SCUBA DIVING IN KOH TAO

Patchy grey cumulus hanging sticky in between the open blue sky and the rising sun. Today we fondly write to you from the beautiful island of Koh Tao. Turtle Island, as it's called in English, is a small spec on the archipelagic reef of the Gulf of Thailand. So small in fact that most of the locals at our school have never heard of it. The island itself looks like a short stack of rock-pancakes jutting out of the ocean. Jungles have taken over most of the island, except for a small enclave of bungalows and dive shops huddled together at the shoreline.

Not sure what was more adventurous, the dives themselves or what we had to do to get ourselves to Koh Tao. We rode the train for an entire day with one stopover in Bangkok to grab some dinner before getting on an all night train again. Then we arrived at the ocean at 5am and hopped a boat that sailed for three hours out to the remote island from which we write to you now. We will have to reverse the trip to get back home... all for a few days of diving.

We've been diving four times already, and we both agree that it's ranked high on our list of top five favorite things to do in this lifetime. Diving is actually one of the reasons we came to Thailand in the first place. Of the many urchins and otherworldly creatures we've seen on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea, especially noteworthy are the black-tipped reef sharks, green-spotted sting rays, morray eels and giant pufferfish. Travis got certified for deep water diving, which means he can finally visit Katie at 90-140 feet below the surface. On his first dive to the bottom, a 6 foot reef shark glided by within just a few feet of his face mask. We were awestruck yet again, by the ethereal experience of submersing in Mama Gaia's giant aquarium.

Sailing back to the island from one of our dives, we realized that we're the first generation from our entire lineage to be able to take a good look at what lurks a hundred feet under. Not even our Norwegian Viking forefathers did that! As you can see in the photo below, we are flying high from the adventure.