Week 10 ~ Thailand Pt 1

To my surprise, our guest writer, now known as Mister Big Lung, wanted to share his creative writing with the readers this week. I think it is because he didn’t want me including a poll on his mustache review. (Despite being frequently discussed by readers). Thankfully, I always make the final edits and photo uploads, so stay tuned and enjoy this week’s blog from the one and only, Nicholas King. 

We arrived in Bangkok and had the first taste of home in a month. That taste of home came in the form of a family friend’s condo, two cute little girls, and spaghetti with meatballs.

We stayed with Brendan & Izza O'Neil, two of our family friends, who have been living with their two girls Aynor & Amalia (6 & 3) in BKK for the last two years. After traveling for 9 weeks, sitting on a couch, making coffee in a kitchen, and eating a home cooked meal at a kitchen table are luxuries.

The cute story of the week was at 6:30am on our second morning, we heard a quiet knock. In came Amalia. I rolled over & through squinted eyes was looking at a very cute 3 year old, who was looking to play before heading off to school. Her invitation came by way of “my mommy & daddy are awake.” It was easy enough to read through the lines here, that she was saying “why aren’t you awake, I want to play.” 

All we did in Bangkok was rest & plot out our next week while enjoying good company. Brendan mentioned Ko Tao being one of the most affordable & highest quality places to get scuba certified, and that sold us.

Special thanks to Brendan and Izza for being amazing hosts and possibly selling us on living in Bangkok. 

Our travel to Ko Tao, was a smooth 9 hours via bus & boat. We were pumped to be getting to the island.

We booked an Airbnb for a week, as we needed a bit of rest. We have been running on the after-burners following the pace of Vietnam. The view from our Airbnb was one-of-a-kind.

View from our porch.

Ko Tao is cool. Before getting into the diving, we went and got a workout in. We got a great workout in. Wood weights, ropes, some dumbbells, a piggy, cold plunges, and a sauna led to one of the best workouts we've had since traveling.

I found a local, reputable, dive shop, Roctopus, and booked two Open Water 20 certifications. I figured I would be fine, since I had dove in the Caribbean before. I had my concerns about Mary Kate, since her only C in her academic career was in scuba class at UNCW. If I had a nickel for every time I heard about her not being on the Dean’s List that semester because of scuba, we wouldn’t be staying in places that had cockroaches.

Day 0 was getting with our group, Keli the instructor, Vernon the divemaster in training, and Illya a 19 year old German who had been traveling for 3 months. We did a quick hour of academics & two hours of homework.

Instructor Keli from Canada, left. Dive master trainee, Vernon, from England, right.

Day 1 was a morning of academics, and then 4 hours of exercises in the pool. That is where things got interesting. What, to me, felt like elementary exercises in the pool (and that is saying something for those of you who know about my past swimming episodes), was to others, a life-or-death situation. And now, I will pause. 

“I want my opportunity to speak my piece. I don’t want my story bein’ told.” - Mary Kate

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Before Mr. Big Lung took over writing this week, I had discussed with him that this week had a theme of perseverance. The scuba diving was the first example of this.

Best visual of how scuba diving was going for me this week.

Everyone I’ve ever known who’s scuba dived have raved about the peacefulness and beauty of being underwater. It took me about four days of diving to understand this. I actually didn’t think I’d see the day to understand what these divers were talking about during my first couple of hours sitting in my scuba gear in about 4ft of water.

I’ll admit, I did have a chip on my shoulder from scuba diving class in the first semester of college. Never got scuba certified and never made it out of the pool. (Not because of my skills, although this story I’m about to share would suggest otherwise).

Gear on, sitting in the pool learning about our first skill set, submerging, and “getting comfortable breathing” underwater. Easy. Or so I thought…. Immediately within the first 2 minutes of being underwater, panic ensued. While in the moment, I couldn’t understand why, all I could do was try to breathe through it. Which is literally the most important thing they tell you about diving. Five minutes in, I’m trying to talk myself out of the highly anxious state, resisting the urge to stand up, remove the mask, climb out of the pool, and cancel the entire certification course for me. An internal battle I faced the entire time I was in the pool and during my first day of diving.

I was confused as to why I was feeling this way. I hadn’t had any issues in the past while scuba diving in a pool, but this time around, I was feeling extremely claustrophobic. I’d only ever heard amazing things about diving from my friends and mother-in-law, but why was this so unenjoyable for me? Later that night, during what I now like to call a “fear review”, I was finally able to pinpoint why I felt so claustrophobic and an inability to “get out”. My friend, Hanna, and my brother will probably remember why I was feeling "stuck", when I mention being front row at main stage Tomorrowland Belgium in a crowd of 100,000 people.

