hats or pre-packaged spices. Customers come alongside in boats or shop from the side of the canal. There is also a land-based part, with goods of the tourist variety – clothes, ceramics, T-shirts, shoes, etc. Bargaining is the order of the day, with your first offer being half of their asking price, eventually working together to meet at about 60% of “retail.” It’s funny because sometimes they bargain themselves down. They ask 500 baht, you say 250, they come back with 400, you don’t say anything, they say Well OK 300 but maybe you would’ve paid 350, or even the 400 if they hadn’t been so well, precipitous.

It was fun, especially since we came on a long-tail boat that went really fast along the canals. But it was almost like a Disneyland ride too because so many tourists were coming to the market in long-tails that one boat was following after the other like Pirates of the Caribbean or more like the Jungle Cruise. By the way, we did see some alligators, but they were baby ones, not like big gators around our part of the US.

Afterwards we had a couple of shopping stops, the Jim Thompson store & some jewelry/gemstone outfit. I just waited while the shopping was done, but for anyone who was interested, the prices were good. I just don’t “do” fancy silk scarves or jewels. Then the tailored people had their final fittings & picked up their clothes. Cheryl still had a couple of issues, so she didn’t bring all her clothes back to the hotel.

Dinner was at the top of a 60-something story building, open-air. Not for acrophobics! The name of the restaurant was … Vertigo. Very appropriate. What a view! It was our celebratory event since next we had to go home & try to get two weeks of dive equipment, dirty clothes & souvenirs into our suitcases. We get up at 5 tomorrow to leave for the airport at 6.

While we were packing Cheryl got a visit from her tailor at about 10 pm, bringing some refitted pieces. They still needed adjusting, so he took them back to the shop & brought them back to 11:30! Talk about service. And even with a smile.

Sunday 19 February
Can’t wait to get home

5 am came mighty early, but we made it to the airport. Then while checking in there was some disagreement about luggage & Cheryl & Ann were so delayed that we thought we’d never see them again, but they came sweeping onto the airplane at the last minute. Whew!

Bangkok – Singapore, 2 hours. Layover of 2 ½ hours, so Cheryl & I got back & foot massages in preparation for the long LONG nonstop flight of about 18 hrs Singapore – LA. It was a good thing because on those long flights there really is a danger of poor circulation, swollen feet & legs, etc. We were prepared! I watched 4 more movies & slept 4 hours, so it was a successful flight. (The funny thing about this flight is that you cross the international date line & get to LA before you leave Singapore.) Then a layover of 2 hrs in LA, a 4 hour flight to Houston, and back home at about 1am Monday.

Finally got to sleep in my own little bed, with my sweet George. Heaven!

Cambodia

Tuesday 14 February
Happy Valentine’s Day, and happy Angkor everything

Today we get to see Angkor Wat & Angkor Thom, one of the main reasons I came on this particular dive trip. When I was about 8 I saw an article in a magazine about this area; in particular I was struck by the pictures of Buddhist temples with huge trees growing all over & breaking up the walls. I thought then (50 years ago) “I’ve gotta see that thing sometime,” and … here we are.

Our tour guide is Mab, which means “Fatty,” a misnomer for sure because she is a typical small & slim Cambodian with lovely brown skin & straight shiny dark hair. She said that Cambodians all have what’s their real name, and then what they are called by everyone. People are named for animals (tiger, frog, pig, but never dog) and even colors (red, green, white, even pink). They are called rather unattractive names as small children to ward off evil by not drawing attention to themselves. If a child is sick the parents take it to a Buddhist monk & he will often say the name is not good for the child & they change it, sometimes over & over until the kiddo is more healthy.

Before we went to Angkor Wat we rode on an elephant – I know, too touristy for words but still cool if you’ve never done it, which I hadn’t. Two people sit on a seat across the high part of the elephant’s back, and the driver sits on his neck behind his ears, directing him with his legs. The drivers wear loose pants & hospital-type shirts with a small pocket between their shoulder blades that prominently says TIPS that you look at through the whole ride. The driver for Ann & me snagged a leaf off of a tree & used it like a kazoo, playing really beautiful & I suppose traditional songs. It wasn’t “Let It Be” anyway.

