It was nice to leave the island for a night. It really does makes you appreciate it more when you return. Island life ;-D

So what’s been happening? Well, we had a group of Thai kids (6-12yrs) with their parents for a morning. They wanted a presentation about coral reefs and a land activity, so Tim gave them a lovely little presentation with lots of clips and pictures and then we took them on a beach clean up, logging all the trash that we found. In addition to that, I’d mixed up a couple of trays of cement and put an outline of a fish and turtle and then got the kids to make mosaics by using some of the trash that we had found. I think they enjoyed the morning and learnt a think or two 😉

The last few days the weather has taken a turn and it’s been wet and very windy. So windy that the dive boats haven’t even been going out and that doesn’t happen too often. Where we live, it’s pretty high up and we’re constantly getting huge gusts of wind. Can be pretty frightening …as we have to secure everything down before it blows away ;-D

There is no chance I can cycle in this, I would be blown off my bike. Hopefully in a couple of days, things will calm down and we’ll be out diving again. To occupy myself, I’ve been making Tshirt yarn and painting chalk labels on anything that needed it.

Today, due to the weather, we had a power cut from 10am – 5pm …it’s not too much of a problem but we certainly do take everything for granted.

No power, no water, so no shower, at least had water to brush our teeth 😀

Hi everyone,

We are currently in Koh Samui. We had to come over to sort out our work permits / visa’s. After paying the lawyer a large amount of cash, we no longer have to the country and try and come back in, so all is good.

We left Koh Tao this morning on the 9am Lomprayah, which instead of the usual high speed catamaran, was a small speed boat which seated aroung 24 people. Everyone had to wear masks but there was no social distancing going on at all, not that there have been any cases on Koh Tao. PHEW!

So, with a quick change of speedboat at Koh Phangnan we got to Koh Samui in very good time. The first thing we did was to rent a bike, drove to our hotel, checked in, then we were straight back out again to see the lawyer where we signed loads of paperwork and then it was straight on to the Immigration office to drop off our paperwork, have our photo’s taken and back to the hotel. Mission accomplished!

We are only here for 1 night and then it’s back to Koh Tao tomorrow afternoon ;-D

The roads are pretty quiet and the supermarket was dead …hardly anyone shopping which was nice. Simon and I stopped in on the way back from immigration and brought a nice fresh loaf, edam, brie and had a picnic on the bed …so romantic!! 😀

Oh, Cuthbert’s with us too, he’s mostly been hiding in my bag. Too many bugs around he says 😀 He liked ‘Big C’ supermarket though. Thought it was named after him. Bless!!!

Mid July and things are slowly getting back to normal. Saying that, it’s still extremely quiet on island. Even though people are allowed to travel around Thailand, customers are few and far between. The dive school is still running on skeleton staff and the boat now goes out just once a day now but that’s not always the case.

Simon’s been filming a few Open Water courses and I’ve taken out one of my old interns a few times but that’s about it for paid work we had. Hoping once the borders open up, we’ll get me students in which should be at the end of the month. Knowing Thailand, this will probably change at the last minute.

Yesterday, we had a little spring , which was nice. Our airing/storage style cupboard had a lot of boxes, speakers, remote controls and other rubbish in it, so we put most of it in the loft and then the rest we just binned. So with all this extra space we now have a shelf for bed linen, towels, toiletries and then underneath, we have our cleaning utensils and I have my little area for my Up-cycling/crafty bits ;-D ….I know, this is very exciting stuff!! LOL

A few pictures of our dives and activities we’ve been up to 😀

Sending our love and miss you all!!

XOXOXOXOX