Just to rub it in a bit more...

How good is this? Two posts in two days! Be impressed (but don't expect this kind of craziness too much in the future). Just wanted to share a few photos with you. Unfortunately, I didn't take these, but they do give a bit of an indication of my recent diving experience, the greatness of which I extolled in my post yesterday.

I think this one's a batfish. There were lots of them around.

As I mentioned, lots of fish.

And lots of coral.

And lots of these cool "Christmas Trees" that instantly disappear back into the rock when you get too close to them.

This is a great shot of a sea urchin. There were lots of them around as well.

I love the way the light reflects off my head in that last one. Well, that's all I've got for now. Cheers.

Islands, rainforests and a dash of politics

Life here has been quite busy the last couple of weeks and I have been out and about around Thailand a bit. Allow me to share some of the highlights with you.

Ko Chang
Last weekend we had a long weekend, so about 25 people from school went down to Ko Chang, which is a beautiful island near the Cambodian border, although a bit more touristy and developed than I expected. The main reason we all went was to do some diving, and we got to do some great diving in the Marine Park off the south coast of the island. The place we dived the second day was definitely one of the nicest spots I have ever dived – massive amounts of unspoilt coral, thousands of tropical fish and beautiful clear water. It was like diving in an aquarium. I also completed my Enriched Air specialty course, meaning I’m now qualified to dive with oxygen-enriched air, which basically allows for longer dive times. Apart from diving, we just relaxed on the beach and hung out in the little town nearby. Here are some photos from the weekend - and yes, the water really was that colour!






Residential
One of the things I'm really beginning to appreciate about Thailand is the contrast in landscapes it contains - not unlike Australia I guess. So after spending the weekend on a tropical island, last week I went up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand with 140 year 9 students for the annual residential week, which means a week away from school doing more non-academic education. It was a great week. Apart from just being in such a beautiful and lush part of Thailand (about as far removed from Bangkok as it's possible to be), we did white water rafting, mountain biking, trekking, kayaking and bamboo rafting. It was a lot of fun and the students were extremely well-behaved – quite a contrast to many of the camps I have been involved with in the past. Here are a couple of photos of where we were.

24 November
Yesterday was significant for several reasons. Firstly, it was my 37th birthday, and after waking up on a train on my way back to Bangkok from the afore-mentioned Chiang Mai trip, I celebrated the occasion by having a few beers with Owen and Marianne (who had also been on the same trip) at about 10am after we got back to Bangna (the outer suburb of Bangkok in which we live and work). In the afternoon I had a very relaxing massage at a rather posh spa and that night I went to a pub for dinner and a few drinks with a bunch of others from school. It was a very enjoyable birthday all round.

You may recall in a previous post that I had a certain birthday wish in relation to the Australian election, which also took place yesterday. Well, I am very chuffed that all my wishes came to pass – not only was there a change in government but the former PM also lost his seat. As I sat watching the telecast on the internet I couldn’t help but smile. Not that I expect the new government to be wonderful, but I am certainly hoping they redress some of the imbalance I believe has crept into Australian life in the last 10 years. I don’t want to go on about this too much, but would like to recount something I have thought about a lot lately. A wiser man than I (that you would be you, Mr Herron) once made a very astute comment to me. Not long after the last election in 2004 I was bemoaning to him about the fact that the Liberal party would get control of the Senate. He said to me it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because he believed it would spell the end of the government. He said up until then the country had only experienced a watered-down version of Howard conservatism, but with the Senate under his control the country would get a full-on dose of it, and that when Australians realised what that actually entails, it would pretty much guarantee a huge backlash at the next election. Prophetic words as it turned out, as I tend to think this is at least partly what happened yesterday.

Well, I think I’ve done enough political commentating for now. After all this time away from school, I’m back to having to do proper work again tomorrow. But fortunately there’s only 3 weeks before our Christmas break, and there are two public holidays before then as well, including the King's birthday which is a very big event here. Well, it's getting late and I need some sleep. Cheers!

Life-long learning

Some things I have recently learned while living in Bangkok:

• Asian Elvis impersonators are very cheesy.
• So are Asian Tom Jones impersonators.
• Kids letting off bungers (loud, explosive fireworks) outside your apartment building on a regular basis becomes rather annoying after a while.
• It's quite possible to convince yourself that ordinary Aussie wine tastes much better than you always thought it did when it's "imported" and you pay three times the price for it.
• If you like street fashion parades featuring large transvestites, come to Bangkok.
• Phone companies being difficult and incompetent is a global phenomenon.

Some things I am expecting to learn in the near future:

• How to scuba dive using nitrox (oxygen-enriched air).
• Whether it's possible for me to visit a Thai island without getting rained upon mercilessly.
• If voting in an Australian election is as rewarding and thrilling when you're not attacked by "how to vote" people.
• What it's like to take 150 year 9 students away for a week of rafting, trekking and mountain biking.
• How much sleep one can get on an overnight train whilst surrounded by 150 year 9 students.