So, Angkor Wat. Originally a Hindu temple, with a number of Indian stories portrayed on the outer walls. (Later the Khmer, the Cambodian people, switched over (back?) to Buddhism, with religious flip-flopping going on for a good while as the kings changed their minds about what religion would be official and the people dragged their feet on changing.). It was built in the early 10th century and has been called the biggest religious complex in the world. It is surrounded by a wide moat. The “front door” is approached by a long causeway that crosses the moat, about three car lanes wide. Its balustrades are long long snakes, tails at the temple end and 5-headed flared cobra-looking pieces at the entrance. These snakes are called naga (which sounds like the Nagini snake in Harry Potter!).

The outer galleries are open, framed by a long double row of columns. These walls are covered with scenes of battles & stories like “the churning of the sea of milk,” a Hindu creation story that features gods demons horses elephants fish the naga snake again a turtle very prominently and lots of apsaras (half-naked celestial dancing maidens, which you find on every empty spot, usually with their bodies facing frontward but their feet facing left). While we were poking about, the monks in a modern wat (temple) just across the way were chanting. Pretty fabulous. They also could be seen strolling about in their orange robes, and were happy to chat with you & let you take photos. They are very striking in the robes & with their shaved heads.

From this gallery area you walk up some closed-in darkish stairways & then emerge into the light of a cloister called the Hall of the 1000 Buddhas. Now there are just a few standing & sitting statues, mostly broken bits, but still with altars of flowers & fresh incense burning. Some of the statues were removed to protect them, others were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge.

Up one more flight of stairs & you enter a big courtyard dwarfed by a huge central dome & four smaller ones. You can climb up some stairs to get to the base of these domes, but it is almost like mountain-climbing. The stairways are narrow & the steps perilously steep and shallow. So you have to go up on all fours. But it’s worth it to get to the top & see all the carvings etc up there, not to mention looking down on the tiny ant people standing around below who didn’t make the climb. A little feeling of superiority too for having made it, I suppose.

By the time we did all this we were ready for lunch. In the restaurants in the countryside they don’t set place settings, but put a glass of hot water on the table that has inside the forks, spoons, & chopsticks that you might need. Instead of napkins there are small boxes on the tables that hold pieces of paper about half as big as a Kleenex and of about that strength too.

Then Angkor Thom, a larger “city” than Angkor Wat was, but with a smaller temple. They say that there were over a million people living here after it was built in the 12th century. The outside walls here show some mythological/battle things, but also lots of scenes from everyday life – people baking bread, healing the sick, fishing & hunting, etc.

Once you get past the outside walls, the place is on 3 levels like Angkor Wat. It isn’t in such good repair, but still fascinating because of the huge heads depicted throughout, some smiling, others with eyes closed (meditating or actually napping?), etc – with 2, 3, or 4 on the sides of the 37 towers still standing. As you climb around in the doorways & halls you will suddenly see a big face looking at you, or in a dramatic profile. Again, not so many buddhas left here, but people are still tending them and encouraging you to light some incense (and put a dollar or so in the bucket).

After this we left the temple area and passed scores of tour buses of Japanese & Koreans who were there to climb the zillion steps up to a temple on top of a hill, sunset being the attraction. It’s funny, it seems that sometimes they just follow the itinerary without a lot of interest, taking the photos of each other in front of the famous scenes, then moving along after that sight is checked off. (Mab confirmed that was her impression too.) Who knows, maybe that’s what they think we’re doing also. You didn’t catch them on any elephants, which they may reasonably consider a point in their favor.

Wednesday, 15 February
Ta Prohm & Banteay Srei

Turns out the memorable photos I saw as a child were from Ta Prohm, a large 12th century largely-unrestored temple full of vegetation & with large trees growing through its walls & towers. It was decided to leave one of the main temples as they all looked upon their rediscovery in the 19th century, and this is it - any work done on it has been only to prevent further collapse. Apparently the monster trees are silk-cotton & strangler fig, which take hold in a crevice from a seed, their roots then growing down toward the ground and splitting the stone. As with the other Angkor temples, this one features sanctuaries inside cloisters inside enclosures inside large walls, surounded by a wide moat. Of course with small currently-used altars, incense available to anyone who wants to honor the Buddha or say a prayer.

