Africa and Koh Tao Pictures

For anyone interested in seeing our Africa and Koh Tao pictures, you can now see them at the link provided.

http://sarahkeepingitmoving.shutterfly.com/

Bangkok

Becker and I are no longer on the lovely island of Koh Tao, but are in the large city of Bangkok. It was rough leaving the island. I really got use to traveling, diving, relaxing and not thinking too much. So needless to say, I am not overly excited about starting my final MBA courses.

Our apartment in Bangkok is awesome. Its a studio apartment that I have all to myself (well I have to share it with Becker for another few days). Below are pics of the apartment and also the view of the city from the balcony. Make sure you don't miss the samurai swords on the shelves. Becker picked them up at the market today for $57!! What a deal! They are going to go into our "international room" once we actually stop traveling and can afford a house!







Becker will be staying here until Tuesday (April 28th) then he's heading back to Koh Tao to do a Dive Master course. I am a little jealous! We both loved diving so much and I think its a little unfair that Becker gets to go back and have fun learning more about diving while I'm learning about the boring world of business :( But by the end of this trip we will both have a Masters in something! So that's exciting! Can't say that the trip to Thailand was for nothing!

This last week consisted of orientation. I didn't learn anything too interesting! The Thai language stuff was the most interesting. The teacher and the other Thais in the room loved laughing at all of us as we tried to pronounce the words! It was hard not to laugh, half the words sound like noises rather than words!! But I now know a few phrases:

Sawat dii Kha - Greating - good morning/evening/afternoon

Sabaii dii mai Kha - how are you

Sabaii dii Kha - I'm fine

Today we went to the Chatuchak Weekend Market and found lots of cheap things!! I bought 3 skirts, 2 dresses, shoes and a purse and each was only about $5 (except for one dress, I splurged - it was $11). Becker also found some shirts, swim trunks and of course the samurai swords. It was fun!

The rest of the day I had to do some actual school work. Booooooo :( I don't wanna!

Well anyways. We're going to head to Tesco to find some food! See ya!

And pictures on shutterfly will be available soon!

We are advanced open water divers

So over the last couple days we have completed our advanced open water diving course, which consisted of a peak performance buoyancy, navigation, night, deep, and naturalist dives. We were already pros at adjusting our bouyancy to just hover under water so the first dive was a breeze. The navigation dive was pretty easy too. We just had to figure out basic things underwater with a compass, like doing a square, triangle, etc. The night dive was amazing. We pretty much swam around with flashlights and had fun! On that dive we saw two stingrays and lots of other crazy fish. When we turned off all lights and waved our hands in front of our face it made flickers of light like fireflies! It was cool!
On our deep dive we went down to 30 meters (100 feet) which is as deep as you go when recreational diving. We saw schools of barracudas, puffer fish, angel fish and tons of others. The naturalist dive was a lot of fun. We just swam around and identified fish and corral. We saw another stingray, that tried to hide from us, and we saw a baby puffer fish that was absolutely tiny. Later we saw a big one. We also saw nemo, angel fish, butterfly fish and a ton of other fish and corral. We also saw a tiny little fish that shares a hole in the sand with a shrimp. They were really cool to see how they interact.

We have one day off and then start a new course called nitrox which means you have more oxygen in your tank and less nitrogen so you can dive longer! Really exciting!

Certified Divers

Becker and I are now officially certified divers!! We can dive alone if we so choose. But don't know if we're ready for that yet!!

We spent the last 4 days watching some dive videos, taking tests, doing some confined water dives in the pool and then finally we were able to do open water dives in the ocean! It was awesome!! We saw lots of pretty fish, a Moray Eel, a Stingray, Nemo and a bunch of coral. Diving is so relaxing! I think we may have to find some more time to dive throughout our stay in Asia and perhaps see if there is anywhere we can go when we're home. We don't want all of our diving certificate money to go to waste!

Today we have a much needed day off. Its surprising how much diving takes out of you! So we plan on just sitting around the beach and reading for fun and then also reading for our next open water class. Tomorrow we start our Advanced Open Water course. we have some academic stuff in the morning and then we get to go on two afternoon dives and then a night dive! Should be fun. The preditors come out at night so we should be able to see more sting rays and maybe some bigger fish! After our night dive we have to wake up early the next day for two more dives to finish off our advanced course. Then we get to celebrate Songkran (the Thai new year). Apparently its quite the party and it mostly consists of people throwing water at each other! Should be a good way to get some relief from the heat! It is HOT here!

Africa

So here is some info about Africa!

we have had a good time in Zambia where we started. we laid around the hostel and read. There were monkeys around the hostel. It was pretty cool at first but then they started to get a little annoying!! They stoled becker's boxers one morning! he had them hanging outside the tent and when we came back they were gone! But we did get them back. Apparently the monkey realized that it wasn't something that it could eat, so it brought them back near our tent and dropped them off!!

we went and saw Victoria Falls. Its really pretty. We'll have to get the pictures online some time but probably not until we get to our apartment in Thailand. Unless there is cheap internet on the island in Thailand.

we also went gorge swinging and it was crazy!! It was terrifying but fun! We have a video of Becker and me going. I'll get it online whenever I can. Probably about a month!! We also did the abseiling and flying fox. You can check out all ths stuff here: http://www.thezambeziswing.com/gorgeswing.htm

The next six days consisted of our safari. It was a very interesting experience. The first couple of days we pretty much just drove to our campsites and hung out the rest of the day, which was relaxing. At the first campsite we went on a river cruise in the evening where we first started seeing animals. We saw Kudu, hippos, a crocodile, and at one point we watched over 20 elephants come running down to the water to drink, that was really exciting. The second campsite we stayed at was called Elephant Sands, where the elephants were litterly all around the campsite, which was amazing. There was a watering hole just past the pool and bar/patio area where there were several elephants just hanging out and drinking. The next day we woke up early and had a really long drive to a campground on another river and set up camp, ate, and then had some drinks with our new friends. The next day we had another long drive to the most amazing campsite we stayed at on our trip. We got there, set up our tents then jumped into safari vehicles for a night drive. The night drive was amazing, in the first couple minutes we were within feet of two female lions, very exciting! Throughout the drive we saw buffalo, wildebeast, a giant elephant, and a couple rhinos. The next morning we woke up really early again and headed to Kruger National Park in safari vehicles. Right away we started seeing all sorts of animals. Throughout the day we saw Impala, Kudu, Elephants, Giraffes, Zebras, Buffalo, Wildebeasts, Warthogs, and several other species of animals. Our guides were very dissapointed they couldn't find us Lions or Leapords, but we were still happy. That night the campground had some children from a local tribe come and do a traditional dance for us, which was really fun, and then had a phenominal meal after. The last day was another long drive to Jo-burg. It was really nice to sleep in a bed again!

While in Jo'burg we went on a tour through Soweto (South Western Township) which is where Nelson Mandela lived, and is kinda the slum of Jo-burg. It was very interesting. Now we're gonna rest for a while, the lack of sleep is catching up with us!

Tomorrow we leave for Thailand. we're both very excited to get to the island and start scuba diving!!

Sorry to everyone for not emailing too much :( I love receiving your emails, but the internet is really slow and cost money :( So I usually can only email a few people back at a time :( Will have better email upon arriving at my apartment in Thailand towards the end of April.

Hope all is well!

Love,
Sarah and Becker