Similar to that night, there was only one way to overcome, and that was pushing through.

The next morning, we had our test. I woke up with a heavy, unsettling feeling in my chest. The symptoms did not change after the test despite scoring 100% (whoot whoot). I decided to share how I’d been feeling with my instructor, Keli, and divemaster in training, Vernon.

To my surprise, Keli responded with “Oh I know, I could see it in your eyes during the pool exercises yesterday. It was funny, though, you were smiling the whole time. You are very expressive with your eyes. Don’t worry, though; most people, who are uncomfortable, end up getting out of the pool and canceling their course. You overcame that, so you’ll be fine.” I had to laugh a bit because I thought I was having this unique experience of wanting to remove all of my gear and get out of the pool the day before, but turns out, I’m not that special. Keli’s acknowledgement definitely settled some nerves, but the true test was going to be how I handled the ocean.

I think some version of this with a little more panic is what my dive instructor Keli was talking about.

Post lunch, no afternoon coffee, as ready as I could be for the dive. I think Nick best explains the remainder of the details of dive #1.

But first, I just wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Nicole, whom, I’ve witnessed overcoming her fear of heights on multiple occasions. As I was facing my own internal battles during the scuba diving, I thought back to my friend Rachel F’s, bachelorette in Acadia National Park. During the super fun weekend in Maine, I witnessed a group of strong women overcome their fear of heights during challenging hikes and rock climbing. Believe it or not, rock climbing and hiking at large heights don’t bother me unless you ask me to jump from said heights. I couldn’t necessarily relate to their fear, but I remembered how impressed I was by the girls overcoming their own internal battles. Especially with Nicole, who showed her grit when she lost the coloring in her face as she lowered herself over the edge of the cliff to rock climb. I just wanted to add that long winded shout-out since that is what I was thinking of as I swallowed my own discomfort during scuba diving.

Pictures from the super cool bach rock climbing in Acadia National Park ft the bride, Rachel. Impressive climb for a group of girls afraid of heights.

Back to Thailand.

To all the adventure people reading this, who might not understand the fear of heights, let alone scuba diving, consider yourself lucky. Not everyone can cross a foot bridge while being mocked with chicken noises and end up okay on the other side.

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Day 2 was another morning of academics with our written exam. We both passed, the scores aren’t important, but we both passed. Our afternoon was our first ocean dive!

We took off by boat. And, no, this was not your fiberglass hull, nice seating kind of boat. This was your pure, 100% Thai wood, blessed by thai buddhist monks for safe sea travel, kind of boat. The captain & boat boy lived on the boat. And we took off with ~50 air cylinders and a group of divers.

We suited up & did our buddy checks. BRAID. Buoyancy. Regulators & Releases. Air. Instruments. Diver. Does your buoyancy equipment work? Are your regulators good? Is your air level good? Do you have your mask & fins? And finally, most crucially, is your buddy OK to dive?

After being informed about the previous day’s anxiety, this last question was the most important. With a tinge of reluctance, my buddy said she was ready to dive.

Now, to add insult to injury, the boat did not have a step down platform to jump into the water off of. Instead, you climbed up the side of the boat, with a 50 lb pack on, and jumped, from about 3 meters, into the water. 

It was a pretty high jump, especially with all of the weight, and you had to hold your mask, regulator, and weight belt to make sure they wouldn’t fall off.

We both successfully made the jump, Mary Kate giving a little fist pump.

Now, on to the descent.

The way that you descend when scuba diving is to let all off the air out of your BCD (buoyancy control device). Because you have weights on, you start to sink. To control your rate of sinking, you kick. And, as you descend, you clear your ears. We descended to 10 meters. Well, I descended to 10 meters. My buddy was stuck at 0 meters.

What my buddy did not realize was that nerves led to her to kick much faster than you need to. Mary Kate thought she was going down, but remained just below the surface. It was not until our instructor, Keli, returned to the surface. Poor Vernon, our 22 year old divemaster in training, had only ever dealt with a diver faking anxiety in the water in his training.

When Keli arrived, she told Mary Kate to look up. It was at this moment, Mary Kate realized that she could reach up & her hand would be out of the water. She put her hand up just to be sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

Vernon, Nick, Keli, and MK at the surface after the dive.

Keli pulled Mary Kate down into the depths of Aow Leuk, our dive spot. We swam around for 5-10 minutes, and saw a very cool pufferfish, and lots of other rad fish.