Ta Prohm was built by a king called Jayavarman 7th to honor his mom. The carving of the main female deity was based on her likeness. Although it has some nice carvings (especially interesting is one that looks like … a stegosaurus???), the feature here is the overgrown jungle-y nature of the place. The large trees that have nested in the walls really give you a sense of how long the temple stood vacant. The whole Ozymandias “Look on my works ye mighty & weep” thing, the mighty building temples to demonstrate their power, which all fall to dust. Pretty moving.

On the way in we passed a band of traditional instruments – strings, drums, a couple of zither-ish things, & cymbals, with the traditional bowl out front for money and even some CDs available for purchase. But these weren’t the normal buskers. Their name was “Victims of Landmines” and they had shrapnel-scarred faces or stumps of legs, etc. Mab said just about every village has a band like this, and we saw another one later at the Banteay Srei temple. Lots of the villages are named for the temples nearby, so I guess we saw the Ta Prohm Victims.

Another interesting thing I noticed particularly at this temple was the number of cleaning people around. These are usually women dressed in loose clothes & hats with scarves tied about their faces to keep out the dust & protect their skin. They carry bundles of sticks to use for brooms, and they’re always sweeping up leaves & other debris, putting them on big pieces of cloth & toting them away. It’s a bit strange because at first glance it looks like they’re sweeping up the dirt. I took some good pictures of them. Beautiful people.

Then we visited Banteay Srei, which was like a little jewel compared to the other, almost monstrously huge royal temples built by king this-or-that. This tiny one was built by the counselor to one of the king-this-or-that’s, it’s more reddish than gray, probably 10% the size, half the scale, and everywhere deeply carved with very intricate, delicate reliefs. Similar themes to those found in the other temples, but more delicate & small-scale.

Then after lunch we went to an artisans’ shop called Artesans d’Angkor. A local foundation finds interested young people in the villages & brings them into Siem Reap for training to do relief carvings (like on all the temples around here), stone & wood statuary, silk weavings, paintings, and pottery. The painting students are all deaf mutes, so there is a chart of the Khmer alphabet with corresponding signs, KSL I guess. The work is all done traditionally, some of the pieces taking months & months of carving, hand-rubbing, applying metals like copper, then lacquers, more rubbing, varnish, etc. It was interesting to watch them work & talk to the English speakers. After their apprenticeship they are sent back to their villages with the materials & tools they need to continue their work. Of course there was also a shop attached where we picked up … a few items. (Joke! We lost our minds in that shop!)

A couple of notes on Cambodia tourism before we leave:
They mean it when they say don’t go wandering off into unmarked areas, because of the land mines left over from several wars. Most have been removed in tourist areas, but less so in the area between Laos & Cambodia.

Speaking of “tourist areas,” that would pretty much be around Siem Reap, where the ancient wats are. About 1.7 million people visit this area every year since the Khmer Rouge pulled out, but this is the only place. No one is particularly interested in checking out the night life in Phnom Penh. So the economy looks pretty good here, lots of renovation & new buildings (especially hotels) going up. But not so much in the rest of the country. You definitely still sense the third-worldness here, though.

Everywhere you go are people hawking souvenirs, books, post cards, handicrafts. Lots of it is locally-made stuff. Many of them are children, just beautiful faces & so hard to say no to. They have a great patter down, “Only one dollah! Very nice flutes. Please madam, just one dollah.” “Ten bracelet one dollah, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, just one dollah, madam, very nice.” The medium of exchange here is the US dollar: although they have their own money, I don’t even know what it’s called because tourists don’t have to use it.

The roads here are crazy, full of walkers, tour buses, local buses, bicycles, motor scooters (with sometimes 3-4 people on them, but then again the people are small!), and things called tuk-tuks, which are like modernized rickshaws. Instead of a cart being pulled by a person, it’s pulled by someone on a scooter. And everyone’s going in every which direction, no concern about which way you should go on which side of the road. An indication of the transportation confusion: their vehicles have steering wheels on the “opposite,” right side, but they drive on the right side also. Huh?

