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Thailand

Paradise Island

Thailand and its endless string of islands has a vibe for everyone. Want to learn how to scuba dive? Go to Koh Tao. Want to experience the legendary full moon parties? Koh Pha Ngan. Pamper yourself at a luxury resort? Koh Samui. But what about an island for those who want a sense of what Thailand was like before the hoards of tourists swarmed the shores? Did those places still exist? I wanted to believe that they did.

Thailand

Tourist Trap

Koh Lipe was meant to be one of those perfect island paradises that you read and fantasize about. Perhaps the fact that I had heard about it meant that it was already too late. Perhaps I should have known better than to visit six years after initially hearing about it. Koh Lipe was nothing close to the place I hoped to find.

Malaysia

Other Water Activities

Langkawi has it all, the white sand beaches, the lush, tropical jungles, the wide open roads, perfect for exploring, and even the waterfalls. If you’re in need of cooling down, skip the beaches (save those for suntanning later) and head straight to the Seven Wells waterfall. 

Malaysia

Guide Book

Wondering where to stay while you explore the beautiful island of Langkawi? Looking for a cheap but clean bed in the heart of the main tourist area, with easy access to the rest of the island? Check out Bed Attitude!

Malaysia

Guide Book, Travelogue

I’m not going to lie, eating and roaming around looking at all the street art were my two, absolute favorite activities in George Town. That is not to say that there was nothing else to do though. Penang offered a wide range of activities, and I did manage to fit in three of the more popular ones (with the addition of the Blue Mansion which I have already written about). So if you find yourself looking for even more to do in George Town, consider checking out Batu Ferringhi Beach, the Clan Jetties along Weld Quay, and Penang Hill. 

Malaysia

Culture

Did you know that you can tour the mansion that was used as one of the filming locations in Crazy Rich Asians? Well you can! This post is all about the story behind the Blue Mansion in George Town, Malaysia.

Malaysia

Foodie

Penang is considered to be the food capital of Malaysia, and by some, to have the best food in all of Asia. Here are some of my favorite pescatarian dishes from this foodie haven that you simply cannot miss!

Malaysia

Culture

I didn’t research George Town all that much before arriving. I knew it was an old colonial town with some recently developed charm in the travel spheres, and some famous street art, but that was all. As soon as I stepped foot onto the narrow streets filled with beautiful old buildings and quirky artwork, I had to know more. This was not typical Asia. Where was I?

Malaysia

Guide Book

If you are ever in George Town and looking for budget accommodation, be sure to check out the 80's Guesthouse. It is full of character, and will give you a glimpse at some of the colonial architecture that the city is so well known for.

Malaysia

Foodie

After traveling long distances, I always find myself craving my favorite meal, which is a good Western-style brunch. It just so happens that Kuala Lumpur is hopping on the brunch bandwagon and has some swanky, new restaurants to check out! This is my experience at one of them, Breakfast Thieves.

Oman

Scuba Diving

Disclaimer: If you suffer from any amount of thalassophobia (fear of the sea) please skip this one. The sea is a wonderful, beautiful place, and my posts usually aim to educate on the safety of being surrounded by even the most feared sea creatures. This post is for people who enjoy the spookier things in life.  

Oman

Cute Animals, Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences, Underwater Photography

The water in Oman was cold, too cold for my liking. It was also green and murky, enough so to make me wonder why so many of the European guests kept coming back for more. I had spent six weeks telling myself it was only for two hours a day. Surely anything is tolerable for two hours a day. Since I was working, bringing my camera along had not been an option, but now the end of my stay in Oman was drawing near and I had no photographic evidence to show for it. Was it worth venturing back into

Oman

Culture, Foodie

Continued from: Muscat City Tour - Part I Mutrah Souq We drove to the harbor area where the Sultan’s pair of matching cruise ships, or mega yachts, or whatever you would call them were moored. They were sand-colored just like the rest of the surroundings. The scenery was still a bit baffling to me. On the one hand, you had miles and miles of desolate, scorched earth, and then suddenly popping up out of nowhere, you'd see some crazy display of opulence.  It worked to our advantage on the water, because out of the 40 miles of coastline we covered, there

Oman

Culture

Muscat is the capital, port city of Oman. It is wedged in the desert between mountains and ocean, and offers all your arid delights, from 16th-century Portuguese forts, to modern shopping malls and regal palaces.  No one can seem to agree on the true origins of the word Muscat. Lonely Planet, forever romanticizing even the most unpalatable corners of the globe in true wanderlust fashion, says that the name means ‘safe anchorage.’ And this is indeed a very poetic way to describe a city in which the sea plays such an important role. Oman is even said to have been the

Oman

Culture

Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, is said (see what I did there?) to be to be a huge fan of classical music and the arts. So much so, in fact, that in 2001 he ordered an opera house be built in the capital city of Muscat.  Sultuan Qaboos attended the Opera's inaugural performance of Puccini’s opera, Turandot, and hasn’t been back to the opera house since. The show must go on though. The Royal Opera House Muscat hosts up to 80 performances every season, including opera, jazz, ballet, pipe organ, Islamic, and traditional performances.  Visiting the opera was a

Oman

Culture, Misadventures

1. Find an occasion that requires an outfit.  When you think of the Middle East, what comes to mind for most Americans are images of either war-ravished waste-lands or wealthy, fossil fuel tycoons. Culture, in the sense of visual and performing arts are usually assumed to not have much of a place in the desert. And yet Oman’s sultan, a fan of classical music himself, ordered the building of an opera house in 2001. Fletch and I knew nothing about this, but when Stefan and Tanja asked us if we wanted to go to the opera, I was all too excited

Oman

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

A few lovely ladies who also blog and myself recently formed a little group where we swap articles to edit for each other prior to publishing. My first post on Oman came back with a note that said, “Can you add what makes this a good place to dive? As I’m not a big diver myself, I’d love to know why the Gulf of Oman is a good place to dive.” A perfectly fair question, and one that should definitely be addressed if you fancy yourself a halfway decent writer. I had to laugh at it though. Oh, if only

Oman

Misadventures

“The air of the place had something Mediterranean or maybe Caribbean about it. Will had never been out of England, so he couldn’t compare it with anywhere he knew, but it was the kind of place where people came out late at night to eat and drink, to dance and enjoy music. Except that there was no one here, and the silence was immense.” -Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife Panoramic view of the harbor at Jebel Sifah, Oman Fletch and I walked outside the flat on our first morning in Sifah, Oman, eager to see our surroundings after arriving and promptly crashing into

Oman

Belated Updates, Cute Animals, Travelogue

I had relatively few expectations flying into Oman. Usually I do some research into a new country first, and I had bought the Oman cultural guide book, but knowing that we were going to be at a Westernized resort for the majority of the time turned me into a lazy researcher, instead relying on the few bits of information we had gleaned from our friends. The rest I could figure out once we arrived. Fletch and I were flying to Oman to help out our friends Stefan and Tanja with their busy season at the dive resort where they were currently

England

Culture, Travelogue

I am very excited to announce that Fletch and I are in Oman for the next month and a half! But before we arrived in the desert land of the unknown, we had a few hours in London to meet up with our dear friend Aaron, who was the reason we landed ourselves the jobs in Fiji three-and-a-half years ago (where does the time go?!)  We walked off of our United flight, dazed and borderline irritable after listening to the hellion of a child behind us scream for all but 30 minutes of the flight. Fletch had been granted the lucky

Hawaii

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

On our very last day in Maui, Matt hooked us up with a friend who was able to get us onto her dive boat. We would have gone diving sooner, but a great swell had descended upon the islands, and the waters had been too rough for tour boats of any kind to go out. Matt had been out of work for the past week at least. But now the waters were finally calming down enough that our fears of the boat getting canceled were unfounded.  Fletch and I excitedly packed up our gear and made our way across the street

Hawaii

Travelogue

I mentioned before that while we were hanging out in Maui, we played disk golf a few times to help Matt prepare for his upcoming tournament. On one of these days, we were meant to drive up to Polipoli, which was supposed to be a gorgeous hike (and a disk golf course to go with it). Everyone had been telling us for days that we needed to go. We were on our way, but just after we passed the garbage dump, Matt's truck started overheating. That wasn’t good. We pulled over, allowing the engine to cool, and then tried it

Hawaii

Belated Updates, Foodie

July 4 rolled around and Fletch had the brilliant idea to make sweet treats for everyone called firecrackers. So we spent a day gathering supplies, soaked some strawberries in a bowl of vodka, then dipped them in marshmallow cream and blue sprinkles. Red, white, and blue, get it? The blue sprinkles were supposed to be pop rocks, to create the popping sensation like a firecracker, but pop rocks were nowhere to be found. The treats were a hit regardless. We also attempted to inject some tangerines and watermelons with vodka, mostly because once we found the injector, it was too

Hawaii

Misadventures

After the beer Olympics, our slightly hungover caravan made their way back down into town to rest and recoup. Fletch and I still had the camper jeep for one more night and didn’t have any plans. We thought about going back to Kipahulu, but didn’t want to drive that far for one night. Matt recommended a spot, but it wasn’t officially a campground, and therefor didn’t have any facilities. We wanted someplace like Kipahulu but closer, and so after a little bit of internet scouring, came up with a campsite called Olowalu that had beautiful photos of lush green campgrounds,

Hawaii

Party All Night

The beautiful, Maui morning started out at Fred’s, the bar/Mexican restaurant our friends frequented for breakfast due to their buy one, get one drink specials. The food was mediocre, but the bartender kept everyone coming back for more with her generous pours. We all downed some really bad coffee, and those competing in the events prepared their stomachs with a hearty base of carbs and exactly one drink on the hour, every hour. The atmosphere of excited competition was tangible. After missing out on the gold for the past two years in a row, Matt and his team were ready

Hawaii

Activities for Your Bucket List, Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Imagine sitting around a campfire in the dead of night with a few of your closet friends. All is quiet, save for the crackle of the flames, and the excited breath of your buddies. You would be telling ghost stories, but no one dares say a word. You are waiting for the real story to arrive. This won’t be a tale told with words, but an otherworldly experience, the story which you’ll tell for the rest of your life. Suddenly and quietly it arrives, a giant and majestic shadow, gliding gracefully over the flames. Everyone gapes in awe as a

Hawaii

Scuba Diving

You have to be a true diving enthusiast to jump islands in Hawaii solely for the sake of scuba. Island hopping is not nearly as easy as it is in some countries. For one, the only way to travel between islands is by flying, and this isn’t Europe; airfare is not cheap. For two, the diving isn’t cheap either, at over $100 per tank. And since flying is involved, you have to plan 12-18 hours to decompress after your last dive before flying out again, which probably means staying an extra night. And oh yeah, it’s Hawaii so that isn’t

Hawaii

Other Water Activities, Paradise Island

Day three of our Hana camping trip was spent being shown around by Matt, who knew some pretty awesome local spots where we were able to get away from the majority of the tourist crowd.  First he brought us to Hana Bay, a picturesque bay area where we were meant to have breakfast, only we had already whipped up another batch of breakfast burritos at the campsite. The ones we hadn't already devoured were wrapped in tinfoil and baking in the hot sun on the dashboard. So instead we sat on a picnic table and admired the bay where the surf

Hawaii

Activities for Your Bucket List, Other Water Activities, Travelogue

We woke up at the Kipahulu campground and set about making breakfast burritos with some quinoa salad we had picked up at Costco, zucchinis, and cheese. The meal was delicious and a cinch to cook with our kitchen setup. Then we brewed some tea and set out on a spiritual journey for the day.  Kipahulu sits at the base of the Pipiwai Trail, a two-mile hike through the jungle-covered mountainsides that leaves you wondering where the dinosaurs are hiding.  Molly, Matt, Fletch, and myself, started off single file through the tall grass, giddy with excitement and already feeling connected with Mother Nature.

Hawaii

Activities for Your Bucket List, Paradise Island, Travelogue

A little bit of research into Maui would suggest that no trip is complete without a journey along the Road to Hana. Hana is not much more than a small community on the east-most coast of the island, and one of the most isolated communities in the state at that, but the road there is paved with some of the most epic scenery the US has to offer.  Our friend Matt suggested we go camping there. The internet suggested that camping out in an old-fashioned Westfalia was a rite of passage, but apparently booking a month in advance was not enough

Hawaii

Belated Updates, Travelogue

Aloha dear readers! I’m sure everyone already knows that this beautiful word means both 'goodbye' and 'hello' in a common sense, but it has many meanings beyond that too. Its literal meaning is the “presence of breath” or the “breath of life,” and it also means 'love,' 'peace,' and 'compassion.' This lovely, all-encompassing word comes from the vivacious, young, land of Hawaii, but before we get to that, a quick update.  I may have mentioned previously that I have begun the arduous task of building an entirely new home for Adventures of an Aquaholic. Since 2007 I’ve brought all of my content

Indonesia

Travelogue

We opted out of diving on our last day in Lembeh, Indonesia. We could have squeezed in a last morning dive and still had time to decompress before our flight out of the country, but why push the limits? You may be aware that flying too closely after diving is about the equivalent to your insides as opening up a bottle of soda that has just been dropped down the stairs. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in any great hurry to drink that soda. (The recommended time between diving and flying is 18 hours if you were

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

I've had the remainder of my blog posts on Indonesia sitting in the drafts folder for far too long now collecting dust. Don't ask me why. I guess I was hoping I could come up with something cheekier to say about the last of the little critters in my photos. But there really isn't all the much written about these sea-dwelling creatures, not compared to the widely adored seahorse or the fiercely fascinating mantis shrimp anyway. So I'll just throw the last of my photos at you with a tidbit of information or two. This is the ghost pipefish. Little is

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Did you know that the male seahorse is the member of the couple that gives birth? They’re quite unique that way in the animal kingdom. I meant to have some fun facts like that ready to go for you, but instead ended up geeking out on words, so bear with me here for a second. Or skip down to the numbered list below if you don’t share my enthusiasm for completely random (and probably useless) linguistics trivia. Seahorses, funny looking things that they are, belong to the genus Hippocampus. This word originally comes from the Greek hippos, or “horse,” and kampos,

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

One of the most remarkable creatures beneath the surface of the ocean is the mantis shrimp, which isn't actually a mantis or a shrimp. (It belongs to an order called stomatopoda). This incredible crustacean has what is thought to be the most complex set of eyes in the animal kingdom, can punch with the same velocity as a .22 caliber rifle, and is being studied to create stronger and lighter armor for military use. If those facts don't distract you from the cat video on your Facebook feed, then read no further, I've got nothing for you. The beautiful, infamous, Peacock