As a part of our certification course, we had to repeat many of the drills we did in the pool yesterday, now at a depth of 10 meters. These included, removing your regulator, an out of air buddy scenario, and the dreaded mask removal. 

For those of you who hold your nose when jumping into a pool (like Mary Kate). First, grow up. Second, this is your worst nightmare. Mary Kate did not like this in the pool. But, at least in the pool, you could swim to the surface if you panicked. Now, at 30 feet deep, there was no escape. Mary Kate executed the mask removal, replacement, and clearing to perfection. Again, fist pump.

That was the toughest exercise, so we knew we were in the clear. We wrapped up two dives of ~40 minutes a piece, a few more exercises, and headed back. We talked with Illya about the big dive tomorrow to get the certification & he told us he was going to have to cut his jungle party night short. We logged our dives, including our SAC rate, which is where I became known as Mr. Big Lungs, and returned home to prepare for our final day.

Day 3 was the final day of our course. Illya must have not cut the jungle party short enough because he missed the boat. All that was left was to hit the required dive time in the open water. In terms of a final two dives to get your certification, there may not be a more epic spot than Sail Rock. Sail Rock is 2 hours off the coast of Ko Tao. It looks like a random rock in the middle of the ocean, but that is just the iceberg effect. Below the surface were more fish than we had ever seen. Mary Kate was now more comfortable in the water, and we had two great dives. 

Sail Rock.

What's going on below the water at Sail Rock.

Pictures from our dive. Obviously taken by the professional photographer that came with our dive package.

So. Many. Fish.

Notice all the fish behind MK.

We got to see plenty of our favorite fish, the banner fish. The banner fish mate for life. They are always in pairs. They are very playful. We frequently saw them chasing each other around. When one banner fish in the pair dies, the other banner fish remains by themselves, a sad sight. Butterfly and angel fish also mate for life but the most playful and enjoyable to interact with was our favorite, the banner fish. 

Here are some more dive photos:

When we returned to the dive shop, we received our lifetime certification to dive to 20 meters, and we hung out at the pool. We got to talking with Vernon & another diver, Bo, a Bulgarian who had just completed his advanced certification.

We had cool conversations about travel, our countries, and beliefs. We got dinner with them & returned home very tired.

Day 4 of diving was just a morning fun dive. We now had our certification & could just go out with a divemaster. The ocean was incredibly rough, so we found ourselves a tucked away dive spot, the Japanese Gardens, and did our two dives. The highlight here was diving through a cave. We dove through a very cool & very tight at some points, cave system that had some big fishies hanging out in there.

After back-to-back 5:30am wake-ups, I was pretty dead. I took a nap. I arose when our doorbell rang & lunch was being delivered. Mary Kate ordered some delivery lasagna & pizza. She has gotten a lot of flak for this decision. However, I stand by her, that sometimes you gotta get some comfort food, especially when we had been eating mostly Thai. By the time, I made it outside to eat, she had basically finished the lasagna, leaving me two bites. 

Well, that lasagna took Mary Kate down pretty bad. What started as 15 minutes of consistent burping, quickly turned into violent vomiting. You know, I have had my fair share of bad food. For some reason, it always hits me when I am drinking. So, I am no stranger to this situation. I am not known for my subtlety when throwing up. What I heard from the bathroom, sounded a lot like how I think I sound when throwing up. So, I got her a cold towel, some water, and put some headphones in.

The vomiting continued for the evening, and not much sleep was gotten. By the morning, we were mostly on the other side. Thankfully. Because what ensued was horrific.

I don’t really use the word horrific. But, after hearing a backpacking Brit use it to describe our transportation, I think it is the most fitting description.

We were traveling from Ko Tao to Koh Phangan. A quick 1 hour boat ride, to shorten our longer travel day. We lined up outside of the catamaran that we took to the island. And started to board. We boarded the catamaran, and received a true bait & switch. They walked us down the stairs, and off the back of the catamaran into a small speedboat.

The boat was like 60 feet long. There were 15 rows. 3 x 3. Every seat was full. There were 80+ large backpacks scattered everywhere. The boat was fully enclosed with plastic to prevent water from spraying in. Well, that plastic also prevented any airflow. Good news for us, the ocean was the roughest we had seen it. Consistent 1 to 1.5 meter swells. With all of the bodies & no airflow, the temperature within the boat must have been 100 degrees. A smiling, thai boat boy immediately started to pass out bags as we departed. Down goes the 10 year old in the front row. Down goes the 35 year old lady in the row next to us. Whif of vomit. Panic spread across the boat. Mary Kate is trying to talk to me to pass the time. I am so locked in on the front of the boat, that I don’t hear a word. That hour felt like 4 hours. But, we made it. And we got a cab with some backpackers who said, that was “horrific.” I concur.