Thursday 16 February
More travel

Another day of traveling, but this is the mercifully short day, just a flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok, a couple of hours.
Back to Thailand!

Diving on the Aqua One

Tuesday February 7
Ker-flooey

Here’s the info on the boat. It’s called the Aqua One, and it has sleeping accommodations for 16 people (in 8 rooms) and about a dozen crew. Cheryl & I are in a room with two single beds that have about 6 inches between them. The crew sleep according to their status – dive masters & chef have individual rooms & the others sleep in a dorm area.

The crew members we see are three dive masters, two dinghy drivers (Niyom & Ian), a general helper on deck (Tia, a short smiley guy who’s cute as a button, especially when he hands you a dry towel), an engineer who works in the engine room & helps with the compressors that fill the cylinders with air (Pomm), and Dum, a server who also cleans. The ones we haven’t seen are a captain who drives the boat (Prayong), and two cooks (Kann & Sujin).

Interestingly, the dive masters are Indonesian - Ali is Muslim and from the Moluccas near Papua-New Guinea, Dalton & Nus are Christians from Manado on Sulawesi - and the rest of the crew are Thai (Buddhists). The dive masters have the best jobs but are also very far from home & hardly ever see their wives & children. This seems to be just a more extreme case of a general pattern – for example, people from all over Thailand have come to Phuket to work because of the tourist trade, leaving their families behind. The lady who did my massage yesterday lives in Phuket & her parents are raising her daughter in Bangkok. She goes once or twice a year to visit. In our society we may have to move away from extended family to work but are usually able to have husband, wife, and kids together.

The daily schedule is:
7 get up & have small breakfast –juice, toast, tea
7:30 dive briefing, suit up & get dive gear together
8 first dive
9:30 real breakfast – eggs, bacon, potatoes, Thai veggies etc
11 second dive
1 lunch – some American food, some Thai
2 third dive
4 afternoon snack –fried bananas today, yummmm
7 evening dive
9 dinner - Thai beef, pork, chicken & cashews, rice today
And in between everything is nap, nap, nap. Fruit, cookies, drinks are always available in the dining area for us to snack on in case we get hungry between all these meals.

The boat also has a TV/video/DVD player & a selection of movies to watch. Some of us watched The Wedding Date between the third & fourth dives today. There is also a library of fish books, which we are dragging out all the time to try to find out the names of things we saw in the water.

My favorite dive master is Dalton, I stick right with him because he has a book with plastic pages & writes the names of things as we see them. Fun!

The first dive was great! We saw all kinds of cool critters. The second dive was fabulous (with one small problem). I have never seen so many huge schools of fish, really more like cities or countries! They were like huge curtains hanging in the water, some large fish like yellow snapper and others tiny white fish, about an inch long. I swam right into the walls of little ones, they were all around me, with their tiny silver bodies shining in the sun.

The problem was that one of my ears wouldn’t clear well on the way down. When you descend in the water there is a lot of pressure on your body. Unless you go dangerously deep it’s no problem, but your ears are very delicate and susceptible to the pressure. The water presses on your eardrum as you go down (you feel it even if you go as “deep” as the bottom of a swimming pool). You have to hold your nose and blow to fill the tubes on the other side of your eardrum with air to push it back out, which is called “equalizing” or “clearing.” I heard the familiar squeak in one ear, but a funny glub in the other. I thought I was OK but now I know I have liquid behind the eardrum. So I have to stay out of the water until it dries up since the liquid makes it impossible to equalize, and your eardrum can break from the pressure. Oh well. I’m not the only one - as it turns out, Tom may have to stay out of the water tomorrow too. But the scenery is pretty & I can read & work on my photos while looking at it.

Wednesday, February 8
Documenting the trip

Last night I talked a while to two of the dive masters, Nus & Dalton. They were reading funny little Indonesian books about a kung-fu guy, cheap paper that looked like the old penny novels about the wild west. A series of … 51 books! They were OK with visiting a while to practice their English, so I learned about the boat & how it all works.