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

I wrote a dozen different (failed) attempts at a (not-so) humorous intro, tying this little fellow in with a current topic of debate, but they all made me cringe, and so I'll just cut straight to the chase here.  It just so happens that there are many cases of changing sex amongst marine organisms. One of these examples is found in the beautiful and elegant ribbon eel, so named because when free-swimming, it looks like the rippling ribbon of a rhythmic gymnast. As hypnotizing as they are, it is incredibly rare to see ribbon eels free-swimming. They are usually burrowed down

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

The number one thing I really wanted to see in Lembeh, Indonesia was a mimic octopus. Normally I don't dive with expectations, I just enjoy whatever show Mother Nature feels like putting on that day. As dive guides, Fletch and I have really grown to loath the question, 'What are we going to see today?' It's a silly question. You can never guarantee anything but water. And the list of things you might see could fill up the pages of a bible. We were told that the way to dive Lembeh though was to give our dive guides a wish list of

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Sounds like the start of a joke doesn’t it? An octopus, a ghost, and a muffin walk into a bar… I wish I knew the punch line, but sadly I’m a rubbish joke-teller. If you have any ideas, drop a comment. I wish this story were as funny as a joke but it’s actually kind of sad. I wrote down these three individual stories at the end of our day in Lembeh, thinking they were all unrelated, only to realize that they were in fact completely related. You may find them sad. You may find it creepy that the same story

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Nudibranchs, the pride and joy of many seasoned divers. Finding one of these little colorful blobs of jelly takes a keen eye, and results in some serious bragging rights. Why mother nature decided to make sea slugs in so many different shapes and sizes and colors is beyond me. I mean land slugs are kind of gross. Sea slugs though? Show me more! Not a fan of slugs? Check out this frilly purple dude and tell me how you feel about them now! (Flabellina rubrolineata, size: 25mm) Their vibrant colors are derived from the foods that they eat. It's a bit ironic

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Ok that title might be a little bit misleading. I’m actually going to present you with a species of fish known as dragonets, which include the psychedelically colored mandarinfish, so named because their vivid colors are reminiscent of the robes an Imperial Chinese ruler might wear. Our dive guides brought us to a site called Trikora, which had a plethora of cool critters to stare at in awe. That is probably why it was one of the busier sites we visited. Most of the dive sites we hadn’t had to share with other divers, but unfortunately, this site had another group

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

When people envision scuba diving, they probably see crystal clear blue water, a reef full of corals in every color and texture, and a kaleidoscope of various fish in every hue of the rainbow. Perhaps a turtle is munching algae off of a rock. Perhaps a shark cruises along the reef. Everything looks like an aquarium. What they probably don’t envision is the mucky, sandy bottom of a strait that hosts a busy boat port. Why would anyone ever want to dive in a place like that? Because that muck is home to a weird and wonderful assortment of critters. Some

Indonesia

Travelogue

Before we knew it, it was time to journey across the northern tip of Sulawesi to the east coast, and across the Lembeh strait to the island of the same name. The entire journey took less than two hours, and the perks of booking with the same resort in both locations included not having to painstakingly dry out our dive gear, and Tetris it back into our luggage. Yes, I just used Tetris as a verb. Instead, the resort simply loaded each of our crates, labeled with Candy Crush name tags, into the truck, and off we went. They also

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

In no time at all, our vacation was half gone and it was our last day of diving in the Bunaken area. For our last day of diving, we requested two of our favorite spots we had been to during the week: Sachiko’s Point and Mandolin. Sachiko’s Point proved that no two dives are ever the same. You simply cannot repeat an experience. There is always something new waiting for you in the ocean. In this case, the plethora of dogtooth tuna that had been cruising the reef previously, were now nowhere to be found. On to Mandolin for our final

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

On our penultimate day of Manado diving, we dove a site with some crazy current. It was the most fun I’d had being swept along at high speeds since Palau. It kept switching directions too; we’d be flying down the reef in one direction, arms outstretched as if we were flying up in the sky, only to suddenly be kicking into the current and have our guide, clad in snorkel fins, signal for us to go back the other way. We swapped directions three or four times, and I loved every moment of it. The first time I dove in any

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

And so we fell into a comfortable routine of waking up and going to breakfast each morning for a beautiful selection of fresh, tropical fruits. There would also be an omelette station set up. After breakfast, we would head out on the boat for the two morning dives, venturing into the underwater world, to one colorful wall bursting with healthy corals after another. The state of the thriving reef was a happy sight. There were times when I would look for a bit of rock or dead coral to steady myself with a fingertip while taking a photo, and would

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

On our third morning in Manado, I finally felt refreshed and like my body was caught up and rested and ready for the task of diving. No more wimping out in the cold for me! We had the boat to ourselves, allowing us to make the longer trip over to Bunaken National Park. The previous days a German diver had joined us for only the second dive, meaning we had to stay close to the mainland so that we could make the trip back to the resort to pick her up between dives. We had figured out that the mainland

Indonesia

Scuba Diving

The first few days at Thalassa Dive Resort were a blur as the stress of travel wore off. Fletch and I had left the US four days prior to our arrival, flown 12,000 miles via four different flights, and had jumped ahead sixteen time zones in the process. Tanja and Stefan had their own stress not just from the journey from the Maldives, but from work as well. We attempted to do the two morning dives each morning, but each of us more or less took a turn sitting out for half a day to rest. Fletch and I did the

Indonesia

Travelogue

When I told people that we were going to Indonesia, most of them assumed Bali. That’s fair; Bali is the tourist hotspot that everyone associates with Indonesia. As it turns out, Bali is only one of about 17,000 or 18,000 (depending on which source you refer to) islands that make up the country of Indonesia. Only 6,000 of these are inhabited. The four biggest of these islands are Java (shared with Papua New Guinea), Borneo (shared with Brunei and Malaysia), Sumatra, and Sulawesi. We are on that fourth largest island, which has an area of 67,000 square miles (roughly the

Singapore

Misadventures, Travelogue

Continued from 48 Hours of Jet Lag in Singapore, Part I Singapore is a shopping-lovers haven, and if it weren’t for the food, would be my worst nightmare. I seem to have missed out on that female gene that compels the rest of my gender to shop. You could spend days riding the metro from one mall to another, never seeing the light of day, and getting blissfully (or horrifyingly, in my case) lost in store after endless store. From the bus stop, we were supposed to transfer over to the Sentosa Express, which should have been easy enough. But this stop,

Singapore

Travelogue

We touched down in Singapore after a grueling 17 hour journey (not including the two flights beforehand) on a full flight, cramped in a small, US economy seat the entire way. (I find it odd that given the average size of our population, we still offer the least amount of space on our airlines). I had spent the past two hours watching Crazy Rich Asians, a movie that had gotten good reviews, but neither Fletch nor I had shown any interest in seeing in the theaters. Now that we were Singapore bound for a 48 hour layover, it seemed appropriate.

Japan

Guide Book

This post is for travelers looking for itinerary tips and ideas. If you are usually here for the stories, feel free to skip this one. It is about to read more like a guide-book. If you are looking for ideas on how to structure an itinerary for one month in Japan, then here we go!   Transportation Japan Rail Pass Japan offers the Japan Rail Pass to tourists in increments of 7 days, 14 days, or 21 days, at prices that locals can only dream of. These rail passes will give you unlimited access to MOST of Japan’s railway system for the amount of

Japan

Travelogue

Japan Day 26 - Tokyo Our flight back to the western world wasn’t until late in the afternoon, and so Fletch and I decided to spend our final morning visiting Tokyo Skytree. We had been meaning to go, and I had been scanning the weather apps for the clearest day possible. Today was our lucky day. We checked out of the hotel and left our bags in the lobby, then rode the subway over to Japan’s tallest structure. The Skytree is new since my last visit to Japan, and definitely demands attention when you catch a glimpse for the first time.

Japan

Rambling

Japan Day 25 - Tokyo Our last full day in Tokyo was spent more or less lazing around. We met up with my friend from high school again in the evening, and another mutual friend from college. Fletch and I requested okonomiyaki, the delectable cabbage pancakes, for our last dinner in Japan. I laid awake in bed that night reflecting on the place that Japan had become. An overwhelming sense of emptiness and loneliness had been growing somewhere deep inside of me ever since stopping in Tokyo. For cities so crowded, we had observed so little in the form of human interaction.

Japan

Rambling

Japan Day 24 - Tokyo We trekked over to Harajuku for brunch. They had an Eggs ’n Things there (a Hawaiian chain we had discovered early in the trip) and we were both in the mood for American breakfast. Harajuku is an area in Tokyo known for its colorful street art and fashion scene. On the weekends, it is usually teaming with young people dressed up in cosplay and Lolita fashion (or so I remembered my high school Japanese teacher saying). Japan as a whole is a fairly conservative society. Women don’t typically show their shoulders, or any amount of chest. None

Japan

Travelogue

Japan Day 23 - Shibuya, Tokyo Our last four days in Tokyo were spent at a much slower pace, wandering around the city, exploring, and watching the fast-paced world turn around us. That is what Fletch and I have become good at over the years, planting ourselves in a spot and getting to know the neighborhood like locals. I notice the cultural nuances and he has the uncanny ability to never get lost. I pick up bits and pieces of the language, and he reads context and people’s intent, making language almost unnecessary. It makes for good wanderings. Now that we

Japan

Cute Animals, Travelogue

Japan Day 22 (Part II) - Akihabara, Tokyo When our MariCar tour was over, Fletch and I were both feeling pretty hungry from all the adrenalin and excitement. Most of the restaurants in Akihabara were advertising either pasta dishes (the Italian type) or random fried foods. A few times we even passed by a massive dessert served inside an entire loaf of white bread. It was all novelty to look at, but none of it was screaming eat me! Finally we found a 24-hour seafood joint. I know what you’re thinking, 24-hour raw fish sounds a little sketchy, but it

Japan

Activities for Your Bucket List

Japan Day 22 (Part I) - Akihabara, Tokyo There was just one thing left to do on our Japan wish lists: dress up as Mario Kart characters and race around the streets of downtown Tokyo in go-karts. I’m not talking about a track, or a virtual realty experience, but actual vehicles zooming around the city streets. Who wouldn’t want to turn the world’s best video game into a real-life experience? Enter MariCar, where you can live out your childhood fantasies in a city as colorful and bizarre as a Mario Kart course. (Disclaimer: MariCar is in no way associated with

Japan

Foodie

Japan Day 21 - Shibuya, Tokyo Fletch and I had been on the go for 20 days. 20 days of touring around Japan, of hopping between major cities, of riding bullet trains across the country. 20 days and so many different hotels that they were all starting to blur together. I went in trying to keep notes on each hotel's differences, for the purpose of writing a post of hotel advice for other travelers. But the truth is, in the $100 per night range, all business hotels are created pretty equally. They're all clean and neat and provide an almost-too-stiff

Japan

Culture, Cute Animals

Japan Day 20 - Himeji to Tokyo I would have happily traded the time we spent in Kyoto for an equal amount of time in Himeji, but alas, after a mere night it was already the beginning of the end, and time to make our way back to Tokyo for our final days in Japan. The trip from Himeji to Shinagawa took three and a half hours, after which we boarded the Yamamote line for Shibuya. That probably sounded like Greek, but after so many weeks riding trains across the country, we were well versed in matching up the correct lines. Shibuya

Japan

Activities for Your Bucket List, Culture, Travelogue

Japan Day 19 - Hiroshima to Himeji Fletch and I had saved our cheese tarts from the previous night for breakfast. They weren’t hot out of the oven anymore, but they still had the sweet richness of the best possible combination of a cheesecake and a tart. The six miniature pie crusts with creamy, cheesy goodness were gone a moment later. Hiroshima was the end of our line, but to break up the journey back to Tokyo, I had scheduled a one-night stay in the little town of Himeji, just enough time to visit the namesake castle. Miniature model of Himeji

Japan

Culture

Japan Day 18 - Hiroshima Fletch and I took our time in the morning. We knew it was going to be a heavy day, so we weren’t in any real hurry to get an early start and jam-pack as much as we could into our hours of daylight. When planning our trip, I had asked Fletch what he wanted to see and do in Japan. His only real request was that he wanted to see Hiroshima, and learn about the Japanese side of WWII. That had been on my list as well, and so our only goals for the city

Japan

Foodie, Travelogue

Japan Day 17 (Part II) - Hiroshima This is a short one, but it didn't belong in the same post as the roller coasters. The two experiences were as different as night and durian.  Halfway dazed from hours of fun and adrenalin, we rode the train back to Osaka, picked up our bags from the lockers, rode the local train to Shin-Osaka Station, and finally the bullet train to Hiroshima. What a day. Luckily our hotel was practically connected to the train station, and so we hardly had to walk outside. The Hotel Granvia Hiroshima was a hotel that had been the

Japan

Activities for Your Bucket List

Japan Day 17 (Part I) - Osaka I liked the Hotel Mystays Dojima. They had given us different sized pillows, some foam, some normal stuffing, some rollers, and none of them felt like newspapers. We also had plenty of space to spread out, and plenty of outlets scattered everywhere, some of which were just USB ports which made them even more convenient. The mirror in the bathroom even had a square patch at eye-height that didn’t fog up when the bathroom got all steamy from the shower. I had always wondered how they managed that, and discovered that the square

Japan

Foodie, Sharks

Japan Day 16 - Osaka It’s difficult to know what to do when you have one full day to explore a city the size of Osaka. Reading Lonely Planet had given me two ideas. One was a biking tour of the city that stopped off at various points to try different foods. We hadn’t attempted any guided tours up until this point and the idea of having a local show us some of the things we might not find on our own was intriguing. Plus it was a food tour. I love food. My other idea was to give culture a

Japan

Foodie

Japan Day 15 - Kyoto to Osaka The strange “hotel” room we were staying in had given us a checkout time of 10:00 - 12:00. We took that as permission to have a lazy morning and took our time packing up. At 10:00 sharp someone was knocking on the door to make sure we were out of there. So much for that plan. Japanese people are very into water conservation. If water is going to be running to flush the toilet anyway, why not have it run through the sink first?  We rode the bus back to the train station, walked across

Japan

Tourist Trap

Japan Day 14 - Kyoto There were two places in Kyoto I definitely wanted to see. The first was the bamboo forest, which I had never been to before. The online reviews said to arrive early, before the crowds, and so Fletch and I did our best to wake up at an early hour. Despite our best efforts, it took an hour and two busses to navigate over to the outskirts of the city where the forest was located, and so we ended up arriving at a normal hour with the rest of the crowds, and crowds was an understatement. The bamboo

Japan

Crazy Cat Lady, Foodie

Japan Day 13 - Kyoto Villa Front Kyoto Seimei was a strange place to say the least. I had booked it for $60 per night, which was a steal in Japan, and so I suppose I couldn’t complain too much, but it was still an odd place. It wasn’t really a hotel or an Airbnb. It was a building full of rooms like a hotel, but without the staff. Instead, someone at a drug store, a 20-minute bus ride away, was working the check-in and check-out. The room itself could have been really nice. It was brand new, spacious, with two

Japan

Travelogue

Japan Day 12 - Hakone to Kyoto Many places in Japan have early checkouts (around 10:00 AM) and late checkins (sometimes as late as 4:00 PM), so even though it would be around a three-hour journey to Kyoto (including some generous transfer time), we had some time to kill before our next accommodation in Kyoto would hand over the keys. I had just assumed we would make our way to Kyoto and kill the extra time there, but when we made it back down to the main train station in Hakone, we were greeted by a beautiful, clear, sunny day.

