Congratulations!!!

Happy to announce that we're back from Phuket after a five-day four-night trip.

PICTURES TO FOLLOW THROUGH SOON!
Whoooooo hoooooooooooo! We did it!!!

That's Sidney doing his favourity backflip from a rock on Banana Beach where we pulled in for lunch break in our longtail boat.

Congratulations to new PADI Open Water Divers Zlwin and Justin!!!

Both of them were fabulous. Scored 80% to 100 % in their theory exams and cleared all their practicals easily in the Andaman sea successfully! even though Zlwin farted and burped and vomitted at both ends in between dives because of too much wind in his system. Heh heh.

Many of you would not be surprise since Zlwin usually has so much so talk about... so much wind in him, that it takes the diving to put pressure to bring out the wind in him!!! Heh heh heh.

Justin was simply excited and wanted to join the Advance Divers to do their last three adventure dives for the trip on Phuket's largest wreak - an 83 meter-long sunken ferry at a depth of 33 meters plus. But I guess five dives is just about right for them on their maiden plunge into the Andaman Sea on the South-West tip of Phuket Island.

And Congratulations to Jefferey, Sean, and Sidney on achieving their new merits as PADI Advance Open Water Divers. And all three did fantastically well hitting a maximum depth of 30 meters and exploring eight different dives on a single trip! Peak Performance Buoyancy and Navigation at Racha Yai, 2 wreck dives (at Kingcruiser and Banana Rock also deep dives to 22 to 30 meters), Deep dives, Fish Identification, two different types of boat dives, and even a drift dive at 0.4knots current at Koh Doc Mai.

All three demonstrated wonderful peak buoyancy during the dives and did minimum damage to the corals.

I discovered Jeff to be a cool diver. He didn't just shrug off a broken rib and continued to scale Mt KK last year. This cool and tough dude didn't even panic when I buddy ascent with him after offering him my octopus when he was down to his last 20 Bar of air on one particular strong current dives at Koh Doc Mai (Flower Garden in Thai that looks liek a giant muffin floating out of the sea with vertical drops to 25 meteres).

In fact, he told me later, he was ok because we already did our safety stop and was only five meters from the surface.

Cool! He's one guy you'll want to dive with. Only problem was he had some stuffed ear problems on his last few dives and had difficulty equalizing. Maybe he was too cool. Needed to warm up with a couple of half-dozen chin ups and push ups. Heh heh.

As for Sean and Sidney, I happily waved them off into the deep blue on their own to do natural navigation in their last dive at Shark's Point to navigate around the first pinnacle before gliding across the sandy bottom to the second pinnacle at about 22 meters.

My dive Swedish dive buddy, Carl Richardson, was the best host giving us added value pictures and video shots to take home.

Sean, Sidney, and Justin had a special welcome from the Royal Thai Police who waved them off after issuing them a summons for illegally parking their motorcycles.

So glad to have Shannon and Wenshoo snorkel with us when we went out to Banana Rock and Banana Beach and Kamala Rock on our second day.

Nothing like having a few pretty girls to add colour to the already colourful underwater world. Heh Heh.

Kudos to Justin's parents and Zlwin's father for joining us on this trip and exploring Phuket on their own.

Annnnnnnnd ..... All of us came back with a tan!!!