October 2013 - January 2014:
No big events that I can recall. I celebrated NYE on "the Bund" which is the area of Shanghai many people recognize because of the city skyline. It was a crazy night with one memorable event. I GOT SLAPPED IN THE FACE. Some dumb girl wore a white dress and my wayyyyy to intoxicated friend was dancing with me--long story short, he fell on me. I hit her on the way down. Her red wine spilled on her dumb white dress. I stood up. I got slapped. Didn't even know what hit me. Didn't know why I was being slapped. So, naturally.... I just started to cry and went to the bathroom. When I came out of the bathroom back to the party, everyone had already forgotten it had happened. Nice friends.
January 2013:
Every year between Jan and Feb the biggest holiday in China is celebrated. Chinese New Year is the beginning of a new lunar year, and the vacation time they get here is amazing. It is much like our "winter break" in college. As a teacher I got 3 full weeks off and of course, did some traveling.
The first stop was Cambodia. At this time, Cambodia was the poorest country I had traveled to. The people were great though. They were just as content as could be, many of them possibly owning as little as one full outfit. We hit the big cities here (Phnom Phen and Siem Reap) and the major tourist attraction, well worth spending time at, Angkor Wat. We had little fish eat the dead skin off of our feet while drinking beer, and then read an article that this was spreading HIV and Hep C. Too late now.
From here we made our way to Bangkok, Thailand, but went directly to the airport to fly to Chiang Mai in the North. At this time, Thailand was having pretty major protests in Bangkok and we decided it would be best to see this city a different time. Chiang Mai was beautiful. We bought souvenirs at a night market, ate local street food, went white water rafting and elephant riding.
From here we flew and ferried to a small island off the southeast coast of Thailand called Koh Tao. You may have heard of this place in the news kind of recently--you know, for the two British tourists that were beaten to death with a garden hoe on the beach. Before that glorious incident, we spent 10 days at a diving resort there. We got our basic diving certificate, and then decided - what the heck - to get our advanced certificate. We did 9 dives in these 10 days. We also played beach volleyball and tried to get rid of our "porcelain" skin complexions.
Many of the dives we did were similar, but equally amazing. We learned about different fish species, corals, underwater navigation, and about all of the equipment used to dive. With our advanced certifications we are allowed to dive to 30 meters, which doesn't sound that crazy--but thinking about being 100 feet under water for 40 minutes makes it sound a bit more cool. There are two diving experiences I would like to tell you about. Both left me smarter and knowing more about my body than I had known before.
Wreck Dive: Our instructor was a crazy old guy who had lived on this tiny island for about 30 years. Every response out of his mouth had some sexual innuendo in it. You got used to it. Anyway, we were doing a wreck dive to a ship that was purposely wrecked there for divers to enjoy. Well, you are supposed to be "wreck certified" to go in ship wrecks... but I believe I told you our instructor was crazy. He took 8 newly certified divers into the wreck. There were two opportunities to go into the ship. The first one was exciting! You swim through a door and into the captains deck. There are windows letting light in (because only the instructor had a flashlight) and its a pretty clear path to get out if something were to go wrong. I DID IT. I came out of there feeling like a champ. "Whoo hoo," I though. "I went in a ship wreck!" Then we went to another door. But why? We already finished. I though I was done going in small dark places while 100 feet underwater. Nope. Apparently not. I followed the person in front of me to the door, watched her swim in, stuck my head inside the door to find I could only see small bubbles and a giant black tunnel that was a flight of stairs leading down into the dark hull of the boat. I could not see her flippers. I could not see a flash light. I could see nothing. So, I promptly shoved myself backwards out of that door back out into the light blue ocean. NO WAY. Luckily, the instructor at the back of the group did not plan to go in the ship, as she is claustrophobic, so I could stay with her and meet them on the other side. Unfortunately, Kyle was behind me, and my mini-freak-out prevented him from being able to go in the wreck. Maybe next time? Lesson learned: I am extremely claustrophobic underwater.
Night Dive: Yeah, you read that right. NIGHT DIVE. DARK DIVE. BLACK DIVE. BAD IDEA DIVE. Apparently people enjoy going into the ocean at night. I have no idea why. Didn't they watch Jaws? Anyway, I expressed my fear to all of the instructors and people that I would be diving with. Somehow, they convinced me to jump in that water. Let me tell you, I was hyperventilating before I even jumped in. It was cold. Everyone had flashlights for this one. The majority of this dive I don't really remember. I was hyperventilating--using up my air tank way faster than the other people in my group. I was shivering-- also not helping my oxygen issue. I was constantly looking at my watch seeing if we were close to 40 minutes yet so I could get the hell out of there. Apparently everyone else in the group saw a sea turtle. I think I saw it's fin--I lied and told everyone I saw it so we could keep moving (just in case something big and hungry was following us). So after about a 35 minute blur of darkness and fear, my air was finally low enough to do the "low air" signal so we could start to surface. YES! LOW AIR! I never thought I would be happy to see my oxygen low. But I was. I was ecstatic. We were deep enough during this dive that we had to do a stop at 5 meters to let our bodies get rid of some of the nitrogen we had absorbed during the dive. This was the hard part. I wanted so badly to get out. I was so close to the top. And I had to stop and wait. I did, don't worry--I didn't get the Bends. I was hovering in the water, slightly above my group, when my instructor signaled for us to swim towards the boat, as it would be easier to swim underwater than on the surface with all of that gear. Anywho, my group started to swim under me and all of their bubbles came up around me. That doesn't sound too bad, right? WELL IT WAS! I had bubbles from every direction. All I could see was bubbles. I didn't know which way was up. I was terrified. Just at my peak of fear, I started to feel the swaying of the waves close to the surface. I got to the top, but I was alone, completely separated from my group that was still 5 meters down. Another group had surfaced near where I had, so that instructor saw me and made sure that I was okay. She asked where my group was. I told her what happened. She made sure I floated safely over to the boat and I met my group there. Kyle was unhappy, to say the least. I disappeared into the dark ocean without warning. I apologized, and tried to explain, but I know that I would have also been angry because I would have been scared that I lost my buddy. I now know what vertigo feels like. And I never want to feel it again.
I probably just made you want to go night diving really bad, didn't I? Yeah, I should work for them promoting it, I think.
I'm going to end on that note. Seems I'm not too brief in my recall. I'll pick up the next time I think about it. Happy Travels!
No comments:
Post a Comment