Japan

Activities for Your Bucket List, Foodie, Romantic, Travelogue

Japan Day 11 - Hakone Is it possible to hear the word Japan without an image of Mount Fuji coming to mind? Japan's tallest mountain has long inspired many an artist and poet, and imagery of the majestic volcano is nearly synonymous with the country. It is an active stratovolcano that last erupted in 1708, and a subject of Shinto mythology. Such an incredible natural wonder and yet it had eluded me over the course of three trips to Japan. Today was the day we were searching for a view of Mt. Fuji. Of course that also meant that it had

Japan

Foodie, Travelogue

Japan Day 10 - Tokyo to Hakone After checking out, we collected some coffee from the Belken Hotel before walking back to the train station. The little coffee machine in the lobby offered “weak coffee” or “hot coffee.” Who drinks weak coffee? After pushing the button for hot coffee, it was reassuring to hear the sounds of coffee beans being ground right then and there, somewhere inside the little machine. Or maybe it was just sound effects. If Japanese toilets could have sound effects, why not the coffee machines? Coffee in hand, we walked the twelve minutes back to

Japan

Travelogue

Japan Day 9 - Sapporo to Tokyo Fletch and I were getting into the groove of packing up and checking out every couple days. We did just that and checked the train schedules heading back down to Tokyo. Most of the trains in Japan run hourly at the least, but for that eight hour journey, our options were slightly more limited. Our choices were 10:44 or 13:30. We opted to try for the earlier itinerary, just incase anything funny happened where tickets were sold out. Best to have 13:30 as a backup option. We bought our tickets without any issue, and

Japan

Foodie, Travelogue

Japan Day 8 - Sapporo Our morning coffee was interrupted by the sounds of music drifting in through the window. The thermostat on the apartment’s heater didn’t work, and we were keeping the window open to cool it down, even though it was still brisk out. I ran over to poke my head out the window, and noticed a small parade making its way down the street below. Day two of the Hokkaido Shrine Festival was apparently in full swing, and how fun to be able to sit and observe from above with a cup of coffee. Parade making its way

Japan

Culture, Travelogue

Japan Day 7 - Sapporo Fletch and I woke up to the most amazing view from the apartment, overlooking the park and the mountains in the distance. After booking everything, I had realized that we would be spending almost our entire time in Japan in cities, and while cities are definitely a change of pace from our normal lifestyle, they all begin to look the same after a while. It was nice to see some green. I watched the little lake with amusement for a while, where several couples were trying to figure out how to maneuver the oars on

Japan

Foodie, Travelogue

Japan Day 6 - Sendai to Sapporo Fletch and I checked out of Hotel Vista Sendai where we had spent the last two nights, and walked the five minutes across the street to the train station. I had tried to strategically position us as close to the train stations as possible in each city, so that we wouldn’t have to deal with maneuvering our backpacks through packed subways or local trains. Japan is a place where you definitely don’t want to overpack, because maneuvering between crowds and small areas can get to feeling very claustrophobic. I feel claustrophobic at times

Japan

Culture, Travelogue

Japan Day 5 - Matsushima The other most memorable thing that my host family did with me while I was in Sendai, was take me on a day trip to Matsushima. Matsushima is the Palau of Japan, just take away the warm, tropical setting, and crystal clear blue water. Lots of pine tree-covered islands dot the coastline, making it one of the three most scenic views in Japan according to the Japanese people. I had to show this beautiful scenery to Fletch. We left the hotel with the intent of finding Manhattan Bakery again. We didn’t make it quite as far this

Japan

Culture, Foodie

Japan Day 4 - Sendai Pouring rain was forecast for the entire day, so we decided to do the local sightseeing first, even though it was Monday and that meant that the museums were closed. We could always duck inside some shop in the city if the rain got to be too much. A sudden cold front seemed to have settled over Japan, one that was not on the forecast when I was deciding what to pack. I remembered Japan being hot this time of year. Everything I read said Japan was going to be hot this time of year. So

Japan

Foodie

Japan Day 3 - Tokyo to Sendai We woke up to a rainy day. We did come to Japan during rainy season. Most of my trips here have been during rainy season and it has never been a bother before. It was quite early so I spent some time scouring the internet for breakfast places. Japanese breakfast usually consists of rice and fish, and while I do love fish and Japanese food, my palate isn’t quite ready for such adventures yet first thing in the morning. I’m a big fan of fruit and/or eggs. My early morning search brought us around

Japan

Culture, Foodie, Travelogue

Japan Day 2 - Ginza, Tokyo I am nearly certain that there is no such thing as sleeping in on your first day in Japan. For one there’s the jet lag. But there’s also the fact that you are in the land of the rising sun. That’s not just some catchy name. The sun rises at 4:20 in the morning in the summertime in Japan. Since we were on the 12th floor, we found it unnecessary to close the drapes the night before, instead enjoying the small view of the city. That was a mistake. We both woke up happily,

Japan

Travelogue

Japan Day 1 - Narita to Tokyo There is a lot that I left unwritten about Fiji, but perhaps that is for the best. Life in Fiji was slow, which was a beautiful way to live life, but not all that much to write about. Fletch and I lived on a little island where we never had to worry about shoes or wallets. We did lock the door, but our key lanyards were left in the open window of the dive shop, so it’s not like it was really that necessary to lock up. Plus every door could be opened

Fiji

Rambling

It’s been a long time since I attempted to compose an entire story with something as primitive as pen and paper. Letters, sure, but an entire story? I’m having flashbacks to a little piece of prose I tried to compose in middle school in my very best script handwriting (which was always too sharp and pointy and lacked the right curves in my opinion). It was a “short” story about a girl who played the cello on the Titanic, and went on for page after page because the story just kept coming to me all at once as I wrote.

Fiji

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

My favorite dive site around the Mana Island area of Fiji is a spot called Gotham City. On a tame day, it is teaming with ocean life. On the best of days, it’s a journey into another world, where you would think a rainbow exploded underwater there is so much color. The schools of fish are so thick that at times, you almost wish you could part the curtain to see what’s behind. Gotham City is comprised of two pinnacles, with a channel between. The site is a 45 minute boat ride away, and out in the middle of nowhere, with

Fiji

Misadventures

2017 turned out to be the year of repeats. Our second year in Fiji, our second year going to Tokoriki for our anniversary, our second year going to Beachcomber for New Years, and our second year getting an iPhone stolen. We looked into doing something different for New Year’s Eve, but if you want to party in this corner of the world, then Beachcomber Island is the closest thing to it. There is a new day club not too far away, and we looked into that, but it is only a day club, and does not offer overnight accommodation. Beachcomber

Fiji

Belated Updates, Romantic, Sharks, Top Wildlife Experiences

November The time really does fly here. Before I knew it, Fiji was kicking me out of the country again. I’d known for the past year that my oldest and closest cousin was getting married at the end of November. Unfortunately my visa was up at the beginning of the month, and there’s no way for the dive shop to operate with only two people for an entire month, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to make the wedding. Fletch worked his magic though, and arranged for a previous instructor who used to work here

Fiji

Belated Updates, Scuba Diving

September  I was teaching an open water course, the entry level certification that will allow you to dive to 18 meters anywhere in the world. I misjudged the amount of air it would take to return to the mooring line at West Wing with my one student, and so we reached our ascent point with way more air to spare than was necessary. Luckily, a flash of color caught my eye at a nearby bommie, so I led the new diver over to investigate. Our approach scared an octopus down into his hiding spot in the coral. I already knew he

Fiji

Belated Updates, Misadventures, Party All Night, Scuba Diving

August Our coworker had a friend come stay with us for a month to do his divemaster training. Becoming a divemaster is the first step towards professional training in the dive world. A proper internship usually takes around a month, where you do all your training, whilst learning how to work in the setting of a dive shop. Fletch and I both did the same internship in Honduras, just a year apart. That is how we met. That is what started this blog. That is what turned my life into this awesome adventure, that one divemaster internship in Roatan. Having had

Fiji

Belated Updates, Freediving, Other Water Activities

March  Fletch and I have found ourselves a wonderful little island paradise: Mana Island, Fiji. Mana is Fijian for “magic,” and it is indeed magic; it never rains here. The island is a long, narrow stretch of sand, with a ridge of hills down the middle to protect us from whatever storms might try to approach from the north. Our south side is protected by a gorgeous reef that is home to not even half of the dive sites we frequent. There are no roads here, and thus no need for transportation. There really isn’t even any need for shoes.

Fiji

Sharks, Video

My first instinct is to write a dozen excuses for why I haven't written in so long, but I'm going to skip all that. No one likes excuses. There is a real post with stories and everything on its way, and here is a little video I put together to tide you over in the meantime. I've been taking photos for most of my diving career. In the beginning they were all just blurry and blue and might as well have been taken by a toddler. I have hard drives full of these blurry blue photos, just taking up space, never

Fiji

Conservation, Freediving

In Roatan we used to spear lionfish. Half of you are probably reading that sentence again, wondering why someone who loves the ocean as much as I do would ever spear something as beautiful as a lionfish. The first time I ever posted a picture of a lionfish at the end of my spear on social media, I received a slew of concerted comments asking why I was killing Nemo. The other half of you may already know that lionfish are invasive in the Caribbean, and are destroying the reefs there. Lionfish don’t belong in the Caribbean, but were introduced

Fiji

Crazy Cat Lady

Warning: this post contains a plethora of cute kitten pictures. It was July 1, and Fletch and I were headed to our first rugby match. Two big teams from New Zealand were in Fiji, and so we were headed down to Suva to watch the game with the resort owner and all of his buddies, at least a dozen of them, all flown in from New Zealand. We were in the resort lobby, hiding from the onslaught of rain. It always rained in that corner of Fiji. Suddenly we saw a little kitten darting under one of the dining tables. So we

Fiji

Party All Night

A great deal of thought and planning went into this year’s New Year’s Eve celebration. Fletch and I were at home in our tiny, mustard-walled, one-room apartment playing with Ratu Kitty Cooper (our kitty that I now realize I have failed to welcome into our lives with a proper blog post. That will come shortly). Fletch asked, "So what are we doing for New Year’s this year?" I thought about it for a good 60 seconds. These things are very important decisions. Kitty rolled over and stretched. “Beachcomber?” I asked after a minute. Beachcomber Island is another island in the

Fiji

Paradise Island, Romantic

My lovely, wonderful man outdid himself again for our three year anniversary. I told him that at this rate we’d better be riding dolphins off into the sunset next year, whilst being serenaded by mermaids. The only downfall so far with our job, is that we are two out of only three divers running the shop. So it is a little bit tricky for both of us to take time off at once. Fletch magically arranged the time off for us though, and the day before our anniversary, one of our boat captains drove us north about 45 minutes to another

Fiji

Rambling

I’ve become incredibly lazy. I wrote about a dozen different excuses for why I have written a total of two posts in the past four months (five now that I’m finishing this). Including, I don’t use my computer anymore and blogger doesn’t work on iPad, yet. (Seriously, what’s up with that?) I’ve been too busy with work. (As if). I felt guilty that I communicate more on here than I do out loud. (I’m really a very quiet person in real life if you can believe it). I’ve been suffering writer’s block. (Probably as a result of too many sandwiches

Fiji

Scuba Diving, Sharks, Top Wildlife Experiences

I estimate that I’ve been to around 130 dives sites in my life. That might not sounds like very many for as much diving as I do, but when you commit to living in one place for so many months, you really just visit the same few dive sites repeatedly. That has allowed me to get to know maybe half of those 130 dive site very intimately. Different dive sites have always been special for different reasons. Some have beautiful topography, some have water so crystal clear you would think you were in an aquarium, some have fun swim throughs,

Fiji

Rambling

I'm usually a very sound sleeper. Nothing wakes me up. Nothing. Last night though, I felt the grunge every time I rolled over, the grunge from not having showered in three days and from sleeping on sheets that hadn't been washed in a month at least. I'm not a dirty person. My living conditions have just gotten a little too 'third world' for even my comfort level. In February, Fletch and I accepted a job running a little dive shop at a very secluded resort. We knew the pay wasn't great, but we were in it for the resume builder. 'Dive

Fiji

Scuba Diving, Travelogue, Underwater Photography

Continued from Taveuni - Fiji’s Garden Island Sunday, Valentine’s Day I slept like a rock and then woke up to a big, cuddly Fletch wishing me a happy Valentine’s Day. What better way to celebrate than to go out diving? Fletch, Aaron, Mikaila, and myself started the day out with breakfast, an amazing omelette stuffed full of wonderful, fresh veggies. Not to sound like one of those new-age, hippie weirdos, but as my yoga teacher would have said, it was just bursting with prana. (Prana being the sanskrit word for 'life force', or 'energy'). A side of toast with homemade passionfruit

Fiji

Other Water Activities, Travelogue

Friday When Fletch and I first came to Fiji, we traveled around for a month as tourists. One of the islands we visited with our friends, Aaron and Mikaila, was Taveuni. From the resort where Aaron and Mikaila were working on the Coral Coast, which is on the big island, Viti Levu, we arranged a rental car and drove the two hours to Suva where the ferry left from. Since the ferry could accommodate vehicles, we decided to pack up the trunk full of dive gear rather than trying to fly and worrying about weight restrictions, giving the gear time