An interesting story they told me was about a non-Thai dive master who was good at his job but teased the Thais by ruffling their hair. Thing is, in this culture it’s very disrespectful & insulting to touch the top of someone’s head. So the Thai employees went to the Thai owner & said “it’s him or us,” and so he was fired. The other disrespectful thing is to point your foot at someone, so no sitting at the desk with your feet up around here.

I am staying out of the water for the first two dives today and serving as documentary photographer, shots of people suiting up, the dive briefing, the dinghies leaving the boat with dry divers & coming back with wet & tired ones.

I decided to try to go in for the third dive, but come right back up if I couldn’t equalize my ears. So I went down about a foot at a time, clearing ears constantly & made it all the way down! I was so happy to be back in the water that I didn’t watch my pressure gauge closely enough & Dalton had to point out that I was at about 400 psi, and you’re supposed to go up at 500. Made it to the top with no problem, but I’ve never hit the boat at, well, 0 psi before.

Everyone who went on the night dive came back all excited because of all the stuff they saw. Different critters come out at night, colors are different, and corals feed, which makes them look different too. Ann and Jess found an octopus that ended up crawling up their arms and exploring their faces & masks with its tentacles. Ann said that she got an octopus kiss because of the suction cups on her lips. Hmmm, it would be cool, but for me, still not worth going into the water at night. It just feels too closed-in, not like during the day when you can see so far off & the shafts of sunlight come angling through the water – it’s like flying.

Thursday, February 9
Finally learning something about computers

I went on all three daytime dives today, so I’m pretty pooped tonight. I also took my camera in for the first time on this trip. The first couple of days I usually don’t take it because it’s enough to review the equipment & diving procedures without complicating things by bringing another system into the mix.

The first two dives were very mellow, but one the first one my dive computer & Dalton’s both said we had to hang at 15 feet for a while before we could surface. The computer measures how long you’ve been down, at what depth, for your last X dives (mine tracks 5 dives), and calculates how much nitrogen has gotten into your body as a result. The deeper & longer you go, the more nitrogen – that’s what “the bends” is, nitrogen getting stuck in your joints because you come up too fast, before your body can process it. So on the way up you have to pause for a while at 10-15 feet to give it time to adjust. We had to hang so long I ran out of air, but since he’s a dive master he doesn’t use much and had a half tank! All divers have a second breathing apparatus that’s there for their buddy to use, so I used his “second” for a while. A first for me!

On the second dive something different happened. I had been at about 90+ feet a bit too long & my computer said DECO & told me I had to stay at 10 feet until it gave the go-ahead to surface. Again, hanging with Dalton. Technically you shouldn’t really get a DECO (decompression) signal, so we reviewed my computer after the dive & he explained to me how to track my times better under the water using it. So my assignment for the third dive was to read my computer the whole time.

Unfortunately that didn’t work out too well because it was a dive with a lot of current. We had to descend & the ascend on a rope between the bottom and a buoy because the current was so fast. So we all went down, looked around a bit, then came back up awfully tired. There wasn’t a lot of computer gazing going on because we were all trying to stay together. So maybe tomorrow.

After the afternoon snack several of us went to the top deck to do some arts & crafts. Ann always brings watercolors on the dive trips and we invite the divers & boatmen to join us. Today Dalton & Ali did, which was interesting. Ali did a picture of the tsunami, a huge wave crashing to shore and hitting the people there. It was stylized, but captured what it must have been like. He has talked about it a lot. I imagine having experienced something like that would change your way of thinking, that the world would no longer feel like a safe or maybe even reasonable place to be.

I painted nudibranches because they are so colorful & goofy looking, you’d never imagine a sea slug that’s an inch long or less could look like a birthday cake. We are displaying the fabulous artwork in the dining room.

Tonight I plan to go to bed early!

PS. The divers around here worked very hard on a volunteer project to piece the coral reefs back together after the tsunami. There is a scrapbook here of photos from the project – very interesting.

Friday, February 10
The Rock
Today we were at Richelieu Rock, which much of the time is actually under the water. When we first got here it wasn’t visible at all but later in the day the tip of it was out of the water a couple of feet.

