Phuket - land of the partying Russians
I arrived in Phuket straight from the Northern Japanese winter in Sapporo. The hot, humid and busy beach was about as different an atmosphere from the dry, cold and snowy fields of mountainous powder in Hokkaido as I can imagine.
Sandy beach in Phuket
I rented a motorbike worrying on the way over that my lack of motorbike license would make it impossible, like it would be, of course, in the US, but a license to drive seemed to be at the very bottom of list of worries for the dude filling empty water bottles with gasoline and fixing motorbikes in the open air outside his shop. So I rented a bike and spent the days driving to different beaches on the west coast of the island.
Phuket felt like a mini Moscow. All the tourists seemed to be speaking Russian except me. I assume it's due to the large number of Russian people who want to escape the nightmare invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s drafts right now, so they chose Phuket as their sandy safe-haven.
One day, I made the questionable decision to join a hot yoga class with one of the worst sunburns of my life. It was 100F outside and even hotter in the studio. I felt like I was on the brink of losing consciousness for most of the session.
I also tried an Muay Thai class. Which brought me even closer to the feeling of total bodily failure. The class was led by tattooed Muay Thai fighters with sparring pads who prompted you to punch, elbow, knee and kick them until you could barely stand. Collapsing in exhaustion wasn’t allowed, so we just kept punching. We finished the class by taking turns bowing to and shaking everyones hands. It struck me how respectful and inclusive this fighting class was. I noticed the same respect and camaraderie in the actual Muay Thai fights I watched. Nothing but respect between the fighters, who always, unless knocked unconscious, hugged and congratulated each other at the end of the fight.
Phi Phi Island - feverish in the tropics
Heading to Phi Phi island was a mistake. It was very dirty, crowded, and gave me a serious fever. I don’t know if Phi Phi got me sick, but I was sick on Phi Phi. So same same, but different. I managed to go for my first scuba dive in the 8 years since I was certified as an open water diver before coming down with a high fever and heading for the health clinic.
The experience at the clinic was a wild contrast. I was being eaten alive by mosquitos and sweating profusely from my fever and lack of AC in the building, but I also received the best 1-on-1 consultation with a doctor I’ve ever had and was taken care of like a wounded war hero. This doctor had TV show level Doctoring knowledge. I was transported by a golf cart fitted with a stretcher through the small winding streets of the tiny island while the driver audibly ‘beep beeped’ with his own voice. I was then cared for by multiple nurses and talked with a doctor for over an hour, mostly just about questions unrelated to my illness.
I spent the days confusedly wandering to pickup water and food wherever I could find it, shaking with the chills in the extreme heat and humidity. The island smelled of poo and I couldn’t wait to get off it, but the speed boat there had been a survival challenge in good health. It was an extremely bumpy ride and everyone on board kept locking eyes to gauge if you were feeling as incredibly sea sick as they were, so I waited out my sickness.
Krabi - advanced scuba on a budget
I then headed to Ao Nang beach in Krabi where I also rented a motorbike and spent the days (10 of them) driving around to different beaches, programming at wifi cafes, watching Muay Thai fighters knock each other out, and on one occasion, rock climbing at Railay beach, to get a taste of what the Alex Honnold adrenaline is all about.
Rock climbing at Railay was one of the highlights of my trip to Thailand. Like, the scuba community, rock climbers are incredibly positive and stoked about their craft. One climber from the US who was climbing that day, confessed to the group nearby, myself included, that he had an extreme fear of heights. He was physically shaking in fear, but still went for it. Everyone was so kind and supportive of him. It was a beautiful human moment to witness.
Mission impossible style descent
Epic climbing shot taken by Romeo
Each and every morning in Krabi, before the sun rose, there was a loud call to prayer from a Mosque directly next door. Waking up to a dude singing in your ear is a strange sensation. Human society is so strange for that matter. My belief is that humans are just an amazing accident of randomness, a bunch of apes, who managed to create the internet, poorly evolved for the societies we've created, floating through space and hoping to enjoy those sweet, sweet last moments of sleep. But over many generations, we as an ape-internet community developed the myth of gods, and in one case, the tradition of singing loudly before the sun rises, waking even the hopelessly lost for purpose apes like myself. To each their own, I suppose.
My main goal in Krabi was to complete my advanced scuba diver certification. So I found a local dive shop and scheduled the dives. The experience was sketchy, to say the least, but it was scuba on budget, so I suppose it wasn’t unexpected. To become certified as an advanced diver, you’re supposed to dive down to 30 meters below sea level, learn how to navigate underwater and select a few specialty dives to train in.
On the deep dive, we went down to 20 meters because, as the instructor explained, that’s as deep as it goes right here, man. My first thought, naturally, was that the ocean is SO big, couldn’t we find a spot a little deeper just over... there? But we were breathing underwater in the Gulf of Thailand, so the details weren't too important. On our drift dive, where the goal was to learn to flow with the ocean current, there was no current. On a fish identification dive, the instructor dropped the ID book in the ocean, so we looked but didn’t identify. On the underwater photography training dive, I took pictures with my go pro while the divemaster pointed at fish. On the underwater navigation dive, we swam around a pinnacle clockwise with the instructor in lead, and then I took the lead and swam counter-clockwise around the pinnacle. I began to get the slight impression that the instructors weren't very prepared for the situation we all found ourselves in.