Fiji

Romantic

Sunday was my birthday and Fletch, the wonderful man that he is, surprised me on Friday evening by telling me that he had arranged for our work to be covered until Monday afternoon. We would be going to Suva for the weekend. Suva is the capital of Fiji, and the biggest city in the South Pacific. We take the two-hour bus ride there every second or third Saturday afternoon to do some grocery shopping and see the movies. It is so nice to have a movie theater here. Fletch and I both love going to the movies and the last few

Fiji

Misadventures

This is a tale of two missing iPhones. And a dead dog. You’ve been warned. Fletch and I are working at a dive shop based out of a secluded, little resort on Viti Levu in Fiji (that’s the main island). The resort is 4 kilometers (that’s 2.5 miles for you Americans) down a windy, hilly, dirt road from the main road. There is one main road that runs around the entirety of Viti Levu and busses that run constantly in either direction (I’ve estimated that it would probably take around eight hours to drive the entire loop). The bus system here

Fiji

Activities for Your Bucket List, Scuba Diving, Sharks, Top Wildlife Experiences

Anyone who has followed me over the years knows by now that I have a passion for sharks. My shark spiels to my students at times sound a bit like Hagrid going on about hippogriffs or dragons being seriously misunderstood creatures. They are in a certain respect. Our fear stems from the unknown mixed with information we glean from pop culture. The author of the novel upon which Jaws was based, came out years later with a statement regretting that he ever wrote the story upon which so many of our fears are based. The story was purely fiction. Now

Fiji

Other Water Activities, Travelogue

Friday Fletch and I woke up on our Korean Air flight a couple hours before landing in Nadi Fiji, just in time for the processed egg breakfast to be served. Why do they always insist on serving processed eggs before landing? Nothing says welcome to a new country like egg-flavored, moist styrofoam. We landed next to the ocean in a scene of lush rolling green hills. A few hours ago it had been winter. Then we crossed the equator while flying and landed in summertime once more. As I become more and more acclimated to living in the tropics, my idea of

Philippines

Travelogue

Wednesday The perks of staying in a hotel with the reception and restaurant areas under construction include getting free room service, because there is no other place to eat breakfast. Breakfast was delivered to our room as we put the final touches on our packing, by none other then Edgard the security guard. Edgard was the only staff person we had seen the whole trip, but he was stellar at his job, and at all the other jobs around the hotel that had fallen to him. When it was time to leave, Edgard refused to let us carry our bags the ten

Philippines

Cute Animals, Travelogue

Tuesday In Palau, I heard that some of the Chinese tour agencies used to offer phony tours to the unknowing. They would separate the Chinese tourists out at the airport, those who had been to Palau previously and those who hadn't. The ones who had never been before would get an abbreviated tour around all the top landmarks, only the places they took them to weren't actually those landmarks. They would go to the bridge and tell them that was the famous natural arch. They would take them to the nearest corner on the reef and tell them that was Blue

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

A year ago when when I first started writing about our move to Palau, I didn't realize that the name for the people and the language of that country was spelled Palauan (thanks to a red underline from spell-check) and not Palawan (no red line). Come to find out several months later, Palawan is its own island in the Philippines. There weren't very many companies that paid for commercials in Palau, so most of the commercial breaks on tv were filled with ads for the other shows on that channel. Every now and again though, the Philippines or Thailand would air

Philippines

Crazy Cat Lady, Foodie, Travelogue

Saturday Afternoon Our tricycle driver, who turned out to be a very pleasant fellow, drove us through the Philippine countryside and back to the Alona Beach area and up the dirt road to the Bee Farm. I jumped out of the little cab affixed to the motorbike and ran in to see if I could get a room for Fletch and myself. We had just ditched our plans of staying in a dodgy shack in the middle of the woods, something straight out of a horror film, and opted to stay someplace nicer and closer to the airport for our last

Philippines

Misadventures

I recently jumped ahead in my storytelling a bit to bring you the breaking news of Tropical Cyclone Winston, but now that all that excitement has passed, let's return to where we left off in the Philippines on the island of Bohol.  Late Friday The sun was low in the sky when we got back to Oasis, so when Suzanne and Ian invited us for one last drink, we politely declined, deciding that it would probably be a good idea to try and get where we were going. We were heading into the middle of the jungle after all, to a place

Fiji

Misadventures

This is a continuation of The Eye of Tropical Cyclone Winston. Sunday, 21 February, 2016 Volivoli Beach Resort, Rakiraki, Fiji 2:10 AM Since I’m awake, I hope desperately that it is almost daylight. I look at my watch and it’s not even close. I try to fall back asleep and can’t. After a while I realize a trip to the bathroom is in order but I really don’t want to put my finally dry feet down into the swimming pool that our floor currently is. It’s a dilemma for a while until using the bathroom finally wins. While I’m in there I somehow manage

Fiji

Misadventures

Saturday, 20 February, 2016 Rakiraki, Fiji 6:30 AM The alarm goes off half an hour earlier than yesterday. Yesterday some of us laid in bed until the last possible minute and then realized that four of us are sharing a bathroom. That didn’t work out so well and the dive shop called us to see where we were before we were even late. So this morning we are determined to be early. We are so determined that no one is moving yet. My brain in moving. My body is not responding. 8:15 AM Fletch, Mikaila, Aaron, and myself are power walking the sandy, scenic path

Philippines

Cute Animals, Top Wildlife Experiences, Travelogue

Friday Planning our travels through the Philippines turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had thought it would be. With over 7000 islands, and each promising something unique and better than the last, it proved an impossible task to narrow the choices down enough to accommodate a 12 day schedule. Eventually we settled on four nights in Malapascua, four in Bohol, and four on Palawan (which honestly is a place deserving of 12 nights by itself). Everyone raved about Bohol. Between the beach, the zip-lining, the Chocolate hills, the Loboc river with its own assortment of activities, it

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

Wednesday They say to schedule at least half a day for any domestic traveling within the Philippines, if not a full day. They are not kidding. Definitely er on the side of a full day. We arranged to travel to Bohol from Malapascua with our Dutch friends, Ian and Suzanne. Suzanne was awesome and planned out the entire trip, from our transfer from the dive shop, to the ferry from Cebu to Bohol, to rooming arrangements. Some mention was made of staying at the Bee Farm, which I liked the idea of very much, having heard a lot about it, but

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Monday  We signed up for the early morning thresher shark dive again. Beautiful, cartoonish sharks with long, ribbony tails and big, puppy dog eyes were a good enough reason to drag my sleepy butt out of bed at 5am. We were late leaving because one of the guys didn’t show up to work, and as such most of the thresher sharks were already gone when we descended into the chilly water. We still saw enough to make the dive worth it, just not as many as the day before. Of course about halfway through the dive when I’d given up on

Philippines

Scuba Diving, Sharks

Sunday Evolution turned out to be a wonderful little gem of a dive resort. There were three main dive shops that Lonely Planet recommended we go through. Fletch did a nice job of emailing the three of them until we were able to narrow it down to Evolution Dive Resort. That was definitely a good call. The beach front room was everything you want in a room when you’re divining. A big, clean, comfortable bed, and an extra bed to lay out all your stuff on, a clean bathroom with a hot shower, and a little balcony to hang out wet

Philippines

Guide Book, Travelogue

Saturday There’s nothing like waking up on the cold, tile floor of the airport. I didn’t really sleep much, so I was too exhausted to move. But since I wasn’t moving, I was gradually becoming colder and colder, making it impossible to actually sleep. In an attempt to warm up, I sat cross-legged and cross-armed and was so sleepy that I folded forward over myself and fell asleep for what could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes. I’m not sure which, but it was long enough to wake up with pins and needles in my feet. The joys of traveling.

Palau

Rambling, Travelogue

Friday Leaving Palau was a relief. The first few months were fun thanks to the thrill of the incredible diving. It really is unreal. The last month or so was a good time because we started cramming in all the touristy things we hadn’t done yet. We visited Peleliu and had an awesome and fun-filled couple of days with Sam. Fletch and I had a relaxing overnight trip to Carp Island Resort where we hiked and kayaked and napped in hammocks on the beach. We saw the breathtaking sight that is Palau from the air. Sam took us wake-boarding. But the

Palau

Culture, Travelogue

This post is dedicated to my Great Uncle who was stationed in Peleliu during World War II. The second assignment of the first marine division hit Peleliu on June 2, 1944. Not being allowed to reveal their location, my uncle wrote a letter home spelling out the first letter of each paragraph with the letters P-A-L-A-U. During the battle, he was shot by a round of artillery, and laid unconscious all night on the beach. The platoon sergeant recognized him and tried to drag him to safety. A sniper hiding in a tree shot two rounds, hitting my uncle in

Palau

Underwater Photography

I had so much fun flipping through the fish book trying to identify the last set of fish pictures that I decided to post another set of them! Plus with 2000 or so odd fish to choose from, 23 just wasn’t a large enough sample size, so I present to you 18 more.  1. Manta Ray - I’ve seen numerous manta rays by now but have yet to have my camera with me on a dive. And I’m sure if I had had a camera, the mantas wouldn’t have shown. But the other day when we were heading out of the

Palau

Activities for Your Bucket List, Paradise Island

Happy New Year! My new year’s resolution for the blog is to post at least one post a week, and multiple posts in a week do not carry over to the next. There, it’s out for the world to know; now I have to stick to it! Last time we visited the states I asked Fletch to look for flights during the day time so that we could see Palau from the air. I love seeing countries from the air when I arrive someplace new. It’s like seeing the live version of the map. If you google image search ‘Palau’ you

Palau

Crazy Cat Lady

Another awesome year is gone! But you know what they say, out with the old and in with the new, and Fletch and I are very, veryveryvery ready to say our goodbyes to Palau. The travel bug is itching and new adventures are calling. A whole year on a rock in the middle of nothing but ocean has given us both a bad case of the island fever. This is a new sensation for me. I know the blog has been a little stagnant as of late and for that I do apologize. My writing is inspired by new experiences and

Palau

Crazy Cat Lady, Romantic

Fletch and I celebrated our two year anniversary this past weekend. Two years already! I am as enamored with him as ever and can’t believe how lucky I am to have found such an amazing man who takes me on wild adventures. When he asked me what I wanted for our anniversary, I told him a cat. That may sound a little odd seeing as we’re only staying here temporarily. Who would adopt an animal and then say goodbye to it right away? There is a wonderful lady here who started taking in all the stray cats and now she runs

Palau

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

Rainy season is finally over! We’ve been able to get out to Ulong Channel again, one of the funnest dive sites here where a ripping current tosses you down a channel like a roller coaster ride. The sun has been shining, we’ve been hanging out in our pool, all has been good. Saturday, my only full day off from yoga training, we signed up for a full day of diving, excited to go enjoy the nice weather. Only the morning arrived and we woke up to the sound of pouring rain. Not just a little raincloud over us either. Our

Palau

Yoga

I’m starting an exciting new journey in my life and it’s one I never expected to begin in Palau. But then again expectations almost never coincide with reality. That is the beauty of travel. There are always surprises waiting. I expected Palau to be a place where I learned some bad-ass spearfishing skills and learned how to live off the land, island style. Instead I found a nation that has developed past the point of existing harmoniously with nature and instead relies on shipments of processed foods for sustenance. C’est la vie. I’ve known for a long time that at some

Palau

Cute Animals

It is mid October and yet rainy season wares on. June, July, and August usually make up rainy season here, but September didn't see an end to the storms, and here we are in October and the winds are still too crazy to venture out with our little boat. It has been months since we last saw Ulong or Sies Corner, as dive boats are more often then not confined to the inner reefs. If I never see German Channel again I will not be disappointed. (German Channel is a famous dive site where people from around the world flock

Palau

Foodie

You’ve all heard me bellyache about the food here by now. The locals live on spam and rice. Finding anything fresh at the grocery store is reason to celebrate. There will be days or weeks even when the produce isles run dry and there is not a veggie to be found. Our meals are planned around what fresh thing we can find in the store. Eggplants grow locally so we make lots of curries with those. Beets occasionally pop up so I’ve learned how to make a mean veggie burger by adding black beans and quinoa. Several other dishes have

Palau

Culture

The Republic of Palau celebrates its Independence Day on October 1. It became a free country on this day in 1994, after being a United Nations Trust Territory under U.S. administration for 47 years. Apparently they learned well from America, because this year they decided to put on a fireworks display! (I say this year because I have no idea whether or not they do this every year). We were very happy to hear this because when you are an American living abroad, the number one thing you miss every summer is fireworks on the fourth of July. Unfortunately a fireworks display

Palau

Scuba Diving

On Tuesday Fletch and I woke up to a tremendous thunder storm. Thunder storms are a rarity in Palau. We get no end of rain, especially this time of year, but tiny islands out in the middle of nowhere such as these experience a saddening dearth of thunder. Something to do with the ocean surface not warming up as much as land does. So low-lying air cannot heat to the capacity that is crucial for thunder storm formation. (That science lesson brought to you by NASA).  Who doesn’t love a good thunderstorm? We woke up to booming and banging and rolling

Palau

Party All Night

10:00 AM I miss the days of being jet lagged and waking up at 6AM ready to roll. I always wanted to be a morning person but it just never worked out for me. I could set five different alarms and sleep through every one of them. Maybe I should look for a job product-testing alarm clocks. Luckily these days I don’t have any reason to set an alarm unless it’s a dive day. Otherwise I roll out of bed around ten. I know, life’s rough. 12:00 PM Normally we’ll cook breakfast at any hour of the day, but Fletch and I have

Palau

Underwater Photography

Palau is home to some 1500 species of fish due to its unique location at the crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and the Philippine Sea. They come in an incredible array of colors and shapes and sizes, from butterflyfish of every color imaginable, to fearsome apex predators such as tuna and sharks. This list is by no means complete, nor is it any sort of ranking of the most common fish. It is merely a selection of photos I pulled from my camera. Some of these I see every day. Some I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of

Palau

Guide Book, Scuba Diving

Choosing dive gear can be a very daunting task when you are new to the sport. It can get fairly expensive and the options are endless. Should you buy a full set straight away? Or accumulate a few pieces at a time as you become more comfortable in the water? Opinions differ greatly on gear so be sure to do your research. Here are my own personal preferences on gear based on five years of diving, two years as a professional, and a couple years in dive retail. First buy your mask, snorkel, and fins. Some dive shops will consider these

Palau

Cute Animals, Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

For all you fish enthusiasts out there, I experienced something about as majestic as a hippopotamus ballet today. For all you people who don’t care about fish past what it tastes like raw over a bed of sushi rice, I get that, I do. I feel the same way about birds. Black bird, blue bird, woohoo, just please don’t poop on me. Give me an ostrich or a penguin though and then we can talk. This is a story about the dodo bird of the fish kingdom: the humphead parrotfish. Stock photo of a bumphead parrotfish. (from Adobe Stock) The humphead parrotfish was very