Visibility wasn’t too good on the dives, but there was an amazing assortment of creatures, I think because it’s the only place within who-knows-how-many miles and there’s nowhere else for the little critters to go. We saw ghost pipefish, pipefish, seahorses, a turtle who ignored us & went about tearing up hunks of coral for dinner, and walls & walls & curtains & carpets of fish of all sizes. If you weren’t right up against the reefs you couldn’t see them for the zillions of schooling fish – you couldn’t see the fish for the fish, in a sense. We also saw a mantis shrimp, whose pincher things are so powerful that it can break the shell of a crab with one whack. And it’s only about 3 inches long! Stay out of the way of this bad boy!

I made all three dives & watched my computer carefully & didn’t run out of air or go into deco, which is an improvement over my performance yesterday for sure.

There was no night dive because we are leaving the area north of Phuket & the Andaman Sea, and now heading south of Phuket to … the China Sea? It will take more than 12 hours to get there. This boat has fuel tanks big enough that it can drive around for 6 days without having to refuel. Amazing.

Guess I’ll go to bed now. Big day tomorrow.

Saturday, February 11
Happy birthday to me

Everybody sang Happy birthday to me during the briefing for the first dive. Spankings were promised for later.

The area we’re in now has a lot of current, so we descended & came back up on a line. When you’re doing that with strong current, the divers hanging on the line look like flags whipping around in a high wind.

During the three dives today we saw the usual things, but also a type of fish called a bird wrasse, which had a snout that looked like a bird’s beak, and also a huge jellyfish with lots of other fish swimming under & around it, as well as an octopus, which was my first. He was mad at Nus, who was making him come out into the open, so by turns he went from one color to another – red, white, black, and even spotted – all over. Whoosh red, whoosh white, whoosh black, whoosh white again, whoosh spotted. These guys should never play poker, cuz it’s always obvious how they feel.

Tonight we’re having a “barbecue” on the upper deck. They said it’s cuz it’s my birthday, but I imagine it’s because that’s what they were going to be doing anyway!

Later

Well it turns out I DID have a birthday party. The kitchen folks had made me a cake with my name on it & candles an everything! And Ann had brought me a gift & also a card & gift from Mary Frances & a card from my friends at work. Fun! Nus had a guitar & they sang Happy birthday & then we all sang some odd songs, the only things the Indonesians & we knew together (Let It Be, Hotel California!!!) and then the dive guys sang one of their traditional songs. Then Nus showed us some of his underwater photos, probably to try to convince us to go on a diving trip to Indonesia, where they were all shot.

Sunday, 12 February
All good things must come to an end

Last day for diving, and we were only able to do 2 dives because of flying tomorrow at 1 pm. If you think about it, going up in an airplane can be like rising up too fast in the water, if you still are full of nitrogen. So you have to spend about a day out of the water before you fly.

These were relaxing dives, not too deep so that the sun was shining nicely on the reefs & the critters. We took pictures of each other under the water, a sure sign that the diving’s about over.

After lunch we stopped for a quick shore excursion at an island called Koh (means island) Phi Phi, which was hit pretty hard by the tsunami. The waves hit from both sides, so most everything was wiped out. It was interesting to walk around & see how things are being rebuilt. A large, surviving banyan tree was set up as a shrine, with strings of marigolds all over & a sign that said “Never Forgotten – UK Tsunami Support Network.”

Many shops had been restored, and housing was gradually being replaced too. It all looked pretty slipshod, but who knows what it looked like before the disaster? Many of the businesses on the little island were dive outfits, with come-ons like “Try diving, it’s safe & easy. Initial dive x dollars,” or “Get your international license to dive in just 3 days,” a bit scary.

Everyone spent the evening finishing up their dive books and packing everything back up. We are transferring our dive bags to the hotel in Bangkok so that we don’t have to drag them to Cambodia, paying lots of $$ for overweight besides.

Monday 13 February
A big travel day

This morning we left the boat at 9 am and headed for the airport, where we waited around till about 1 for the flight to Bangkok. Unfortunately there was a shop for an organization that has stamped out most of the opium trade here in Thailand by helping develop other types of crops and handcrafts for the people to survive on. It was sponsored by the King’s late mother, called the Princess Mother. They had some great rough silky clothes, & I got a reversible jacket and some very strange pants that you wad up around your waist and tie. Makes me look like the Michelin man, very tacky & comfy.

