It's divin' time! (again)

A week ago I left Koh Phagnan (where I'd been hanging out for 3 days) to return to Koh Tao, where I met up with my college roommate Dan for some scuba diving with Seashell Divers. Our first day on the island we did 4 dives, which was exhausting, but awesome, and then the next day we did two. Yesterday we took a break from diving while switching islands (back to Koh Pahngan), and then today we did two more dives in Koh Pahngan (we hit up Sail Rock, which is supposed to be the best scuba spot in the golf of Thailand - very nice site).

I have been having an absolute blast diving. It seems that every dive I see something new. And the more I go, the more comfortable I am underwater. I'm getting better with my buoyancy (so I can navigate more easily), my air consumption (so I can stay underwater longer), and at my fish-spotting skills (so I can see cool stuff underwater). This is definitely addicting! I think this is the last diving I'll do for a while, as my next stop is Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand), and then I'll be going up into Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. But after that I'll probably fly into Malaysia to work my way back to Bangkok (where my flight to Beijing is in 10 weeks), diving along the way. It's only been 5 hours from my last dive and I'm already in withdrawal!

Anyways, I rented an underwater camera for a couple of my dives in Koh Tao, and got some pretty sweet pictures. Check 'em out!!

whooooo scuba!

clown fish protecting their anemone

triggerfish. You might notice that this is not the clearest photo - that's 'cause it was taken from far away and then I cropped it. Now, why was it taken from far away? Well, because the triggerfish is infamous for being territorial - if it thinks you're too close it will attack! We actually got chased away from one of our dive areas by a triggerfish which thought that the shipwreck we were diving was its personal area. Definitely adds some excitement to the dive. Credit to Dan for taking this picture.

roommate reunion, 60 feet underwater!

wart slug. Very cool looking animal, not so cool name. . .

Dan and I ready to head back to the beach after a day of diving.

during our surface interval (we wait an hour in between dives to rest up, and to let some of the residual nitrogen escape our bloodstream), I do some diving of a dfferent sort. . .

squid!!! They look so cool swimming through the water, I could have chased after them for the rest of the dive. . . not the best picture 'cause they didn't really like me swimming after them, and they're a heck of a lot faster than I am. . .

moray eel!

a shy puffer fish. I would have tried to get an even better picture but I didn't want to stress out the fish and make it puff up - turns out that they can only push up 4 or 5 times in their life, so if I used up one of those times I would have felt really guilty!