One part of the course was very cool however. My instructor brought a bottle of coke underwater to illustrate what happens to a coke bottle under pressure & to show how the color red fades the deeper you go.
March 14 - Krabi Thailand - Journal EntryI just rode a motorbike 40 minutes to get my tourist visa extended in Thailand. It was exhilarating and just a little terrifying. Now I have a looooong time to hang in Thailand. I’ve been sick the last week or so. My energy still hasn’t recovered from Phi Phi, but I’m trying my best to feel productive and good about each day. With this in mind, I’ve been focusing a lot of energy and time toward a mobile app I’m working on, codenamed NoBadDays. The aim is to build a daily planner app that acts as an accountability partner and helps you prioritize working on your long term goals. Hoping to get an MVP working ASAP so I can use it to plan my travels and work toward my goals each day.
Early NoBadDays prototype
I’m planning on staying in Krabi for 10 days to get my advanced open water scuba certification. Becoming an advanced diver has been on my bucket list for a while now. I’ve been thinking about how important it is to consider all of the things I want to try / do and act on those feelings. Often times, while living in Seattle, I felt so stagnant, trapped. The warm, breezy air, fresh fruit, motorbike rides & sandy beaches are just my tempo right now. Just gotta keep on living man. We don’t know how long we have.
Koh Tao - baby shark attack with a couple of Dutch dudes
April 1 - Krabi & Koh Tao Thailand - Journal Entry
It’s been a while since I journaled last. A lot has happened since then. I got certified as an advanced scuba diver. I saw my instructor drink a coke at 20m below. I saw the depth-pressure effect on a bag of chips and observed how colors fade in deep water. I met a girl, while hugging elephants. A flight attendant with a French accent. After bathing the elephants in mud, we spent the day together, hiking to a secret beach, taking pictures of baby monkeys & riding together on my motorbike to a night market. It was a really good day. Note to self: motorbike rides with cute girls, nature & exercise makes for the best days.
Elephant showing off its trunk
Giving a little TLC to my new friend
Baby monkeys saying hello to each other
Skip this if you're not interested in a bit of in depth (pun intended) scuba diving information
After Krabi, I travelled to Koh Tao. My friend Jaycee recommended it as her favorite spot in Thailand. It turned out to be mine as well. My first 3 days on the island were spent in Emergency First Responder training, e-learning study sessions on decompression sickness and emergency O2 use, and in-water rescue diver training. I’m now rescue diver certified. The course was a really cool experience. I learned about emergency first aid and CPR. I learned to perform underwater compass guided search patterns to find lost divers and then rescue them if unresponsive. The lost diver was played diligently by a divemaster trainee named Emily who pretended to be lost, drowning and unconscious all day - I mean honestly Emily, if you can’t swim you probably should’t be a professional scuba diver.
In the final in-water training activity, I planned out a search pattern in the direction of the last known location of the lost diver. I then geared up and jumped off the boat to begin the compass guided search pattern. Once I found the unreponsive diver on the ocean floor (Emily), I slowly inflated my BCD (buoyancy control device) to lift us both slowly to the surface.
Aside: decompression illness and safety stops while scuba diving
When diving in deep water, your body is subject to much higher pressure than on land. There is a lot of heavy water pressing down on you. This pressure causes the density of the gas you’re breathing, nitrogen being the important one here, to increase. Breathing in this much concentrated nitrogen can become extremely dangerous if you follow it by a rapid pressure decrease, like quickly ascending to the surface. If you do rapidly ascend to the surface after absorbing lots of nitrogen, this nitrogen may expand and form bubbles in your tissues which can be deadly. The treatment for this is to hop back into an extreme pressure chamber called a hyperbaric or recompression chamber to breath super dense oxygen until your body chills out. In addition to managing the pressure effect of breathing dense nitrogen, it's important to avoid ascending quickly while holding air in your lungs. As you ascend, the pressure on your body decreases causing the compressed air in your lungs to expand. If you're holding your breath, the air in your lungs may over-expand cause your lungs to rupture.
It’s so important to ascend slowly without holding your breath that it’s standard procedure on every dive to perform a safety stop for 3 minutes at a depth of 5 meters below the surface to help your body off-gas the nitrogen absorbed while diving.
So, anyways, now that we've covered the worst-case diving scenarios (I've probably scared you away from scuba diving.. sorry), once we were safely above water with our lungs intact and our nitrogen levels chilling, I stripped both myself and the 'unconscious' Emily of our scuba gear, tanks and BCDs and swam us back to the boat while performing simulated rescue breathing. Once we reached the boat, I carried Emily up the ladder and began to administer CPR and apply emergency O2. My instructors name was Olga. She was kind and super knowledgeable. The whole process had me considering staying on Koh Tao for a month to train as a divemaster myself… Hopefully someday soon I’ll be back.