Then in the Bangkok airport we had a layover of several hours, so we got … you guessed it, foot massages. Dashed to the airplane & then … waited some more. Travel, never a dull moment!

It cost 500 baht to get out of Thailand (~$15), and $20 to get a visa into Cambodia. You stand in line forever at the airport for that, then in the immigration line even longer as the guy stamps about 100 things, but only twice in your passport. Who knows? It will cost $25 to leave Cambodia. Notice that so far everything in Cambodia is quoted in American $$. As it turns out, that’s the standard medium of exchange here.

Got to the hotel about 10, up tomorrow to leave for Angkor Wat at 8.

Phuket Thailand

Friday February 3 – Sunday February 5 Houston – Phuket, Thailand
Getting there is half the fun

It took over 30 hours to get where we were going on this trip.

“We” is a small group of 6 folks who are going diving in the Andaman Sea off the west coast of Thailand. We will be living aboard a dive ship that has room for 16 people, but with the 2 who are meeting us on aboard we will only be 8, with a staff of 11 to cater to our every need, and even to a few needs we don’t know we have. But more on that later.

The trip to Thailand was Houston – LA, 4 hours, layover 4 hours, LA – Singapore 18 hours (I watched 5 movies & two TV shows & slept 5 hours besides), layover 3 hours, Singapore – Phuket 2 hours. We crossed the international date line, so we added a day besides. When we got to Thailand it was Sunday morning.

We spent the night in Phuket so we could rest up a bit before hitting the dive boat and jumping in the water. This area was famous last year because of the tsunami. It’s where the water receded from the beach and curious people walked out on the suddenly exposed sea bottom, only to be swept away by the huge wave that hit a few minutes later. The wave was over the second story of the hotel we stayed in. It took them 5 days to pump the water out of the hotel & then several months to rebuild it.

The town has been amazingly rebuilt – they had to get it back together, since tourism is so important here. And it has been quite successful, the streets are filled with Germans & Swiss & a few Americans, all lazing on the beach & getting sunburned & also getting Thai massages. You can still see several-storied buildings that are gutted & not obviously in any state of repair, so perhaps some will not be replaced.

The main thing this first day was to stay awake until at least dark so that we could reset the body clock to the 11-hour time difference. So there was nothing for it but to get a hour-long foot massage & then another hour-long body massage, each costing 250 baht, which is about $6.50. The massage-ees were me, dive mom Ann, and my roommate & dive buddy Cheryl.

Between the massages we went back out to the street to see the Phuket version of the “gay pride” parade. It was pretty amazing to see these guys in drag strutting about almost naked on the main drag (so to speak) in a rather conservative traditional society. But apparently this 95%+ Buddhist nation (the rest Muslim with a bit of Christian) is very tolerant of homosexuality, or what the massage ladies called “lady men.” I will try to post a few pictures.

To bed about 8:30, up at 6:30, not bad!

Monday February 6 Phuket
The kings & I

The dive boat folks picked us up at 6:30 pm, so we had a full day to explore. We hired a guy named Pong Sak (“king of the jungle”) as guide and a driver named Kai (“chicken”) to give us a bit of a tour of Phuket.

First let me say that Phuket is an island, not even half as big as Houston, off the coast of mainland Thailand. (If you want to see where it is, look at a map of Thailand & imagine it’s an arm slightly bent. Phuket Island is hanging off the elbow.) There is also a town named Phuket in the middle of the island. We took about 4 hours to circle around the southern part of the island and saw several beautiful beaches, a lighthouse built several years ago for the 50th (50th!) anniversary of the Thai king’s rule, a Buddhist temple, a cashew factory, a rubber plantation, and a gemstone jewelry place. Cheryl was quite pleased to get to the jewelry store, one of her main objectives on the trip being shop-till-you-drop.

Thailand is unique. If you were plopped down here unawares you wouldn’t think you were anywhere else. (Hmmm, is this Texas? Germany? Nigeria? Morocco? Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!) The architecture is amazingly ornate & stylized, all steep roofs with curved edges, the tinkling of bells everywhere. You feel like you just stepped into the movie set of The King & I.