Palau

Culture, Guide Book

If you missed my first set of Palau Fun Facts, you can find those here. Total Land Area of Palau: 459 sq km, or 212 square miles. That is roughly 2.5 times the size of Washington, DC, or one third the size of the Hawaiian island Kauai. Coastline: 1,519 km or 944 miles. That is the driving distance from Boulder, CO to Blaine, MN. Population: 21,168 (2014 est.). That is smaller than the student body of University of Colorado at Boulder, which was was 29,772  in Fall of 2014. Religions:  Roman Catholic 49.4% Protestant 30.9% (includes Protestant (general) 23.1%, Seventh Day Adventist 5.3%, and other Protestant

Palau

Culture

Step 1: Find a map or a sign leading to a cool site like a tomb. Step 2: Locate it. Alternatively, locate said cool thing without any maps or signs showing you the way. Then you're really winning. My dreams of becoming Indiana Jones when I grow up are slowly crumbling as I realize I have zero skill as an archeologist. You might recall when we visited the stone monoliths and never saw any faces in the rocks. Well, today we went on a little road trip to Aimeliik, "the wettest spot in Palau." We meant to visit a tomb and couldn't seem

Palau

Cute Animals, Party All Night

Happy 4th of July to everyone back home! We had a party here last night for all of our American friends and everyone else who wanted to come celebrate with us. We even had a surprise guest who ended up being the life of the party. Meet the praying mantis who came out to celebrate her freedom. We could almost hear her miniature squee of delight when Fletch offered her some cheese. She made a few new friends, always remembering that eye contact is crucial. She accessorized some already stylin' hats.  She tried some of our homemade jungle juice (or hunch punch).  And she even

Palau

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

Ouklemedaol = the Palauan word for manta rays. Yesterday we went diving with Day Dream and for our third dive they brought us to a dive site that they found themselves, and only they know the coordinates to: Secret Stadium. The boat captain and two of the Japanese staff hovered around the GPS as we drove through the stormy seas along the outer reef on the east coast. When we reached the proper coordinates, one of the staff jumped in with a snorkel to go find the morning line, unmarked by a buoy so as to keep the sight hidden and secret.

Palau

Misadventures

All this time I have been referring to the people of Palau as Palawan, because spell-check seemed to like that word over Palauan. Come to find out though, Palawan is the name of an island off of Indonesia (yes, a different island). The proper spelling for the people of Palau is Palauan after all. Someday if I’m really bored I’ll go back and correct all of my blog posts. Until then, my apologies to the people searching the internet for info on Palawan and coming up with my blog. I haven’t been there. Yet

Palau

Misadventures

I know it’s at the top of everyone’s bucket lists to go to the dentist while they're on vacation. I mean what if you start having too much fun and need to tame it down a bit? Getting your teeth scraped should accomplish just that. Overwhelmed by too much beautiful scenery? Listening to a dentist’s drill will help. Or maybe you genuinely enjoy getting your gums stabbed. In that case, go ahead and go to the dentist. Be my guest. Unfortunately, when your life is a permanent vacation, those little necessities like dentist visits don’t go away. Fletch and I realized

Palau

Foodie

“Grand Bleu.” That’s what the sign said above the empty space in the building next to The Taj. It was a very attractive sign too, bold white letters over a blue background, reminiscent of water. It appeared over a month ago and we all wondered what it was going to be. I crossed my fingers that it wasn’t going to be another Chinese souvenir shop full of trinkets. A few weeks later the words 'New York Kitchen Bar' found their place on the sign. The prospect of a new restaurant was a welcome one. Even if the food was as average as

Palau

Culture

Apparently Palau has a problem with England because I picked up a local paper the other day and was stunned to find a quarter of a page dedicated to "Short England Jokes.” Take into account the paper here is only a dozen pages long and is only printed every few days. (My apologies to all of my British and anglophile friends).  Short England jokes Q: How do police know that Princess Diana had dandruff? A: They found her head and shoulders under the steering wheel.  Q: How does every English joke start?  A: By looking over your shoulder.  Q: What’s the difference between a smart English

Palau

Top Wildlife Experiences, Video

As promised to my followers on Facebook, here is the video clip of the pod of whales that greeted our dive boat the other day! (It only took a collective total of seven hours of attempting to upload). We were headed out from the dive shop Day Dream, towards Peleliu for a day of diving, when our boat suddenly veered sharply to the left and someone yelled "pilot whales!" Within moments, our boat was surrounded by bow-dancers. They would come up, several at a time to jump synchronized out of the water, and then leave the space free for the next

Palau

Guide Book, Scuba Diving

We found an amazing new dive shop and it is called Day Dream! I couldn't find them on TripAdvisor to write them a nice review, so I thought I'd highlight a few reasons why they rocked right here. Maybe someone Google searching the diving in Palau will stumble across this and be inspired to check them out. Or maybe this will give some of you ideas of what to look for in a dive shop. Since we have befriended most of the staff at Sam’s Dive Tours, they have sort of turned into our default shop to dive with. Unfortunately, since

Palau

Culture

Yesterday Fletch and I decided to go drive around Babeldaob, first of all because there’s some cool stuff way up north where we hadn’t ventured yet, and second of all because our car battery had slowly been dying due to constantly starting the car and then only driving half a mile. So nice long drive for the car, new territory to explore for us, it was a win win idea. I’ve already described this several times, so sorry if I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but Babeldaob is the big island just over the bridge to the north

Palau

Guide Book

While I’m not a huge car person, I do find amusement in seeing all the funny vehicles that drive the roads when I visit new places, and if I can get a chuckle out of the different cars on the road here, then I figured maybe some of you car people out there would enjoy seeing the cars of Palau. So I sat out on the roof like a total creep yesterday and took pictures of cars as they drove by. I’m probably already sounding like I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, so I went ahead and

Palau

Cute Animals

If you give a crab a mushroom, he’ll let it fall to the ground. If you give a crab another mushroom he’ll let you drop it again. If you hand a crab a mushroom directly into his claw he’ll pinch it, and then back himself into a corner and use it as a shield to protect himself against you. You’ll say, Silly crab, that little slice of mushroom is barely big enough to be a crab-sized hat. And then he’ll play peek-a-boo from behind his mushroom shield and wait for you to be gone. If you let a crab spend the

Palau

Guide Book, Misadventures

In the early hours of the morning I was having this nightmare that I was going to give myself a haircut (something I actually have done many a time before). I washed and shampooed my hair and then the water ran out (it sometimes does that here) before I could rinse all the shampoo out. So I decided that wasn’t a big deal and had wet sudsy hair and went to cut my hair, only to realize that my scissors were dull. I kept trying and trying to cut it, only the scissors were only folding my hair in half

Palau

Crazy Cat Lady

We got a very rude reminder of just how fragile life is the other night. You think everything is perfect and you have all your ducks in a row and then a meteor lands on one of them. We lost little Mars to one of the feral dogs here. I knew they were mean. I didn’t realize they were cold-blooded enough to harm a little kitten though. Mars was playing on the steps to our house (he never went all the way to the bottom by himself) and the white male dog who hangs out in the parking lot came

Palau

Scuba Diving, Sharks, Top Wildlife Experiences

Edit: apologies but the videos attached to this post were lost when transferring between blogging platforms. What I've seen these past couple days is so darn awesome that I'm attempting to upload a few short (and rather poor quality) video clips despite the internet working against me. Please leave feedback on weather or not they work. So the past two days we signed up to go watch some fish porn! Red snapper spawning to be precise. Most marine species of fish produce eggs. Some families such as wrasses, parrot, surgeon, and snappers release these eggs into open water in a behavior known as spawning. This

Palau

Scuba Diving, Sharks

Once upon a time we were headed through the rock islands on our way back to Sam’s Tours after a wonderful day of diving at Ulong Channel (again) and Saies Corner (again). Everyone was happy and relaxed after two fantastic dives. There hadn’t been too much current at Ulong Channel, so this time we had been able to take our time and enjoy the topography rather than being swept along so quickly that our surroundings became a blur. Saies Corner had been fairly relaxed as well, with the current only becoming difficult to work with at the corner itself. I’d

Palau

Guide Book

We’ve mostly just been hanging out and watching HBO and planting trees and tanning our naughty bits in our rooftop kiddie pool so I apologize that there haven’t been a lot of updates as of late. Fletch has been having some work done on our boat and that gets finished today so the adventures should continue shortly! In the meantime, here’s some things you may find interesting about living in the world’s forth smallest country (population: 20,879). The Moon - The moon plays a major role in Palauan culture. The light blue flag with a large yellow disk represents the ocean

Palau

Foodie

Palau is paradise, “the rainbow’s end” as many call it. The scenery is breathtaking, the diving is world-class, the people are hospitable, and the lifestyle is laid back. No place is perfect though, and this blog would get boring very quickly if everything was as wonderful as unicorns that poop rainbows. So I’m going to take a moment to discuss the sad food situation here. Let’s talk produce. It’s pretty much nonexistent here. There are three grocery stores and the produce sections of all three looked like this the first few weeks after we arrived here. They are slightly better stocked

Palau

Crazy Cat Lady, Cute Animals

Uh oh, not another kitten post! Guys, meet Bob. Before you go calling me a crazy cat lady, know that this one isn’t staying permanently, we’re just kitten sitting (I know, that's what they all say). Before we rescued Mars, one of our friends said the cat in her apartment complex had had four kittens that were ready to find homes if we wanted one of them. We were almost tempted, but then little Mars came along. That friend is moving now and needed someone to take care of the last kitten in the litter while she got settled in, so when

Palau

Crazy Cat Lady, Cute Animals

Say hello to Mars!  Fletch and I were saying that the only thing we’re missing here is a cat and then a couple weeks ago we came home from a day of diving and laid down to take a nap. As we were dozing off, our ears started tuning in on some animal’s cry. My first thought was that it sounded just like a baby kitten crying for mama, but the sound just kept going and going and going with no let up. There are some weird birds here that make the same noise over and over again so my next

Palau

Scuba Diving

The other day we got bumped from the Sam’s Tours boat (perks of diving at the local rate) and so decided to check out the other big shop, Fish and Fins. We had no idea where it was though, even after driving pretty much every bit of Koror and Malakal. I figured it had to be someplace really obvious we’d been passing all along that just wasn’t clearly marked. After driving the main road down the length of Koror and Malakal and still not finding it, we started driving around, looking for a poster with a phone number to call.

Palau

Activities for Your Bucket List, Other Water Activities

7:00 AM The alarm goes off. A really obnoxious ehk ehk ehk. Fletch turns it off and I roll over. 7:30 AM There’s a knock on our door. I don’t hear it because I’m sound asleep dreaming about this highly unpleasant person I worked with in a dive shop once, who then left to fill a conservationist position at another dive shop. In my dream she’s selling the island’s few turtles on the black market to Indians and Pakistanis who want the shells. 7:31 AM I wake up to Fletch scrambling out of bed and half asleep mumbling ‘Oh shit.’ He rushes over to the

Palau

Other Water Activities, Travelogue

The radio stations here play very eclectic selections of music. You’ll get a country song, and then a rap song, and then a few Indian chanting songs that will make you scramble to change the station. It’s nice because you never hear the same song twice. Ever. But then the songs you actually want to listen to are about one out of twenty. It’s like pushing the shuffle button on your iPod; you only ever get all the random songs you don’t even know why you have. The other day Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls came on as we were heading to

Palau

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

Our friend Kyle arrived! He’s going to be living with us in our house which is coming along quite nicely. We took him out on his first day of diving here the other day, the second day of diving for Fletch and me. We had to wait until he had his driver’s license because as a local, the price is about half of what it would be otherwise, and diving here is fairly pricy. We were told to show up earlier this time around as our divemaster wanted to do something “special,” so we did, met our two divemasters who were

Palau

Conservation

We got cable installed! We skipped on adding the American news channels package though because all the shows from ABC and NBC and Fox are actually tapes that are sent over from the U.S. They are usually two weeks old by the time they air here. That is if they receive the tapes at all; sometimes they don't get them and so have to show an old (older than two weeks) news program. How funny is that? I mean what's the point of even watching the news if it's two weeks old? If the world turns to chaos someone shoot

Palau

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

A while back a friend introduced me to an imax documentary called The Living Sea. It was shot after spectacular shot of the most stunning, underwater scenery you could dream of. Before departing for Palau, she told me that I should go back and watch that again because apparently it was filmed here. Maybe it was, but those are the kind of shots you can only get from going way out into the middle of the ocean where people don’t go and mess up the reefs on a regular basis, right? I’ve never seen scenery like that in real life.