Rain, monks and fish

OK, so it’s been a few weeks since my last entry. Clearly my noble intentions of writing about once a week were a touch ambitious. Oh well. Allow me to fill you on the last few weeks then...

Not long after my last entry we had a staff development day at school. I shan’t bore you with the details of this. Suffice to say there were several lowlights and two highlights: a free proper coffee and a free foot massage. So it wasn’t all bad. And the fact that it was the last day of school before our half-term break also made it slightly more bearable. So, that night I was off to the airport to fly down to Ko Samui.

The first inconvenience of the trip was that my flight was delayed by an hour and a half, meaning I didn’t actually arrive on the island until nearly midnight. (In hindsight, this could be seen as an omen for the whole week.) However, I did arrive OK and found the hotel that my mate Owen had previously arranged for us (he had fortuitously managed to get on an earlier flight). The next morning we got on the ferry to Ko Pha Ngan, which is about 20 km north of Samui. We found some very nice beachfront bungalows for the few days we planned to stay there. The rest of the day was as expected: relaxing on the beach, reading, unwinding, eating, getting a massage, having a few quiet drinks in the evening - surely the start of a well-deserved break on a lush tropical island. But it’s funny how things can change. The next morning we woke up to very heavy rain. And basically, the rain barely stopped for the next 5 days. I had all these grand plans for my time down there: do some diving (the rain was so heavy the dive boats weren’t going out most days and the visibility would have been dreadful), do some trekking around the island (heavy rain puts a dampener on such things), do some photography (again, rain and cameras don’t tend to get along too well) and relax on the beach (a challenge to relax while enduring water torture). So, our plans were forced to change somewhat. What we actually did instead was: sleep, read, walk around the few shops nearby, eat, drink, watch TV in the pubs and restaurants (when there wasn’t a blackout due to the heavy rain), get a massage pretty much every day, and that’s about it. One good thing was that the rain held off for the night of the rugby world cup final, so we were able to watch that. Owen is Scottish and possibly enjoyed the anguish of the many English supporters around us even more than I did. That finished about 3:30 local time, after which we headed down to the all-night beach party until dawn, at which point the rain started up again. So it was a fairly uneventful time on Ko Pha Ngan. Our original plan was to go to another island called Ko Tao as well, but we decided given the weather to go back to Ko Samui, where there were at least a few more shops and restaurants in which to avoid the rain. We met up with another guy from school Lee on Samui and the three of us pretty much did the same things there that Owen and I did on Ko Pha Ngan. I only stayed for a few more days before flying back to Bangkok, but at least my last day down there the rain eased up, so I could enjoy some time on the beach. All in all, the trip was a bit disappointing, only because of the weather, but at least I got to relax a lot. Needless to say it hadn’t rained at all in Bangkok during that week.

The day after I arrived back (Friday), a friend of mine phoned me and asked if I wanted to go down to Rayong (south-east of Bangkok) with him and few of his mates. So that afternoon we headed off to his mate’s apartment overlooking the beach, about 3 hours out of Bangkok. Very nice spot. The next morning we went to see a local Buddhist festival, which was really interesting. It involved a very colourful parade walking along the main street of this small village, followed by all the monks from the local area walking along collecting donations of food and supplies from the local community. The local people were lined up along the side of the road behind make-shift tables and as each monk walked past, they put something in his bowl (usually something small like a spoonful of raw rice). I don’t know how many monks there were – we didn’t stay long enough to see them all (potentially over a hundred I would reckon), but the line of local people lined up along the street stretched on for several kilometres. Some of the monks were very young – hard to say exactly but about 10 years old I’d say. It was a huge event given the small size of the village and I was one of only a few foreigners there, which was also really nice. I got some great photos. Here are a few but the better ones are on my flickr page (see link to the right).

That afternoon we all went for a walk up to a local river, which ran down the side of a mountain and had several waterfalls along the way. It was a fantastic walk and at one point there was a section where people could feed some fish. It was amazing how these fish were so desperate for food they would actually come out of the water to get it. After a few seconds of course they had to frantically get back into the water. These fish were literally risking their own lives in order to get a bit of green bean. I was going to try to attach a short video of this spectacle, but unfortunately Windows crappy Movie Maker is useless and I don't have another video editing program at the moment. Sorry.

The next day (the last day of my break) we just took it easy in the morning, then drove back to Bangkok after lunch. I was very pleased that I got at least a couple of days of doing something interesting without getting rained upon. Last week back at work was a busy one and this week has been a bit up and down so far in terms of workload. Last weekend I spent in Bangkok just hanging out with friends and catching up on stuff. So life is pretty much back to normal here in BKK. Cheers.