That night, we took a 3 hour kiteboarding lesson. Even though it was exclusively focused on the kite, it was great. I think we picked it up pretty fast. We went until we had no light, and planned to return the next day to get on the board. We rented another motorbike to get around this island too.

Mary Kate was still on edge. In the last 3 weeks, we had the cockroach experience, deep water free solo climbing & jumping, the scuba anxiety, food poisoning, and the horrific boat ride. She was just looking for comfort. She pulled up the sheets to go to bed, and I heard a scream. Cockroach.

We moved rooms. 

The next day, we went to a thai pharmacy. Explained the last three weeks. Got her a bottle of Xanax. She has been more chill. But, I am also now going to be taking over the blog. Until she recovers from the stress. 

Totally kidding about the Xanax. She’s was just popping melatonin before bed.

We are now in Khao Lak, hanging by the beach. There’s a bit of swell here, and I am excited to report, I have not lost the ability to surf. Despite a two & a half month break, I am still significantly better than Patrick at surfing.

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While after reading nicks blog post for the first time left my crying laughing, it also may have skewed my selection of which photos were used in the stash poll. While my vision for this weeks post was a theme of "the week of perseverance", the harrowing story of a girl overcoming both mental and physical challenges in a foreign country," Nick and his creative liberties decided to go a different route. I respect his creativity. Which is why, despite his willingness to add something nice after the fact like "I'm proud of her for overcoming.. or she took it like a champ", we left the raw original version which is, "she may need to be medicated." 

While I could only choose stash photos like this for the poll ......

I think it is only fair to give the readers a full view of this week's stash photos for a fair vote. Plus, I can read through the lines of Mr. Big Lung, and understand his writing may reflect his own insecurities of his test scores and SAC rate not quite matching up to that of his wife's. Similarly, while some might have been questioning it all over some mild diarrhea and cramping, his wife came out of the bathroom after each episode of vomiting,  singing, and saying “ the only thing I can control right now is how I respond”. 

So, we each got to say our piece, now it's time for the readers vote. Currently we have 4 pro stash & 1 no-go stash (my voting is excluded due to obvious bias). Let the voting begin..

Swipe for stash pics. 

Stash or No Stash

• 0%Keep, best stash he's grown yet!
• 0%I'm with Elena, get rid of it.

Some might question how we are doing 10 weeks in. It might appear like we are getting a little squirrelly. We are. Our vagabonding book warned about this, stating even the strongest couples might need some time apart during this type of travel. However, fourteen and a half years in the making has prepared us for this. We are persevering through all the ups and downs that come along with this type of travel.

All jokes aside, I'm so incredibly lucky to have this opportunity to travel with Nick by my side. It's been such a fun ride and there isn't anyone else in the world I could imagine doing this with. As my dad and pop have always said, "Life is like a train, everyone is always in a rush to get to the next station, forgetting about the experiences gained and time spent in between. Some of the best things in life happen during the journey itself." It has been an incredible journey. Thank you for following along. 

Love, 

MK & Nick

Oh, and we almost forgot our high, low, unexpected & learned from the week.

MK:

High: Sail Rock Dive #1 - feeling accomplished and comfortable in the water and loving all of the fish.

Low: At the start of this week, I thought my low was going to be the fear associated with scuba diving.. little did I know.. later in the week, the lasagna was going to get me down bad. Thank you, Patrick and Melanie for questing my judgement related to eating lasagna in Thailand… I just wanted to mix it up with some familiar comfort food lol. 

Unexpected: Starting to learn how to kite surf after learning how to scuba dive. 

Learned: The movie Nemo is a farce. Apparently, when the mom dies in a school of clown fish, the next largest male transitions into a female. So Marlin should’ve become Nemo’s mom. .. C’mon Disney… this inspired Nick and I to rewatch the movie & I 10/10 recommend. It’s pretty funny. 

NK:

High: The dive at Sail Rock.

Low: The “horrific” boat ride from Koh Tao to Koh Phangan.

Unexpected: Working out with a very good & clean piggy on the beach. Much friendlier than the dirty piggy I ran into in Leeds.

Learned: Eels & pufferfish hunt together. The eel goes through the coral & scares the fish up. The puffer fish eats them.

Finally, week 10 blog complete. Getting a little behind? Click here to view previous week's blog posts. Still haven't subscribed? Click here.

Cheers!

We had so many funny photos to choose from to end the blog this week. This one cracks me up every time. Our photographer had a vision. We executed a silly photo & that's about it.