Palau

Culture

Wednesday morning we woke up bright and early and headed over to the Remax Office. Risong, our new realtor, was going to show us houses on Babeldaob (ba - like a sheep, ble - like the end of bible, dob - rhymes with Bob). We picked up Risong in our rental car and the three of us made our way north. I’m sure I’ve described the layout of the islands by now, but incase you’re just catching up, Koror is the main island where everything is located. Businesses, hotels, government buildings, everything. There is one main road that runs the entire

Palau

Guide Book, Travelogue

We are really starting to get settled in here! I must say, my opinion of this little cluster of islands is improving exponentially by the day. I always give new cultures the benefit of the doubt, they’re different, I’m the one who doesn’t understand. I usually find wonder and excitement in trying to figure out new ways of life. Our first couple of days here though just were not promising. Between the Chinese overwhelming the tourist industry and making it impossible for us to do anything, Bianca standing us up, Ashley’s landlord trying to charge us a fortune for the

Palau

Misadventures, Travelogue

Our first few days here in Palau have been spent desperately trying to find a place to sleep, both short term and for the month or however long we decide to stay after that. Our search started about a month ago. We already had one-way tickets booked and I got online to look for a hotel to stay in for our first week, thinking that would buy us enough time to look for a house or apartment for rent once we arrived. I got on TripAdvisor, typed in some search parameters, and waited for the results. Several hotels came up

Palau

Travelogue

DEN to SFO Fletch and I arrived at the airport at 4am, an early hour that I would normally never see except in a dream. Traveling changes everything though. I’ll wake up at any hour for the promise of a new adventure. In about 50 hours we would be in our new home, Palau. From the research that both of us had done regarding this tiny island nation, neither one of us expected to stop in Palau for more than a couple of months; too many small factors were piling up, but those were just from reading. Reading is a far cry

Palau

Guide Book

Alright, the cat's out of the bag and the one-way tickets are booked. Next stop: Palau! Pa-what? Unless you are a serious dive enthusiast or a World War II veteran, chances are you might not have heard of this tiny island nation, and for good reason. Palau is 1000 miles east of the Philippines, 1300 miles southwest of Guam, and 1900 miles north of Papua New Guinea. Whoa! It's a little intimidating to think of spending a significant amount of time away from any large mass of land, but at the same time it is perfectly fitting. I love the ocean,

Thailand

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

I wrote a dozen different introductions for this post apologizing for being insensitive, racist, and poking fun at others' expense, but then I realized that if I was really that concerned, I wouldn't be writing this post in the first place. Or maybe I would write it and just leave it to collect cyber dust with all my other half-written drafts. So yes, these stories I'm about to tell may come across somewhat insensitive, racist, and poke fun at other's expense. If you're going to be offended, read no farther. I'm sure I'll have another post about kittens up before

Thailand

Guide Book

GETTING HERE If you are flying into Bangkok you have two options: The Slow & Cheap Option: Take an overnight bus/train from Bangkok to Chumphon followed by a ferry from Chumphon to Koh Tao. After arriving in Bangkok, walk into the first booking office you see (tourist areas such as Khao San Road are riddled with them) and say you want to go to Koh Tao. They will give you all of your options. The overnight buses and trains both take about ten hours. On the bus you get to sit in an uncomfortable seat all night. On the train you can

Thailand

Culture, Other Water Activities, Travelogue

Monday We booked an early departure from Koh Phi Phi. It's a fun place for a couple of days but after that it's easy to get your fill of drunk tourists and trashed beaches. Gone are the days of the pristine, undiscovered paradises from Alex Garland's novel, at least as far as Koh Phi Phi is concerned. The ferry brought us back to Krabi and from there we got a transfer to Ao Nang. In Ao Nang we had the shuttle driver drop us at the corner on the beach where a booth selling longboat tickets was located, and bought three

Thailand

Party All Night, Travelogue

There's a saying in Thailand, same same but different. If you have ever been there, then you are likely all too familiar with it. It originated in reference to the ladyboys, for obvious reasons. But now you can't walk into a souvenir shop without seeing it splashed across a tshirt or have a conversation with a local without hearing it in everyday conversation, because it just works for everything. Spend more then a couple of weeks in Thailand and pretty soon you will be throwing out same same in the middle of a conversation without even thinking twice about it. The

Thailand

Party All Night, Scuba Diving

Friday The Alarms sounded early, waking us up in plenty of time to have breakfast and meet our ride form the dive shop in the lobby. Our divemaster from OK Dive Club picked us up in a pickup truck with the company logo splashed across the window and apologized for being late, even though he was only late by a couple of minutes. We explained to him that we had been living oh Koh Tao for the past nine months and understood the routine, that 9:30 at work usually meant leaving the house at 9:30. Gotta love island time. We drove to the

Thailand

Travelogue

Wednesday  I froze all night in the air/con car. Sometime around the time we stopped in Chumphon I remembered there was an extra blanket we had stolen wedged under my pillow. The next hour or two of sleep was much more comfortable and then we were woken up by our extremely flamboyant train steward who started waving his hands around at us, wanting to make our bunks back into benches. The train dropped us off in Surat Thani and we were herded away based on the color stickers we were wearing. We were loaded onto a shuttle bus that took us to

Thailand

Foodie, Travelogue

This is my 100th post everyone! Thanks to all of my readers who have kept me blogging this far. I was going to plan a special post but I'm already so behind that that's not going to happen. Sunday  As cool as Montis Resort was, the breakfast buffet was surprisingly disappointing. So we left halfway through and made our way back to Chiang Mai. We returned the bikes without any fees for scratches (I had tipped mine over in a parking lot after it was stopped and had been dreading how many zeros would be on the fine). Maybe that's just a

Thailand

Travelogue

Friday We woke up and packed up, strapped our backpacks to our bikes, and left Chiang Mai, but not before making a detour to Thailand's only Cat Cafe. A while back someone posted a list on Facebook of all the Cat Cafes around the world. As soon as I saw there was one in Thailand I knew we would have to go. Catmosphere was visible from a mile away with its sign decorated in old school movie theater light bulbs. We rode up and read the sign on the front door that asked us to please wait for someone to let us

Thailand

Foodie, Travelogue

Thursday I woke up on the train to a sunny sky outside and rolling hills gradually turning into city. We were arriving in Chiang Mai, the north of Thailand. Fletch and I had just crossed the entire country, from south to north, by train. I had wondered if it would be cold up north. It wasn't. As we carried our backpacks off the train the air was still as hot and humid as it had been in Koh Tao. Yet it was different somehow. There were a number of red, covered, open-backed trucks lined up outside the train station waiting to transport people

Thailand

Travelogue

Tuesday Eric and Fletch and I all left Koh Tao on the same day, Eric to fly home from Bangkok, and Fletch and I to go explore the rest of Thailand for two weeks before also making our way back to the US for the holidays. Knowing that we were going exploring for two weeks only just barely made our departure more bearable. The fact was that Koh Tao had been a perfect home and I was really going to miss it. The island was small enough to be able to get around anywhere you wanted to go in no time

Thailand

Crazy Cat Lady

Our rent-a-cat experiment ended about how I expected it to. I fell in love with a bundle of fur who was destined to stay on Koh Tao while I was doomed to leave. He was one cool cat. His favorite way of being held was upside down. And when no one was around to hold him upside down he would pop a squat in his own personal beanbag chair. Sometimes he would get tricked into wearing stupid homemade tinfoil hats when he thought he was going to get held upside down. Those were never good moments. And if still no one would hold him

Thailand

Guide Book

1. Purchasing a perfectly reliable motorbike for $312.   2. Selling that same motorbike for $250 after riding it everyday for nine months. That's $62 for nine months of transportation.    3. Buying a brand new set of dirt tires for that bike for $30.   4. Fixing pretty much anything on that bike for $5.    5. Bum guns. They're a little weird to get used to at first but after a couple of days you come to realize that cleaning down there with running water is so much more hygienic then just wiping with a bit of toilet paper. Why has the rest of the world

Thailand

Travelogue

A while back a friend of ours had posted a picture on Facebook of a beautiful resort room where he was staying on Koh Samui. It had a massive jacuzzi in the middle of the room and looked like some high end spa. He told us that it wasn't incredibly expensive and that we must stay there next time we were on Koh Samui. So Fletch and I got on the website and booked a room to coincide with when we would have to do a visa extension run. Since we applied for visas ahead of arriving in Thailand, we get

Thailand

Romantic

On November 15 Fletch and I celebrated our one year anniversary and he somehow managed to outdo himself again. First of all though, I've already been with this awesome guy for a whole year! Thank you Fletch for a year of amazing adventures, for being an incredible travel buddy, an irreplaceable friend, and most of all the man I love. Fletch told me to be home at 5:00 so that we could be ready to go at 5:30 and that was all he would say. So I hurried home and put on the one nice dress I brought with me that

Thailand

Travelogue

Tuesday I suppose Captain Bob's Booze Cruise is going to be a tough story to follow but I didn't want to just leave you hanging, wondering how we got home. We woke up at 9 and walked down some of our hotel's many stairs to the lobby where the restaurant was. They had three different breakfast sets, the largest of which they had been racist in naming the "American" Breakfast. But then again a bunch of Americans ordered it and devoured it so maybe it wasn't that racist after all. We packed up our belongings and checked out, then stopped at the

Thailand

Other Water Activities, Party All Night, Travelogue

Monday We woke up and checked out of our hotel in Krabi, helping ourselves afterwards to the complimentary breakfast. We had booked tickets already to go to Koh Phi Phi, an island chain a little ways south comprising of two larger islands and several small rocks. Our minivan picked us up, drove us thirty or so minutes back to Krabi Town, and dropped us off at the ferry station. The ride was two hours across smooth seas and under a sunny blue sky. The main island is Koh Phi Phi Don and that is where the ferry dropped us off. As we

Thailand

Travelogue

Sunday I woke up at 7:30 feeling hungover and so went back to sleep. At noon I woke up again feeling much better and so waited for everyone else to get up and moving. By the time we were all alive and functioning it was definitely time to find food, so we walked around the little Ao Nang area desperately trying to find breakfast food. No place had western breakfast food, only Italian, Thai, and Indian food. We searched dozens of restaurants for an hour before we found a little cafe with a Harley Davidson theme that had several breakfast items

Thailand

Travelogue

Friday Our good friend and now roommate, Eric, had some friends visiting from Colorado recently who wanted to go explore. Eric had invited us to go with them. We have been wanting to see the rest of Thailand and so considered it briefly, but then decided that six people traveling together would be too much of a logistical problem. It's easy enough to squeeze four people into a room but with six you have to wonder if an extra room is worth it. The morning that they were leaving we all met up and Fletch and I changed our minds. We

Thailand

Culture, Party All Night

Yesterday was Loi Krathong, a holiday here which takes place on the full moon of the twelfth month of the Thai lunar calendar, which usually falls in our November. It is the festival of lanterns that you have likely seen a photo of if you've ever flipped through a guidebook of Thailand. Thousands of lanterns are released, creating the most beautiful scene. Loi means "to float" and Krathong is a lotus-shaped vessel made out of biodegradable materials. It usually contains candles, incense sticks, flowers, and coins. Under the light of the full moon, everyone releases a lantern to give thanks and also ask

Thailand

Crazy Cat Lady

Now that we've moved into a place that doesn't threaten to kick us out when they see cat hair, we decided foster a kitty for the few months that we have left here. There's an amazing animal clinic here on the island that doubles as a vet and a humane society. The lady who runs it works mostly off of donations. If you're ever having a bad day you can go in and play with all the dogs and cats. We headed over a couple days after moving in and asked her if there were any adult kitties that needed a

Thailand

Freediving

This is the sequel to my original story: Freediving. One year ago I took a freediving course at a wonderful school here on Koh Tao call Apnea Total. I absolutely loved the idea of freediving and couldn't wait to lean some breath-holding tricks. The course ended up being much more of a mental hurdle to overcome then physical one. The school was closing for slow season after our course ended and so we never got the opportunity to do any additional training until just recently. Work has been pretty slow lately so I decided to take advantage of the break and

Thailand

Party All Night

I redesigned my blog! Take a quick poll on the left to help me decide if this is a good look or not. (Best viewed in Safari. (Please don't vote if you are viewing the black and white mobile version.)) Day One At the last minute Fletch and I decided to join Summer and her three friends who are visiting from the US for the Full Moon Party, October 2014! As we were walking out the door we also convinced Kyle to come with us, so our group ended up being seven total. On the day of the full moon we took

Thailand

Misadventures

If you are following my travel stories then this post may or may not be of interest to you. I write it mainly incase anyone with the prospect of coming to Koh Tao long term is looking for a place to stay and has stumbled across my blog by chance, maybe by typing in the right search terms. Gotta love Google. It's still a good story though. As you may recall, the past six months we've been renting a beautiful three bedroom villa just out of Sairee. We found the place via a management company on the island called BUA. BUA is

Cambodia

Activities for Your Bucket List, Travelogue

Tuesday Our alarms went off bright and early, well before dawn so that we would have enough time to get over to Angkor Wat and watch the sun rise over the ancient Khmer temples. I've never been a morning person, and long ago gave up on the prospect of ever being one. Sleep is the only inviting activity in the morning and when I hear the alarm I always have to question if it's really worth getting out of bed. Usually the answer is no. As the alarm went off I felt that same cringe of annoyance over being woken up

Cambodia

Foodie, Travelogue

Would you believe I’ve been in Thailand for six months and already had to leave the country again on a visa run? Where does the time go?! My mindset on the whole visa run situation hasn’t changed. Screw sitting on a bus for x number of hours only to be transported to the border, get your passport stamped, and come right back. If I’m going to kill that many hours on a bus and have a sore bum then I want to go see something! My friends Summer and Eric were due for their first visa runs as well so

Thailand

Misadventures

The only reason I write this is because those who know I am here will be wondering what is going on and the media is having a field day turning the reputation of our tiny island paradise into the dangerous location of a gruesome double murder. Yesterday, Monday, I got home around noon from a morning spent diving, got on Facebook, and read on the community board that two tourists had been murdered on Sairee Beach earlier that morning. Someone had posted an article on a Thai news source. I searched Google News and nothing came up. Maybe it was just

Thailand

Belated Updates

Disclaimer: If you are a Kahlùa and Baileys enthusiast, or an Avicii fan, you should probably know that this post has nothing further to do with either of those topics beyond the fact that that is what I am doing right now. Hey Brother is my new favorite song, and the only song that is currently downloaded onto my iPad, so I'm sure it will be my least favorite song before I'm finished writing this post. Ohhh if the sky comes falling down for you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do.  It has been a whopping two months since my

Singapore

Foodie, Travelogue

Monday Fletch and I woke up in that heavenly cushy cloud of a bed and both had the same idea: Toast Box. The day before, whilst walking around, we had noticed a little chain of restaurants called Toast Box, one of which was right outside our hotel. It sounded like a breakfast place, it had a cute name, and it had to have good food by default being in Singapore. So we got dressed and started walking out various exits from the hotel, trying to remember exactly where we had seen it. When we finally found it we walked in and

Singapore

Foodie, Travelogue

You may be wondering how it is that I am able to work here. The average backpacker / student / traveler who passes through always is. The answer is that I'm technically not supposed to be working.  It is all very under the table. Sort of like the illegal immigrants you hire to mow your lawn. I'm here on a tourist visa. Usually, upon entering the country, tourists are given 30 days. Before leaving the US though I went to the "honorary" Thai consulate in Denver and applied for a 60-day, triple entry visa. That means I'm allowed to stay

Thailand

Foodie

If you are a google searcher who was trying to find a banana cake, then I'll cut straight to the chase. The best banana cake in all the places I've traveled is made by the British ladies at a little cafe called Through The Looking Glass on the island of Koh Tao, Thailand. It will knock your socks off, stuff you like a pig, and you will cry a little bit when you are too full to continue indulging in its perfection. You won't even care when you've gained five kilos after eating it because it was just that good.