Houses & businesses all have a small red or white shrine on a pedestal out front, about the size of a birdhouse but shaped like a Buddhist temple, with flower chains draped around and a glass of water, some fruit, and incense in front. The shrine is meant to please the powers that be, spirits that can bless the building & its inhabitants. These offerings are made every day to ensure everyone’s well-being. You buy the shrines at stores that are along the side of the road, open-air so you can see how your shrine will look out front. Before you start the daily offerings, a special shrine-blessing guy has to come and sprinkle water about, burn incense, say some prayers, and tell you exactly what you should do each day.

We saw a few elephants doing work alongside the road, but A LOT of elephants of the carved wooden variety. At the lighthouse site was a large shrine with a four-headed golden Buddha inside, each head facing a different direction. People come to this shrine to ask for help with problems, or to make wishes. If their request is honored, they bring an elephant to the Buddha. Elephants are good luck. So all around this shrine are hundreds, probably thousands, of elephants. Check out the photos, it’s something to see.

Drug & sex trade aside, the country seems very peaceful & “centered.” The people are friendly & gracious and they call you “madam.” (Could be the gray hair that brings that on.) They greet you with a “wai,” a small bow, hands held as if in prayer, and even if you don’t buy something from them in the markets, they keep smiling & saying thank you.

They love their king here. He can do no wrong. Like I “heart” New York signs, they have I heart the king. They are quite proud never to have been colonized, unlike every other country in the area, and a lot of this pride is seen in their respect & affection for the royal family. One of the symbols you see all around is a spread-eagled & highly stylized dancer in a mask, half-man & half-lion, with wings besides, which is the emblem of Thai royalty. For example, you see this image on mileposts along the roads. The Thai flag is 5 horizontal stripes, red-white-blue-white-red, with the red representing the country, the white the harmony between religions here, and the center, larger blue stripe the king, who is the center of everything.

Back to the tour. We went into a temple, dedicated to three famous monks who served there. There are gold-leaf statues of these three right in the middle of the temple’s open-air hall. There is also a second building that holds totally life-like wax statues of these fellows (get back, Madam Tussaud). And another temple with two floors of gold-toned statues of buddhas sitting, standing, reclining, AND on the top floor a tooth from the original Buddha, inside a glass globe inside another glass globe, inside a big glass box.

Cashews! No wonder they cost so much. Their fruit, which is about the size of a pear, grows on trees that look a bit like magnolias. Each fruit has ONE cashew inside a hard pod-like shell, which has to be removed from the fruit, dried several days in the sun, then split by hand with a tiny guillotine, the nut then removed by hand. The tiny lady we saw doing this in a “factory” had her hands all wrapped in plastic because the pod is full of an acidic juice that would eat her skin away otherwise. She can shuck about 1 kilo an hour, for which she is paid 15 baht. Remember the exchange rate? $1 = about 40 baht. So in this labor-intensive process SHE’s not getting the big bucks.

We came back to the hotel for a late lunch (pad Thai in Thailand! Cool!), then crammed into a van with all our luggage. I’m surprised the van made it to the docks. You wouldn’t believe the amount of luggage that divers have to tote. My dive bag, one of the lighter ones, weighs in at 44.5 pounds. We have to pay overweight fees constantly, but you can’t dive without a regulator, buoyancy-control vest, boots, fins, mask, wet suit, several swimsuits, etc. And then there’s the photo equipment! Fortunately we don’t have to carry tanks & weights, these are provided by the dive outfits, but that’s all we don’t carry. It’s ridiculous.

There have been two “situations” on the trip, both for Ann. Her dive bag got lost between Houston-LA-Singapore-Phuket & hadn’t shown up by the time we left, so she had to go find a place to rent all the dive junk; and the box she carries her camera equipment in was broken into, maybe at the hotel but probably in an airport along the way, and one of her cameras & several lenses were stolen. Bummer!

We made it to the boat without incident, got all our dive gear set up, and fell into bed. In the morning we will be wakened at 7 for a small breakfast, then suit up at 7:30 or so for the first of 4 dives. Better rest up!