Sweaty Buses, Spicy Food, and Spectacular Landscapes

After a two-day flight, I arrived Saturday morning in Krabi, where I met our project coordinator and hopped on the bus. The drive from Krabi to Ao Nang, the small town in which I'll be living for the next month, was about 40 minutes. As we drew closer to Ao Nang, the scenery became more and more spectacular. Massive limestone karsts jutted out of the ground, smothered in all sorts of tropical vegetation, dwarfing trucks and scooters crawling along the two-lane road.

I showered and headed into town for a day of orientation, which essentially consisted of me eating obscene amounts of Phat Thai and checking in at the dive center, before returning via the bus. (Don't be misled by my terminology - the bus is no more than a pickup truck with two benches in the back.) Crammed in with about 12 Thais and sweating profusely in the mid-day sun, my thoughts punctuated by the intermittent barking of our driver as he recruited more people to pile in the back, a deef affection for Thailand began to settle in.

The next morning I awoke early for breakfast and a dive briefing, after which our conservation team boarded trucks for the three-minute drive to the beach. There longtail boats, the rusty motors of which bucked to and fro at the graceful hands of our captain, ferried us to our larger dive boat. On the two hour boat ride to Phi Phi Don, my German roommate Eike and I reviewed our diving basics, and soon we arrived at Losanah Bay. The landscape was utterly breathtaking - behemoth rock formations leapt vertically for hundreds of feet from the shimmering water. Lush vegetation crept skyward, diverting their course for the many mysterious caves that pockmarked the rock face. I could tell this was going to be a memorable month.

While the rest of the team did marine life counts and managed Crown of Thorns populations, Eike and I did the first half of our dive review, before taking a succulent lunch of yellow curry rice and chicken on the boat in transit to Koh Yung. After completing our dive review, we embarked on the two-hour ride back to the mainland, and spent the afternoon studying our advanced dive manuals.

Today Eike and I finished the first half of our Advanced Dive course, logging a deep dive at Koh Bida Nai and a naturalist dive at Maya Nui. We were fortunate enough to see some barracudas, a turtle, and some blacktip reef sharks, among other aquatic life. After one more day of training we will be ready to begin working with the team.