Koh Tao: Everyone is leaving the Advanced Open Water Diver

During the last few days I have completed my Advanced Open Water certificate including the following dives:

The first dive was a Peak Performance Bouyance, including a few brushup exercises as its been a long time since I've dived. It was just a few exercises in bouyance at in shallow water (6m) making it quite hard to control the bouyance, but we got throug and had good time to dive around afterwards. It was so nice to dive again, especially in Koh Tao, which is by far my favourite place to be in Thailand. We also had time to complete a few exercises in underwater navigation.

The second dive was Underwater Navigation, because I had completed the compass exercises in the previous dive, I was assigned as leader of the diver to test my skills with a compass and a map, it was good fun but it was at the most crowded dive spot I've ever experienced. The diving was actually pretty good, but the many people ruined it a bit for me.

The next day it was time to go deep, we sailed into the middle of the ocean and had a dive to 30m, this was the most amazing dive I've ever had. There were fish everywhere and the density of the schools of fish was unreal, at one point we swam around a rock formation next to which there was a huge school of bright yellow fish and to the right of this another big school of black fish, over both a huge school of striped barracudas was lurking. We saw stingrays as the picture shows, and also a very large grouper, which I would guess to weigh maybe 40 kilo, that really big. The below shows that even at 30m I'm still heavy metal. Being that deep I found a little claustrofibic, because you have to do a safety stop on the way up, which means you cannot go straight up, we spent 15 min at 30m, 15 at 20m and then grouped up with some of the other divers at 14m.

Then we went to Shark Island very close to the place, we had seen shark on our previous snorkling trip. But no shark this time, to get a little experience in leading I was to lead the group using a map and a compass. Another great dive, and after zig-zagging east, circling rocks and zig-zagging back I was actually able to brings us to back to the boat in the end of the dive, beginners luck maybe, I'd like to think not.

The last dive so far was a night dive, not very far from the bay where we live and not at the most amazing spot but it was so so great. The sky was lit by an almost full moon, and the water was sparkling with glowing plankton (morild), it was just my instructor and me, and when we both turned of our lights the moonlight would be enough to for orientation and the sparks from the plankton gave it all a magic touch, very romantic, especially had my instructor not been a guy. The fish behave a lot differently at night and we saw a lot including a 1.5m Jenkings Ray, this was definitely not my last night dive.

The New Heaven diveshop was very good, and the dives done in small groups or with the instructor only, we kept diving until the tank was empty, and things where never rushed.

Yesterday was spent doing very little, but I managed to go with Kasper to get a Thai massage, a mani- and a pedicure, just men doing manly stuff. As it was Anders last night, we had a very wet night out in Sairee beach, unfortunately my camera went out of battery, Thai Red Bull and Mekong Whisky is surely the prescription for a good time and a massive hangover.

Kasper is leaving tomorrow for Koh Phagnan, so I will be all by myself for New Years eve, which actually suits me just fine, I have booked 2 more dives for tomorrow morning, and they have a party in the diveshop tomorrow. The party is themed super star or super hero, so I guess I'll just wear my normal clothes.

Having travelled for this long has made me realize a very good thing, even though I just love to travel I actually look forward to getting back home in a few days.

Happy New Year!

Swimming with sharks in Koh Tao

After a few days on Koh Phi Phi and a good celebration of Anders birthday/decission to not smoke, we sat sail on the 24th for Koh Tao. Katja decided to go back and train some more, something I could not do, having legs in all the colours of the rainbow. So Anders, Kasper and I spent "Juleaften" on the boat to the small island and arriveded early morning the 25th.

Koh Tao is one of the sweetest spots in Thailand, the 25th was activity day as we: Ate, enjoyed the view from our shoreside restaurant, had ice cream, travelled the long 5m journey from the restaurant to the water and back, we also got into bed quite early.

Today was snorkling trip day, starting early morning on a "big boat". The first site was a little disappointing as there was little coral and not so much to look at, until: Great shadows were seen near the bottom. Appart from a very brief encounter of some small reef sharks, this was the first time in my life to see big sharks (1.5 m is quite big when it's a shark). Seeing a shark swim in the water, you know it's a predator, what an amazing fish.

To get a closer look I tried to dive down and got fairly close on several occasions, but as it turns out, I cannot outswim a shark. This was such a great experience, tomorrow I start my advanced open water course and I really hope to see some more shark when I'm on bottled air. Hopefully, Anders, whos a little sick in his head (his mouth), will join me and take his open water certificate.

Happy Birthday to Anders

Training is over, I got a beatdown in the ring at Tiger Muay Thai by a heavier, taller and technically a lot better guy from Switzerland, against who I had no real chance. I have it on film, but cannot upload from Phi Phi as the network is shit. But the bruises are disappearing and we are now on Koh Phi Phi to relax a little.

Today we celebrate Anders' 30th birthday and also that he will never smoke another cigarette ever in his life, hahahahah, my jaw hurts from laughing so much.

Anyway, it's all good, and tomorrow it's X-mas, so merry merry to you all.

Day 23: More training.

The morning training has just been done with, so I thought I'd blog a little and post my sparring session with Stefan from Sunday. I think it's a better match. I was a lot less intimidated by him: I know him well, think we are somewhat on the same level and we have sparred once before.




Total pushups: 4000
Total situps: 4800

Day 22: Getting closer to the end.

We just started on the last week of training, it has been great so far but also incredibly hard and straining, bruises here and there, aching and strains.

Anyway, I got trough my illness last week and got back training, we had an amazing night out in Patong, which was well needed.

