Underwater Adventures

So I got to Phuket. The trip here was an adventure on it's own let me tell you.

My flight was supposed to leave Clark airport in Angeles City in the Philippines at 11:05am, I was to have a lay over in Kuala Lampur, and then I had to fly to at 8:40 PM to Phuket. Well the night before the flight I received an e-mail from Air Asia saying urgent pre-boarding info on your flight from Clark to Kuala Lampur, that's what the subject read. Then the e-mail said your flight from Manila to Kuala Lampur is moved to 10PM to arrive in Kuala Lampur at 2AM. There were many things that worried me with this e-mail: (a) My flight was from Angeles city not Manila. Manila was a 600 baht bus ride away, and I had just traveled from there to be in Clark for my flight, but I didn't worry too much about this, because in one of my flight bookings prior from Air Asia had said I was flying from Clark Airport and then in parentheses put Manila. So if they wanted to say a city was a different city than it was that's their prerogative. (b) I was going to miss my connecting flight, and this is the same airline that once told me a flight I had booked a couple months ahead of time was canceled a couple weeks before it took off. They refunded the money, but I then had to pay more to find a different airline to fly at the same time on short notice. They made no effort to help me get a different flight, so I wasn't sure if they'd actually help with the connecting flight even though I booked it as one trip.

I called Air Asia and then they told me that the flight wasn't delayed it was still for the same time, and if there was an e-mail to ignore it, they didn't know that an e-mail had been sent. So I did as they said and showed up to the airport at 9 AM to check in.

After checking in and getting through security, paying the stupid terminal fees they slap on for nothing, and went through customs they then said the flight was delayed until 10pm. Luckily some really nice worker there made sure that I got put on an earlier flight to make my connection. The flight took off at 3:15PM. So I waited around and read until my flight. Finally oh finally I made it to Phuket, unfortunately I couldn't say the same for my bag. I made the connection, but my bag decided to stay in Kuala Lampur.

One thing with having had such a rough start to this trip is that nothing really phases me all that much at this point. I handled everything without getting angry and lashing out at anyone. I let things run their course.

When I got to Phuket I was very happy to have found an amazingly

cheap dorm room in Patong Beach, which is really touristy. The next day, after the airline delivered my bag, I ventured out and explored the beach. I also checked around with dive shops for prices on fun dives.

Something I've discovered on this trip is that I'm addicted to scuba diving. I can't get enough of it. I found one shop that had decent prices and went back to go book a trip of 3 dives with them, and when I went in the owner talked to me a little, and sold me on getting an advanced water certification, which is the next step up from the certification I have. It allows me to dive in deeper waters and do some different sort of dives I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. he gave me a discounted price and also through in an extra dive for me. You usually do five dives with this course so he gave me six. It was awesome

I woke up the first day and went diving. My first dive was a deep dive,

which really just means between 18 to 30 Meters. We dove down a reef wall on Koh Doc Mai, a small island off Phuket. It was amazing. We swam into this underwater cave on the ocean floor. That was a little scary being in the dark, but then when we turned around to go out you could see the illuminated blue entry hole swarming with fish.

The second dive we did was out at a wreck called King Cruiser's Wreck. It's a huge ferry boat that sank on the way to Koh Phi Phi and it had 350 people on it at the time, no one died or was injured. Actually people think the owner's sunk it on purpose to collect insurance money, because some people say that they were getting the life boats ready before the wreck and that a speed boat made out to where people were stranded with in 20 minutes, when it would take longer to get out there usually, and to get a speed boat in the first place in Phuket generally takes a couple hours. However the wreck got there thank you. It was amazing. Were swimming and all of a sudden the boat was covered in this school of fish that were long, thin and yellow greenish in color. There was so many that I couldn't even see the boat anymore at all it was like it was formed out of fish. Then as we swam up the hull if we stayed still they completely enveloped us and it looked as if I was standing in a prairie with long grass blades blowing all around me. After we swam a little I saw a pack of barracuda swimming through the school. It was such and incredible dive.

If that wasn't enough we went and did a third dive off what's called

shark point. It's called this because you generally see leopard shark here. Sometimes black tipped reef shark. Neither of these attack humans. While I didn't see any sharks that dive; but the coral and visibility was amazing. The only thing I could think of was that the scene looked like what the underwater world was displayed like in The Little Mermaid when they were singing the song 'Under The Sea.' there was so many bright colors and varied fish.

Three unbelievable dives. The last three I did today were okay, but didn't compare to the ones yesterday. I still enjoyed them but I still

have a pleasure buzz running from the first three.

I'm not sure where diving will take me but right now it feels like a drug. I can't seem to get enough of it.

written by

Kirk on October 4, 2012 from Phuket, Thailand

from the travel blog: Kirk's South East Asia Adventure

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