Thailand

Scuba Diving

Happy Summer Solstice! Being so close to the equator there is less variation in hours of daylight here throughout the year. It is 8:30 PM and it's already completely dark. I’m pretty sure it will still be light out at this time back home. When busy season comes around and I actually have to work more than one day in a row again I’m not going to know what to do! I got a rare phone call yesterday asking if I could come in right away to teach a DSD. When I do get phone calls these days it is always

Thailand

Party All Night

8:09 AM I wake up and turn on my iPad to find a message from Fletch saying that he finally got my postcard in the mail. This was not your typical pretty beach picture postcard. It was a photograph of two elephants painted up and going at it with a crowd of observers. Oh Thailand. How could you possibly see that postcard and not send it to someone? Fletch was the lucky recipient. If you'd like your own personal elephant sex postcard to put on your refrigerator, leave me a comment or send me a message with your address. 8:24 AM I have

Thailand

Yoga

Today I made up errands to run because I sunburned my backside badly yesterday and figured it would probably be best to not do that again. I went to 7-Eleven to buy water, and over in the corner where they have fountain drinks such as Thai iced tea (or in the US I believe it's slushies died some unnatural color) I found little packets of matcha mix. Matcha is a green powder that they mix with hot water in Japan for tea ceremonies. Starbucks caught on to the trend and you can get green tea lattes or green tea frappuccinos

Thailand

Other Water Activities, Paradise Island

Today I had the day off. It is slow season here so I should probably be expecting a lot more days off where this one came from. Normally I like having about one day off a week, because diving is what I came here to do, and is my enjoyment. One day off a week allows me to do laundry and clean the house and run errands but any more days off then that and I find myself at a loss for what to do. Scuba diving is what I do! So yesterday was my run errands day and today,

Thailand

Party All Night

Shawna's, Jamie's and my birthdays were all back to back to back so there has been a lot of celebrating so far this month. Mine was on June 5, and I would like to thank everyone for celebrating with me and for the birthday wishes on Facebook. I'm terrible at planning things and so didn't have anything special thought out. I was teaching an Open Water course and had left for lunch break. When I returned to the shop for the afternoon boat, Tyler emerged singing Happy Birthday and holding a chocolate brownie with coconut icing and a candle. What

Thailand

Scuba Diving

This is what an average day is like for me. I currently work for two different dive shops. Both have their plusses and minuses. You are familiar with them as Dive Shop A, the first job I got here where the people were a bit cranky at first (understatement), and Dive Shop X, the posh shop that was really nice for a while until our head instructor went on holiday and shit hit the fan. Normally I’ll get a call the night before from one shop or the other, asking if I’m available to teach such and such course tomorrow.

Thailand

Scuba Diving

Sometimes I have to stop and reflect on where I’m at in life, and at the moment that place brings the biggest smile to my face. It’s easy to fall into the swing of everyday life, no matter where in the world you are or what you are doing, and forget that life wasn’t always like this, but it’s fascinating to stop and think about the progression of events that led you to where you’re at. When I stop and think about it, I wonder how in the world I got so lucky. Let me tell you my story of how

Thailand

Foodie

The blog post requests are in! There's no deadline though so feel free to keep sending them. So far I have: Attend a local sporting event (cock fight, muy thai fight)  Go on a scavenger hunt (supplied by my sister)  Attend the lady boy cabaret  7:30 dildo time (see my last post)  I can’t promise to get any of these done in a timely manner so just keep checking back. We have a brand new fancy schmancy 711 just off the main road, right down the hill from our place. It’s about twice the size of any of the other 711s I’ve

Thailand

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

I’ve been asked to write a little something about 7:30 dildo time. It is a very sacred time, not to be taken lightly. I burn some incense, do the things you do to get Buddha’s blessing (it’s only polite seeing as we’re in Thailand). I should probably just leave it at that. Haha so a while back, I was looking for a way to put a binding on my dive guide book. There is a very comprehensive dive guide book available here with maps of all the dive sites and pictures of all the fish, and that was my first purchase

Thailand

Misadventures

Those of you who are keeping up with the news at all already know that Thailand has been experiencing some political unrest. I don’t pretend to keep up with politics, but here is the gist of what’s happening: Thailand had a female prime minister who was bad news. Anti-government protesters took to the streets last November claiming that she was just a puppet for her notorious brother and therefor shouldn’t be in office. At the beginning of May, Thailand’s Constitutional Court did remove her from office on charges of nepotism. Of course that brought all of her supporters running to the

Thailand

Travelogue

I can't say who or what The Tuna Squad is, because I've already posted pics of our house on here and our lease states that there are certain things we can't have, so I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea that we are breaking our contract. We are most definitely following all the rules. The Tuna Squad is just an adorable figment of our imaginations. Have I confused you enough yet? Fine, I'll tell you. We all have mercury poisoning from eating too much tuna. I don't know if I've mentioned it already or not, but it's really hot

Thailand

Foodie

Now that I'm all settled into our new place and can pretend that I have fallen into some sort of routine, I can tell you what a typical day on Koh Tao is like for me. This morning was the first morning that I woke up not sweating, thanks to the miracle of a/c. Last night I had initially set it to 26 degrees celsius but when that was too frigid I tried 27 instead. Perfect. Even going to the bathroom and then walking back into my room felt like walking into a nice igloo. Then I did the conversion and

Thailand

Misadventures

It's funny the little things you take for granted living in a developed country. Water for instance: water is something that is always there and always will be. I used to get so frustrated with people in Colorado who would actually buy bottled water, because Colorado is one of the few places that actually has really good, drinkable tap water. It's right there in your kitchen, and plastic bottles are SO bad for the environment. Save that bottled water fund for when you go somewhere where drinking the tap water would probably kill you. Welcome to Thailand. Except even tap

Thailand

Travelogue

We finally found a place to live! Ever since I got here I've been staying with Shawna and Kyle in their studio apartment. There was literally a six inch gap between our beds. Kyle has funny sleep habits. The first night there I woke up in the middle of the night to Shawna asking "Why are you waking up Lexi?!" and opened my eyes to find him leaning over her trying to poke my leg to make sure I was ok, completely sound asleep. It was a very cramped space to say the least, and I don't know how to

Thailand

Misadventures

I thought the job hunt once I got here would be a little more rigorous, me going from dive shop to dive shop, handing out my resume, searching for several days before maybe one or two shops offered me a course to teach here and there. Then right before I left, Kyle said his boss had work for me, at which I was thrilled. So I arrived on Friday, Saturday I met the manager, Sunday was Songkran, and Monday I taught my first DSD at Dive Shop A. Never mind recouping from jet lag. I showed up Monday morning excited

Thailand

Party All Night

I only had a couple days to recoup before Songkran, the holiday I had been told I simply could not miss. I didn’t think I’d actually make it to Thailand in time, but due to a series of unexpected events, I sped up my departure date to coordinate being in Thaialnd for the Thai New Year. What is Songkran you might ask? Now that I’ve experienced it, I can tell you that it’s the most epic holiday of all time, even better than Halloween (or whatever your own personal favorite holiday is). Songkran is one giant nation-wide water fight. All day

Thailand

Travelogue

Denver to Tokyo Not to start the tale of my journey off on a somber note. but goodbyes are always difficult for me, and I knew this one would be particularly difficult considering I was leaving Fletch behind for a whole three months and my newly single mom, who was in the process of moving. I actually managed to keep myself composed until we arrived at the airport, at which point I completely lost it. The prospect of being alone for three months in a foreign place on the opposite side of the world, three days journey away can be quite

USA

Party All Night

Mardis Gras, 2014 New Orleans I have this new bible. It's a book called 101 Places to Get F*cked Up Before You Die, written by the awesomely entertaining travel journalists over at Matador Network. The name speaks for itself. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already dropped what your doing, packed your bags, and run off in an attempt to outdo the debauchery outlined in detailed, travel-guide format. Enough said. New Orleans: that name has always had a spark of magic since before I ever knew anything about the place. There's always been some force there, drawing in my curiosity and

USA

Scuba Diving

When you think of diving destinations, Utah probably isn't the first place that comes to mind. After all it is land-locked, and more of a winter sports area. Just outside of Park City though, where the 2002 Winter Olympics were held, is a little town called Midway, which is home to Homestead Crater, an awesome 65 foot deep hot spring inside a hollowed out, beehive-shaped mountain. This is the closest place we can take students to do their open water dives during the winter when it would be death by hypothermia to go to the reservoir. Five years ago I was

USA

Scuba Diving

Fun fact: you can go scuba diving in two of the tanks at the Downtown Aquarium in Denver! Best Valentine's Day present ever: diving at the aquarium! I'm an extraordinarily lucky girl to have found a guy who's not just an awesome travel buddy, but shares all my same passions of diving and adventuring and enjoying life. He flew out to visit me for Valentines day, and told me the night before that my present was a trip to the aquarium to go diving in the reef exhibit AND the shark exhibit. I pretty much died of happy. We were driving in

US Virgin Islands

Scuba Diving

The time we weren't sailing around to different islands, we spent on St. John, as that is where Summer worked as a dive instructor, and Mikey as a park ranger. I lost track of how many days we went diving, but sometimes we tagged along with Summer's DSD classes and helped out with the students. and other times we just went on fun dives. The first day we got in the water we saw two different sea turtles, and if you know me, you know that I absolutely, positively adore sea turtles. I even have one tattooed on my foot

US Virgin Islands

Paradise Island, Travelogue

From St. John to Norman Island, from Norman Island to Tortola, from Tortola to Virgin Gorda, we finally arrived at this magical place that Fletch had insisted we visit in the dead of the night. We slept on the boat, with the intention of spending the entire next day exploring the Baths. We awoke at our own leisure, ate some breakfast sandwiches, and packed what we could manage into whatever dry bags we had, seeing as we no longer had a dinghy and would have to swim. I couldn't possibly explain to you how magnificent, and breathtakingly beautiful, and travel-magazine-picture perfect this

US Virgin Islands

Foodie, Misadventures, Party All Night

After the new years venture we sailed home to St. John and everyone slowly dissipated until it was only me, Fletch, Summer, Mikey, and Dave from Boston. Actually, for all I know, everyone ran off at once; after all the new years fun, and then spending the day in the sun drinking painkillers, once back on the boat I passed out cold and didn't wake up until the next morning, at which point it was me, Fletch, Summer, Mikey and Dave from Boston left. Mikey and Summer had to work the rest of the week, but we made plans to head

US Virgin Islands

Party All Night

So back over New Year's (I know, this post is only two and a half months too late) Fletch invited me to go visit his friends in the Virgin Islands with him. These were friends who lived on a sailboat and of whom I'd heard nonstop talk of ever since I'd met Fletch nearly a year before. They were the infamous power couple of the Caribbean. A couple days before the Old Year's Night party was set to take place at Foxy's Bar on Jost Van Dyke (the place to be in the Caribbean to bring in the new year) Fletch

Thailand

Party All Night

Disclaimer: This may not be 100% truth. Names may have been changed. Events may have been forgotten or misremembered.  Night One - The Pool Party The high speed catamaran over to Koh Pha Ngan from Koh Tao was only an hour, and once off the boat we wasted to time in going on a very important mission: find the rum. We found our hotel, dropped off our stuff, walked to the sunrise side of Haad Rin (we decided to stay on the sunset side to avoid too much noise if we actually did desire sleep at some point), and found a longtail

Thailand

Party All Night

...the mass migration of everyone throughout Asia to Koh Pha Ngan for the Full Moon Party. As we walked around Koh Tao Friday morning to check out and return the bike, every hostel and hotel in the area had heaps of backpacks and luggage piled out in front, headed to the ferry. Next stop: Koh Pha Ngan. This island doesn't take their partying lightly. It is seriously party all night and sleep by day. If you manage to wake up while the sun is still up, it is only to find the streets speckled with sleep deprived, hungover zombies shuffling about.

Thailand

Tourist Trap

Summary of That Time We Swam To Koh Nang Yuan: Just incase you're not keeping up, in the first part of this story (before I even realized there would be more than one part to this story), we snorkeled all the way over to the neighboring island, Koh Nang Yuan. After a couple hours' swim, we stumbled up onto a gorgeous pristine beach, only to realize that there was a restaurant there, and dinner would be really awesome, only we didn't have any money with us, because all we had was snorkel gear. We tried to hire a boat back to get

Thailand

Foodie

You have to love being in the third world where everything is available in pharmacies over the counter, no expensive doctor's visit or prescription required. Oh, sorry, I'm just talking about my ear infection, not the good stuff. It's nearly impossible to dive every day without getting some sort of wonky ear infection. Take a scuba diving course, it'll teach you that the pressure surrounding your ear doubles in just the first 10 meters of water, and from there only increases as you go down. That's a lot of trauma to subject your eardrum to, not to even mention any bacteria

Thailand

Scuba Diving

So we get on the dive boat the other morning and our divemaster tells us that we are going to be doing something she's never done  before; the boat captain is going to drop us off a little ways away from the dive sight known as Pottery, and we are going to swim to pottery. Gotta admit, after our dive spent swimming over the barren sandy patch the previous day this did not sound too promising. At some point I lost by dive buddy, Fletch, as well as the rest of the group. I'm an experienced enough diver to not get

Thailand

Sharks, Travelogue

This is what we've been doing, for I don't know how many days now, but it hasn't gotten old yet. Jump on scooter. I mean walk of course. Choose direction. Go until you reach water. Spend a few hours snorkeling/freediving until you realize you're hungry, and damn, lunch should have been a few hours ago. Ok just a few more minutes swimming around.  Fletch is the one with his nose in the guide book leading us around. I read all that fun stuff before I came here. Now I just want to see and go play. He keeps showing me descriptions of

Thailand

Other Water Activities

Fletch has a lot of friends here. I'm seriously amazed by how many people he knows here. And they're all from Roatan. They were all there before I went, so I never knew them til now, but still, it's cool that so many people here came from the same place. So one of said friends, Kyle, suddenly gets really excited about going to this reservoir and then going and jumping off of some rock

Thailand

Freediving

Fletch and I decided to take a free diving course. That means ditching all that heavy bulky scuba gear and diving on a breath of air. (Don't get me wrong, I still love scuba, but you've got to admit it's pretty cool to be able to ditch the gear). It's a lot like yoga, mind over matter and mostly about the breath control. Very relaxing. Our instructor was this hunky Australian dude covered in tribal tats and piercings. He had a very hyper personality but a simultaneously zen-like demeanor, talking a mile a minute about how cool freediving is one moment, and

Thailand

Foodie, Travelogue

My first day in Koh Tao is a blur. Still slightly hungover, jet-lagged, sleep deprived from the night on the bus, I have no idea what we did the first day. We found a place to stay, Sairee Cottage, and realized that we need to move. Our first night here was spent listening to an orchestra of construction on the other side of our wall, partying up and down the beach, cats screaming, dogs barking, José (the name I gave to our resident, nearly three legged dog) and an obnoxious rooster who thought sunrise was every hour, on the hour,

