Shark Diving

Gili Trawangan, Indonesia - Today we got back in the water and went diving for the first time in 3 weeks. Our first site of the day was Shark Point which is supposedly one of the best sites on the Gili Islands. We were quite excited to see a shark for the first time or I should say I was excited to see a shark, Betsy was a little nervous, so nervous that I nicknamed her "Shark Bait".

Down we went to 22m for 52 minutes, we saw several octopi, cuttlefish, hawksbill turtles, moray eel, banded sea snakes (3 right next to each other) as well as the usual assortment of angelfish, fusiliers, bannerfish and other creatures of the deep. What we didn't see was a shark! Quite a few people on the boat saw a shark but we unfortunately did not.

Our second dive was at a site called Manta Point, here we dropped down to 22m and immediately came upon a 2m Whitetip Reef Shark that was resting on the sand. He swam around in circles and we probably got within 15-20ft of him. We also saw a large school of batfish, more cuttlefish, a baby shark, turtles and the usual assortment.

What we noticed diving here compared to Thailand are the currents. The currents are very strong whereas in Thailand we had almost no current. On our second dive there was a large surge as well so you would swim along and the surge would sway you back and forth about 10 feet. That took some getting used to. The downside with that is we had to wear extra weight. Whereas in Thailand I had only 3kg of weight here I am using almost double the amount. The currents are really strong!

It is hard to say who has the better diving. There are definitely larger pelagics (fish) here but I don't feel there is the same number of fish as Koh Tao (Betsy disagrees on that). What we do agree on is the coral is much more spectacular in Koh Tao. Years of dynamite fishing has destroyed a lot of the coral here luckily that is no longer practiced.

What is better in Gili is the visibility. We can see 20m+ whereas Koh Tao was about half that. Both areas are great and we are looking forward to our next few dives here.

Simple Life Divers

Phuket, Thailand - Betsy wrote a short thank you/review of our dive school in Koh Tao and they published it on their website. You can check it out here.

Phuket Revisited...

Phuket, THAILAND - We left Koh Tao via ferry headed for Koh Samui that is about a 2 hour ride. Unfortunately, it turned into a longer journey than expected. Once the ferry left the Koh Tao port we headed out for about 15 minutes and then came to stop as we anchored up with two other ferry boats in the middle of the ocean. With no announcement we somehow gathered that we had to get our belongings together and step across to the other boat and the passengers on that boat were to board our original boat. The entire process took almost an hour. When we finally arrived on to Koh Samui we boarded a mini van that was to take several of us to our various hotels. Of course we were the last ones in the van with the driver wanted to head back in the direction of the port but we know our hotel was further on. We convinced him, after he stopped to ask directions twice and was still taking us in the wrong direction, to borrow someone's mobile to ring our hotel for proper directions. That did the trick and we were at our hotel a few minutes after that.

We spent the next 3 days at the Samui Reef View Resort relaxing by the pool and organizing our next stops. The Samui Reef View is located up on a hillside and was very quiete with the pool adding to the chill-out factor. The owner, Angus & his wife made us feel at home.

Next, we flew to Phuket to stay at Kata Beach. Our first flight since flying to Hanoi, Vietnam in late March. To date all of our travels have been via bus, boat or train. Stacy and I were in Phuket 5 years ago on our honeymoon. It is low season here so the hotel and restaurants are pretty quiet. The plan for now is to stay here for the next 5 days and maybe take a couple surfing lessons.

Teddy's Mini-Me....

Koh Tao, THAILAND - During our 20-day stay on the island of Koh Tao, we got to know the employee's of the hotel and dive shop very well. One of the ladies that worked at our hotel, Simple Life Resort, brought her 4 month old puppy to work every day. He would accompany the maids while they went from room to room cleaning. He looks exactly like my mother's dog, Teddy and I got very attached to him during our stay.

Where in the world are the Kuchta's?

Koh Tao, Thailand - Yes we are still in Koh Tao, going on 18 days but are finally getting ready to leave tomorrow to Koh Samui another island about a 90minute boat ride from here.

There hasn't been much in the way of posts lately because we haven't been doing much except chilling on the island and diving and without an underwater camera simply writing about our dive trips is probably not very interesting.