Sunday we had a sparring session in the morning with American Dan, Swiss Stefan, Indonesian Dewie and Danish Camilla. The deal was to give it about 50%, so it was a lot harder than normally and good experience.

Katja had a round with Dewie, who'svery good, but a lot smaller and a round with Camilla, who's also here to train a month.



I think both should take a lot of pride from the match.

I had a round with Stefan, who has a longer reach but on about the same level as I am, and we had a fairly even match.
I also had a round with Dan who's surprisingly quick and punches really hard, he has trained a lot more than I have so I was overmatched but it was still good, I'm glad my guards are generally up though, as it was a lesson in damage control.



For those of you unable to go to Thailand to train, here's a little movie that will help you get out of dangerous situations.

HOW TO FIGHT - watch more funny videos

Total pushups: 3800
Total situps: 4600

A night of pure class: More revealing photage.

First an image of a fight between a foreigner and a Thai. Even though it's a national sport the foreigners always seem to win for some reason, this Thai has prepared for the fight by not eating for a year!

After some cultural education, we went to some classy bars, luckily accompagnied by our own classy ladies.

The entrance to the toilet also showed a lot of class.

Group photo from the taxi home with Anders, Katja, Camilla and Kasper, all deadly weapons and trained in the fine art of Muay Thai.

Even our 14 year old taxidriver thinks we are great.

At the end of the night Kasper, who always keeps his personal items stored safely and dry in a divepack (sometimes even stored in another divepack for double protection), shows he's ready should another Tsunami occur.

Our first night out! Uiihuu

Thought I´d add a bit of colour to this blog ... After 3 weeks without a descent party being way to sensible for our normal behaviour, we needed a few beers and a change of scenery.. So we went to Phatong :o) First stop was bangler stadium.. Muay Thai fights and beers are an excellent warm-up. Next on the list was a ping pong show (educational). Then a bit of a bar crawl on the crazy party street.. After some nail hammering action, fire på stribe, poledancing, Anders picking up "girls" and a shit load of Red Bull, we end up on Rasmus´s porch for some late night story telling and Kasper practicing some newly learned moves on Anders.. Happy days!!!

Day 18: Poker and chill

Just a funny pic of some of the cats running round the resort. They often come to our terrace in the afternoon for a bit of chilling away from the sun.










Not much bloging from my part is about to change ;)
I trained hard for a week or so, since then its been going downwards. First I got an infection or something in my achilles tendon, which made my foot hurt like hell everytime I stood on my toes, so almost no training for an entire week. This week my foot have been just fine, but eventhough I haven't been training that much. I went for a double session on Monday, which worked out great, but since then I haven't done any Muay Thai training. I've been doing some Bodyfit training in the morning, which is extremely hard workout, a bit like crossfit back in DK i guess, and then some weight lifting and running in the afternoon, including the meeting with some angry dogs, as Rasmus mentioned the other day. Nevertheless, this workout schedule of training 2-4 hours a day seems to fit me better than doing Muay Thai training all day, and it's still far more training than I would ever do at home.
Not training that much have left me some time off to do other stuff ;) So of course I've been playing a bit of poker, which is just the way to relax for me hehe. Winnings have been fine, at least I've earned enough out here to pay for the whole trip, which is nice. Winning instead of losing also makes it a bit easier for me to explain to the others, why I should be playing poker when they go training ;)
I totally enjoy life here in Thailand, our daily routines are a bit like mine at home, sleeping 8-10 hours at night, train a bit, eat a lot and then chiiillll. So eventhough I have to realize that I will never become the deadly fighting machine, that I really thought I would turn into when we left DK, I'm still happy and could easily stay right here for the next couple of months.
But I can also feel a creeping something building up inside of me, I really don't know what it is, but it could have something to do with beer and party!!! Life is good, it's very nice to live a healthy life etc etc, but damn i've never tried not partying just a tinny little bit for so long, so at some points I'm really looking forward to moving to Phi Phi within the near future, where we'll celebrate my birthday, christmas and driiiink beeeeers ;)

Keep it real
Joe

The next day or something like that... ;o)

Well dont really know what to write, but feel like I should write something... Tavs has left us, but Kasper has turned up instead.. Got moved to the intermediate team from beginners on friday. Not sure I belong there but its a nice change of chenery, and they are focused a bit more on technice instead of fysicke.. had a bit of ancle trouble this week.. Been taking it easy this week with only one training session a day. Toke a trip to the shooting range to day (maybe Ill post a video of it tomorrow, or one of the next days, perhaps) followed by a wee snorkling trip.. This weekend I´ve decided to get drunk and go to Pathong to see a ping pong show, and Im REALLY excited about it, omg its gonna be crazy..

Day 16: A near death experience.

Another day feeling too sick to train, spent watching movies and reading this stupid book "Whiteout" by Ken Follet. The book sports the most stereotypic relationship of a well kept older man (the boss) and his beautiful younger and succesfull woman (the employee), whos insecurity in his pressence makes me wanna throw up (sick or not).

In the afternoon Anders came around my house and convinced me to go for a run and off we went. There's this route we take during training that takes us around some lakes and some of the more simplistic housing in Thailand. It's a nice little run and off course I fucked it up driving us straight into an angry pack of stray dogs. I generally don't mind dogs, but 10-15 barking and chasing dogs is quite overwhelming, luckily we made it out alive with no bitemarks to show for it.

I have this theory about exercising when recovering from illness (it goes for alcohol too): If you do it too soon it makes things worse (when talking about alcohol the effect is double), but if you are passed the crucial point it makes you feel better.

Anyway it made me fell a lot better and I'm ready for training tomorrow, I can't wait.