In Koh Tao, I stayed at the best hostel of my life: The Dearly Koh Tao Hostel. I got a private room to have my own space, but the inclusive, positive social energy was tangible. At breakfast one morning, I met a Dutch dude named Bas, like the rapper (I let him know). He was also on the island for scuba diving & we connected over that. He had recently met another Dutch dude named Bram. Bram had blonde tipped hair and was into Amsterdam clubbing and existentialism, currently reading "The Myth of Sisyphus". He reminded me a bit of my cousin Danny, who has a tattoo of Sisyphus in his impossible task. A dude with incredibly chill vibes on a quest to understand a deeper meaning in our existence. I went snorkeling with the Dutch dudes @ Shark Bay on Koh Tao and followed a beautiful sea turtle as it snacked on the Coral.
Turtle snacking on the coral
While swimming over shallow coral, I felt a sting on my chest. I looked down, thinking I had scraped Coral, but I was well above the Coral. Then, I felt another prick on my stomach. I looked over at the Bas who was swimming with me - he was pointing at something next to me and then began frantically swimming away. Naturally, this freaked me out, big time. So I looked where he was pointing and saw a creature about 2 feet long that looked to me like a baby shark. The place was called Shark Bay after all. So now I’m also terrified and began speed swimming after Bas, thinking I had just (barely) survived the worlds most minor shark attack.
Back at the beach, gasping for air from the speedy escape, we told a dude nearby the story. He laughed at us. Saying it was probably a sucker fish just trying to clean me. He was right, of course it wasn’t a shark attack. I didn’t have a mark on me. And sharks almost never attack humans. Bas and were disappointed. Mostly because we wanted to be survivors of a baby shark attack, but after googling baby sharks and shark attacks - I’m very glad that wasn’t the case.
Sucker fish, not a baby shark
After completing the rescue diver course, my elephant hugging friend came to hang with me on Koh Tao. We spent the days exploring beaches, snorkeling and eating yummy food. One local Thai food restaurant named Dee Dee had the spiciest, most delicious and cheapest food I ate in Thailand.
One day, we took the motorbike to a secluded spot named Mango Bay. The road there felt like a motocross track with steep declines, broken road, crevices and thin, winding, steep dirt trails. After surviving the ride there with two people on a motorbike that barely qualified as a scooter, we came to the entrance to the bay. To get to the beach, we had to climb through and over gigantic boulders hugging the ocean in our flip flops. Once we finally got to the sand, we were greeted by a big dude who looked just as thankful to be alive as we were. He was the only person on the beach. He had fallen on the rocks during the climb in and was bleeding from his leg, but still in high spirits. He was Israeli and had friends coming to meet him at the beach. His friends started pouring in, wide-eyed, peaking their heads over the boulders. They arrived to applause from the other survivors of the journey, half of which were bleeding from various extremities. The bleeding members of the small beach gathering ended up waiting for boat to rescue them for the journey back. Not to brag, but I made it in and out without a drop of blood on me.
Boulders of Mango Bay
Koh Phangan - the land of the big pants and moon parties
After Koh Tao, I journeyed to Koh Phangan. If Koh Tao was land of the divers, Koh Phangan was land of the hippies with big pants perfecting their tantric crafts. One day, I embraced the yogi culture and joined an acro yoga class. I spent the afternoon practicing handstands, balancing and being balanced in the air by others. It was a really cool experience and a lesson in trust.
Acro yoga in action
I spent my time in Koh Phangan working out at a wooden gym on the beach, celebrating the full-moon, and diving with a massive school of barracuda.
Bangkok - squirt gun warfare
After Koh Phangan, I took a flight north to Bangkok where I stayed for 8 nights. In Bangkok, I explored some of the temples and museums before the craziness of Songkran - the Thai new year celebration began.
Chinatown in Bangkok
I made a new friend with a Thai girl named Furo in Bangkok and spent a few days exploring the city with her. We joined an electric scooter tour, zooming around Chinatown at night and trying local street food spots.
We sat gazing out from the 50th floor of a rooftop bar and drinking Aperol spritz. We walked around the Van Gogh Alive exhibit in downtown and wandered around the biggest malls I’ve ever seen.
Bangkok skyline from 50th floor
Van Gogh Alive exhibit in Bangkok
Most people I met described Bangkok as overwhelming, but I really liked the city. Largely due to the brief relief from the loneliness of solo traveling and the insanity of the Songkran water festival, but my strategy to have a comfy private space to escape to worked. Having a nice spot to just chill and program / read / sleep when I ran out of moving energy was so nice.
When the Songkran festival came, I joined the Khao San road water fights. I mounted my GoPro to a big squirt gun and wandered around the streets for hours soaking in the craziness and joining water fights. The communal, positive vibe of the festival was something to experience. Both tourists and locals came together and celebrated together in the biggest party I’ve ever been a part of. It’s hard to imagine the same scene happening back home in the US.