We've hit pretty much every major dive site around here from the depths of Chumphon Pinnacle to the recent dive boat wreck at Japanese Gardens to the schools of fusiliers at Mango Bay we've seen a lot. The weather has been great and the water warm. Our new found love for diving has definitely changed our focus for the last couple of months of our trip.

So far we have done our open water certification, advanced open water certification and a half dozen "fun" dives with our favorite dive operator on the island Simple Life Divers. Thanks to Woz our instructor and Lisa our divemaster on our fun dives for making our diving so enjoyable.

On our last dive for our advanced certification Woz brought along a camera and we took a few pictures that you can see below.

Us under a school of fusiliers

Looking up at the Fusiliers

Nasty looking Triggerfish

As Betsy calls it a "cute" little boxfish

Stacy & Betsy getting ready

for a dive

Certifiably Diving!

Koh Tao, Thailand - Well, it's official Betsy and I are now certified divers! Woohoo! We completed our Open Water course with two dives yesterday, one called White Rock and the other Japanese Gardens. It was great fun and we both really enjoyed it. We got down to a depth of about 20m (60ft) and got to see a lot of interesting things.

The highlights of the dives yesterday were probably a blue spotted stingray and a school of barracuda that we swam through. We also were chased by a titan triggerfish (nasty little buggers!). Apart from that we saw all the usual suspects including sea urchin, "nemo" fish, bannerfish and an assortment of other colored creatures and critters.

The course was a blast, our instructor Woz was awesome and our classmates Rebecca and Clive were good fun. The school we went with Simple Life Divers was excellent and all the staff were great and very accomodating with us having to delay our diving a few days due to Betsy's cold.

We were accompanied on our open water dives yesterday by a videographer (thanks Amber) who filmed our setup and diving and turned it into a 20min DVD. We got to watch it last night at a local watering hole and it was great fun. Look for it in stores everywhere soon!

Since we have enjoyed ourselves so much we have decided to do the advanced open water certification which consists of 5 dives including a deep dive to 30m (100ft), underwater navigation, fish identification, a night dive and a buoyancy control dive.

This new found love for diving has altered our travel plans once again as we are now planning our trip around what dive locations we can hit.

We've been in Koh Tao for a week now and will probably be here another week. We are enjoying the island and not in any real hurry to move on at this point.

Koh Tao Diving

Koh Tao, Thailand - Betsy and I completed our first dive today, actually it was really just our "shallow water" or "confined water" training but it was a real dive nonetheless.

We were supposed to start the course a few days ago but Betsy picked up a cold so we had to delay and as such haven't been doing much the last couple of days but relaxing and letting her recover.

Yesterday we did the "academic" part of the course...yawn. Today we went out on the boat to a dive site called Japanese Garden. Once we were geared up in we went. We swam from the boat to the beach (about 50m) where the water was only about 2m deep. We then "dropped" to the bottom and practiced some basic skills like taking your regulator out of your mouth and putting it back into your mouth remembering to purge it before breathing in! Also filling your mask with water and clearing it underwater.

We also got to scuba around the site for about 20minutes after we had practiced our skills. Even while we were practicing our skills there were many fish swimming right up to us, schools of small brightly colored fish, larger colored fish even a barracuda was seen.

Betsy was a little nervous that she wouldn't be able to equalize her ears due to her cold but she did pretty good. We only went as deep as 7m (22 ft) but still were able to see a lot. All in all we were underwater for about 50minutes.

Tomorrow we have a bit more academics and then we have two dives in the afternoon to 12m (40ft).

On Sunday we do our final two dives at a place called Chumphon Pinnacle which is famous for its Whale Sharks (large plankton eating sharks that grow up to 12m (40ft) long).

The dive operator we are doing our course with is called Simple Life. So far they have been excellent. I actually got my dive certification 10 years ago in Seattle and didn't really enjoy the course or the instructors. I only went for a real dive once after that and then soon moved to Denver and never dived again.

Simple Life has made this a much better diving experience. They were very flexible with Betsy's cold and our instructor "Woz" has been great. We've also got a small group of just 4 so it makes the instruction that much more personal.

We are looking forward to doing some serious diving in the last couple of months of our trip as we journey down through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.