Thailand

Travelogue

Khao San Road, Bangkok The number of times the sun has set does not match up with the days on the calendar and the number of nights I've actually slept in a bed are very few considering I left Wednesday and it is now Monday. Needless to say, I have no idea what time or day it is. It is dark out and I am awake. That's all I know. Once off the airplane it was some ridiculous hour in the morning so we went to the nearest tourist counter and asked them to take us to the nearest hotel. I was

Thailand

Travelogue

10:00 AM MST: Three hours early for our flight. TSA agent asks me if I'm under 12. It used to be 16 so apparently I'm growing younger. I've gotta start taking advantage of kiddie discounts… I'm sitting watching the bags while Fletch looks for currency, and a sweet little old Japanese lady approaches me and asks if I'm going to Japan. I stare at her blankly for a minute before realizing, Yes! Oh my goodness I really am going to Japan! This is happening. So she asks if I will wake her up when our flight boards and I

Thailand

Belated Updates, Guide Book

I've been afraid to jinx it by saying it was actually happening until now, but with only ten days to go, I guess I can finally shout out that I'm leaving for THAILAND! Despite the odds and numerous obstacles, from bank-draining student loan bills, to getting cheated out of a considerable security deposit refund, I've found a way (with the generous help of my wonderful family and friends) to do the thing I swore I'd do when I left Honduras: go to Thailand. The original plan was to move there and find a job, but given my current financial state, I've

USA

Scuba Diving

I've spent the summer working at a dive shop here in my home state of Colorado. Who dives in Colorado? - you may ask. Well, did you know that Colorado has the highest number of divers per capita of any of the US states? Fun fact of the day. Other fun fact, the closest body of water we can dive in is an hour drive away. Gone are the days of dragging a couple of tanks down to the beach

Honduras

Freediving, Paradise Island

I do have at least one more good story from Roatan. The week after the IDC I was in a bit of a funk trying to figure out what to do with myself. My entire life up until that point had been planned out until some point in the future. College after high school, divemaster insternship after college, IDC after divemaster, but suddenly the IE was over and that was the end of my plans. My entire future suddenly became a blank slate. And with all the nonsense that I already alluded to that was going on, I finally decided

Honduras

Rambling, Scuba Diving

I'm Back! I hate leaving projects unfinished and I feel like I never properly finished telling my story of Roatan. I've also realized that I plan on traveling a fair amount in the future, and rather than create an entirely new blog for every adventure I go on, why not just keep this one up and running? I am not promising to blog on a regular basis, but when there is a story to tell, I will tell it. These stories will be sparse until I do begin a new adventure, but there just might be a few interesting tidbits

Honduras

Scuba Diving

It's official! I got my Divemaster certification number yesterday. Also, I have logged 99 dives. Next dive is 100! (which I am told has to be naked). Tomorrow Holly and I start the EFR instructor course.

Honduras

Scuba Diving

I finished my divemaster certification! It is tradition around the world to do a snorkel test to celebrate this momentous occasion, and so last night, three of us new divemasters, along with two others who had never done their snorkel tests, had to wear taped up masks and snorkels while beer and rum was poured down the snorkel. I've never been able to shotgun a single beer. Way too foamy. Last night I did three, through a snorkel. Initiation complete. I may be staying a bit longer than I originally anticipated. I know I told everyone that I would be home in

Honduras

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

It was a typical morning at the shop and we walked in, and went to the board to see where we were supposed to be for the morning. Four of us interns were assigned to the Kasandra, going to Sea Star Channel, to work on our mapping project. There are various skills we need to complete to become divemasters, one of which is mapping a dive site, and we were all assigned sea star channel. There were also customers on the boat so we were going to be dropped off to do our mapping, and then picked back up on

Honduras

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

All of us interns decided to get our wreck specialties, which means that we spend four dives mapping, planning, and finally penetrating a wreck. And yes, the actual technical term in diving for entering a wreck is "penetration," so you can only imagine the wide array of jokes that go along with wreck diving. There are two wrecks in Roatan down near West End, the Aguila, and the Odyssey. Earlier this week we spent an entire day diving the two. Dive #1 is just exploring the outside of the wreck. Since Holly and I had already done esentially that for our

Honduras

Paradise Island

I'm uploading a video to facebook because try as I might, my blog won't let me upload it. We were supposed to be working on our mapping project and got a little sidetracked. You'll see what I mean. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151480588251737&set=vb.666151736&type=2&theater Yesterday was perfection; one of those days that you know that years from now, you'll look back on as one of the best days of your life. We got the day off and one of our boat captains drove us two hours east to a little deserted island called Pigeon Key. You know those cheesy island calendars that you buy full of beach

Honduras

Scuba Diving

Day 47 There is a single road that runs the entire length of the island and that is the only way to get from one end to the other (short of having your own boat and sailing around). The shop is about half an hour away from the intern house and this morning we made it about ten minutes before being stopped to find out the road is blocked for the triathlon. So there is no way to get to work today, which is just fine by all of us because another storm is rolling in. So Valentine's Day was absolutely amazing.

Honduras

Rambling

Day 38 I truly do apologize for the lack of updates. By the time I ever have any time to write in the evening, I'm usually too exhausted from the day's fun to bother turning on my computer. But here's what's been happening the past week. Saturday we hitchhiked our way to the iguana park. I love that hitchhiking is a thing here. Don't worry we all stayed together as a group and the general rule is you only jump in the backs of trucks; don't get into a the cab of a stranger's vehicle. Finding our way there and back was

Honduras

Other Water Activities

Day 31 It's Friday! But every day is Friday here. We started out the morning by taking our Rescue exams. 50/50! So easy to do well on things you actually care about. And then we went tubing, complete with photo shoot because the shop wants to start offering tubing to people. I'm not going to lie, as fun as it was, it was also a thoroughly painful experience. We rock-paper-scissored for who got to ride first, and Holly and Matt won. So we watched them bounce around until they finally flipped and all had a good laugh, until it was Aaron

Honduras

Rambling

Day 30 Bob had a successful dive lead yesterday and finished his internship after a year. Sadly I wasn't there. We all celebrated at his and Darren's house last night though. A new intern named Matt arrived today. He's from Louisiana. Shiela made Intern of the Month! We started working on rescue skills today with Renee. Pretending to be a panicked diver in the water is surprisingly more exhausting than it sounds. We finally have internet at the intern house. So feel free to email / fb message me whenever. I can't believe tomorrow is already February! Why does time have to fly so fast when

Honduras

Rambling

Day 29 So Rhami moved out on Saturday. Just up and told us that he couldn’t live with people. Actually there’s more to the story but I won’t go into it here. Andrew left for Utila on Saturday. Christine left for Nicaragua this morning. Aaron and Sheila stayed at the shop to go on the night dive. (I gave the whole night diving thing two shots before deciding that I don’t like being blind and cold and underwater all at once). And Holly went for a run. So here I am, alone, in this big, rickety old house, except that I

Honduras

Misadventures

Day 28 Cruise ships roll in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and so those are usually our busiest days, because in addition to the divers staying at the resort, we have all the lovely people who load off of the ships who want to go snorkeling. Today we had a boat going to the shipwreck, which doesn't happen very often because it is an hour away, and a private charter going to Pigeon Cay. There was only enough space for two interns on the wreck boat, and one intern on the charter to Pigeon Cay. Holly and I tossed a coin

Honduras

Scuba Diving

Day 24 Finally Sun!!!! It's been rainy for the past eight days and the sun finally came back out today! I think I can say that I have never ever in my life gone that long without a good dose of vitamin D. The second those first rays came out I stripped down to my swimsuit and just soaked it all in. Today we had an English bloke from the marine park come over to the shop to issue us all licenses to hunt lionfish with spearguns. Before you go getting all offended and animal rightsy, know that lionfish are an invasive

Honduras

Travelogue

Days 17, 18, 19 A rainstorm rolled in at 3:00 in the morning on Friday and it's been raining pretty much nonstop ever since. The hammering of the rain combined with the howling of the wind is enough to keep you awake all night, only to get out of bed and slip all over the floor because it is practically flooded from the roof leaking. Darren picked us up and told us we were all crazy for not taking the day off. When we got into the shop, Rhami, Holly and I were given our Emergency First Response manuals and told to

Honduras

Scuba Diving

Days 15, 16 I completed the work for the advanced open water certification today! Next step: rescue! Yesterday we spent the morning in the pool doing skills with Christina and Andrew, the two who have been here the longest and are nearly complete with their divemaser training. So part of their training is to demonstrate that they can review skills with divers, and us newbies were the divers who they got to teach. The skills I am talking about, if you are familiar with diving, are removing your mask underwater and then putting it back on and purging the water out, loosing

Honduras

Scuba Diving

Day 14 First and foremost, today is the one year anniversary of the day I left to circumnavigate the world. So many happy memories with so many incredible people. If any of my SAS friends are reading this, I miss you guys like crazy! Where to begin? Today was our third(?) day at Subway Watersports. My internship wasn't supposed to technically begin until today but they put me to work as soon as I got here! We usually leave the house around 7:30 every day, Sunday through Friday, spend the day at the shop working in exchange for our training, and then

Honduras

Rambling

Days 12, 13 I love my life! Too busy scuba diving all day every day so write much else at the moment. It's Sheila's birthday today so we're celebrating tonight. Damn, I have so many good stories but no time to actually write them all down. Coming soon!

Honduras

Crazy Cat Lady, Travelogue

Day 11 I arrived safely at the intern house! But alas, the internet is down so I don’t know how long it will be before I actually get a chance to post this. We packed up everything at the beach house this morning, and I called Subway Watersports to let them know that I would be at the airport at 12:00 noon. The lady on the other end couldn’t hear me and so I was skeptical as to whether I had actually gotten the message across or not. We said our goodbyes at the airport, Mom and I busting into tears. We

Honduras

Misadventures, Travelogue

Day 10 – Roatán Honduras So the reason I came down here was for this divemaster internship, and the reason my family came down to vacation this week prior was to set their minds at ease as to where I am going to be for the next few months. I’m afraid it did the exact opposite, at least in my mom's case, because everything that could have happened to raise concerns over my program, happened, and to say the least, it has been a terribly stressful week what with all of her worrying and begging me to come home and whatnot. This

Honduras

Travelogue

Day 9 - Roatán, Honduras Actually, I saw that word - aquaholic - on a t-shirt and quite liked it. I didn't buy the shirt because it was overpriced even by American standards. Here's the irony: I enjoy scuba diving. I enjoy looking at the fish. I never thought I'd be pulling them out of the water. But what did we decide to do? Go deep-sea fishing of course! I feel like I should feel worse about this; I killed Nemo. But that's just the circle of life I suppose? I never felt the least bit sorry for that piranha I fished

Honduras

Top Wildlife Experiences, Travelogue

Day 8 - Roatán, Honduras Mom and I went to breakfast just the two of us at this little restaurant on the main road that is home to two cats and I don't even know how many parrots; there were at least four hanging out in the rafters that we could see. So we were sitting at a table for four and one of the birds helped himself to the extra seat with his little cup of orange juice. I kept tearing off little pieces of toast for him but apparently that wasn't good enough, because before too long he walked

Honduras

Rambling

Day 5, Day 6 - Roatán, Honduras Snorkeling by day and drinking Monkey Lalas (Roatan's signature drink) by night. Monkey Lalas are a frozen drink made with Rum, Kahlua, Bailey's, bananas, ice cream, and a drizzle of chocolate syrup! Seeing as I'm going to be spending the next three months diving, I figured I'd just stick with snorkeling this week, and wow! I have to say that the snorkeling right outside our front door is better than some of the dives I've been on. So many different kinds of fish! I've been playing around with my new little GoPro and still need

Honduras

Travelogue

Day 4 – Cross-country, Honduras I can’t possibly describe to you how much I have missed this. They said I would be seasick but I just laughed. I lived on a ship for four months, I’ve crossed three out of four of the world’s oceans, I chased a typhoon around the Cape of Good Hope; I don’t get seasick. Emotional, maybe. Being back on a ship has been on my mind 24/7 since I debarked, and I was so happy to be back, so overwhelmingly ecstatic to be sailing into a new port that I couldn’t even think to sit in

Honduras

Travelogue

Day 3 - Copán, Honduras This hotel is spoiling me. It is not a fancy resort by any means, but just a quaint little inn with maybe four guest rooms. This morning when I woke up and went outside, there was a single table out in the middle of the garden set for three people. Breakfast was served, consisting of papaya, toast, eggs, and beans. Also, there is a “pillow menu” in the room. I just walked over to José, the doorman and also the only person working here right now, to ask if I could have a few, and he

Honduras

Travelogue

Day 2 - Copán, Honduras We were woken at 4:00 AM for our shuttle across the border to Copán. The person working the hotel at that hour packed us each a bag with a sandwich, water, a banana, and a juice box, which was a very kind gesture. Our shuttle, which was a minivan crammed with other tourists, picked us up and strapped our luggage to the roof of the vehicle, and we embarked on the four-hour journey to the Guatemalan border. I might mention that the entire journey there, my laptop was in an outside pocket of my backpack, and

Guatemala

Travelogue

Day 1 - Guatemala Guatemala is so beautiful and amazing! But alas we are only here for the night. I feel for all the world as if this is one of our SAS ports that we're only allowed one day in, and where do you even begin when you have to take in an entire country in a day? Our flight was originally supposed to leave at midnight last night but was delayed until 3:30 this morning. This actually turned out for the better because then we were able to completely surpass our 4-hour layover in Ft. Lauderdale. After two flights, and

Honduras

Rambling

I was about to say I'm leaving in two days but golly jeepers, I'm leaving tomorrow night! I've become a pro at this whole packing thing. I literally threw my scuba gear, cameras, and a few sets of clothes in a backpack and called it good. I remember the days of stressing for weeks over what to pack but no matter how many times I dump out my backpack with the intention of doing the job properly, I can't think of a good reason to bring anything more. Remember that detailed, extended packing list I posted before Semester at Sea?

Honduras

Rambling

This may be one of my greatest decisions to date! Most people go to grad school or search for a real-person job after graduating college. Granted, both of these things will likely have to happen at some point in my life but why the rush? All I've ever wanted is to live a life of adventure. Real life can wait. So after I've walked in my cap and gown and received my diploma in a few weeks, I'm hopping on a plane and leaving the country for Honduras. I landed a divemaster internship on a little island off the coast