Guess what I seen today?


Ill give you a hint:





A FUCKING WHALE SHARK!!!!!!!!

Since I woke up today, I've swam with a 6M whale shark, an fairly big octopus, a bloody massive reef shark which came a bit too close for my liking, barracuda, puffa fish, yellow box fish (very cool) and to finish it off while I was doing my night dive we swam into the most amazing phosphorescence, which was very colourful and distracted me for about 10mins untill I realised I was just sitting on the seafloor waving my hands about looking stupid!!! But the highlight was the whale shark, I was in the water about 30 seconds and everyone had there head under water looking at something, I popped on my mask and there directly below me was the biggest fucking fish Ive ever seen, I just cant imagine how big the really big ones are if that was a "small" one.......... We totally lucked out as by the time we came back to shore, the whole dive resort knew and were waiting for us to come back and tell them all about it!! I feel pretty lucky after my 5th dive to have seen one of the rarest fish around!! Now just to find the big suckers!!

Hope your all well, more stories and photos to follow when I finished my advanced course tomorrow and have the time!!

Hello Everyone,
We are now in Ko Tao and loving it here..... We were kinda sad to leave Ko Phangan as we really really liked it there, But we got the boat over on Monday morning, The crossing was amazing, the water was just sooo flat.....

Check out Charlie looking all stylish .......

Just look how calm the sea was......

The boat took 1Hr and we got chatting to a guy who worked for a diving resort, I liked his moxy and the price was very good and even the accommodation was included in the price........ (the other dive centres didn't seem as professional and they were pretty pricey!)

This is me on my first day, looking pretty happy with myself, because I had managed to clear my mask of water while underwater (by blowing air from my nose into my mask btw!), without freaking out. (the first 2 times I swallowed most of the pool and nearly drowned, which was not cool)

Here is a cool rock formation around the coast of Ko Tao (look closely at the houses on the bottom left to see how big it is...) The reason diving is so popular here is the island has amazing visibility and has about 30 world class dive sites within a 5 min boat journey. instead of sand and silt the surrounding sea floors are mainly rock, so that's why is sooo clear.

This is one of the instructors "Jimmy" he was really sound and we were the first group of students to be certified by him, (Don't worry mum, there were 2 other dive instructors with us and they were all very capable) Also the lucky bastard spotted a 12 meter Whale Shark (The largest fish around) a couple of days before we arrived..... Other instructors have been diving these waters for 9 years and have not seen one!!

Obviously my camera doesn't work under water, so you're kinda stuck with boring shots of air tanks and the crew of the boat. Sorry.

Well, we finished up today and I am now a qualified "PADI Open water Diver", I'm pretty chuffed with myself as I had to overcome a few things that have always bothered my about scuba diving, especially the whole taking off you mask while really deep, putting it back on again and then clearing it again and not freaking out. Well I did that today at 18 meters down without too much trouble (I even had a pair of sunglasses on for a photo!!)
everything else came really easily and Its just such a cool thing to do, I'm pretty much hooked and I'm going to do the next stage called advanced open water in the next few days, Which includes a 30 meters dive (100Ft) and a night dive and you even get to use a underwater propulsion unit (The James bond gadget!!)

The down side of all this is I wont be taking much photos and I'm bloody wrecked at the end of every day so I wont be updating this for few days.......

Hope your all keeping well and please keep the emails coming as they mean alot to us!!

Lots of Love

Sean.

Right, Sorry about the last post being so small, We kinda felt bad so we decided to fill you lot in on what we have been up to!
We arrived on Koh Phangan last Saturday after leaving Ko Samui, We were kind of unsure what to expect from here, Its very well known as the party island of Asia, We had heard things like it was very cheesy and full of louts and the accommodation wasn't great. We decided to stay slightly outside of the main resort called Haad Rin, and we certainly landed on our feet!! The place we are staying at is called Phangan Rainbow and is just amazing, Its right on the waters edge. Here it is, its the one on the left hidden among the coconut trees:


There are hammocks hanging in a few of the trees, making it very hard to do anything during the day!

Getting up in the morning and sitting down to breakfast with this view is pretty cool:

It makes all those morning getting up and cycling to work in the pissing rain seem worth it!! Its still monsoon over here, but I think somebody forgot to tell the rain as its over 32 Degree's everyday and it has rained for a total of about 20 min in the last week....... *touches wood*

Koh Phangan itself is a smaller island than Samui, its pretty densely covered in forest, and there are only a few proper roads around the coastal areas of the island. After surviving the roads of Samui on the moped, I was well up for getting one here too, that was until I saw the hills........ Ive never seen anything like them, it looks like they made the actual road in a factory somewhere, rolled it up and used a helicopter to lay it down over the top of very steep mountains, some parts are 45' or over, when you come over the top of them, you cant see the road ahead of you, very much like a roller coaster, except there is no four-point harness holding you into your seat! Not to be put off by a little thing called death, I decided to get a moped anyway as the place we are staying is not near anywhere else and I like mopeds........ I did a test run on my own up (and down) the hills, I made it safe and sound, although I was quite glad it was over, Next up was to try it with the two of us, I'm very glad charlie is half my weight, because with anymore weight I don't think we would have made it, You have to get a good run up to the hills as when you hit them at full throttle, you go from doing 80-90 kph to doing 20kph (still under full throttle) by the time you get to the top. We are gonna try and get a video of us doing it as it would be very funny....

Here is a shot from one of the hills (one that we could stop on!!)

The picture does not show how steep they really are......

One thing that is great about the amount of hills around is that you can get great views from them, Here is a nice sunset from a few days ago:


The views are pretty special, you can see all the surrounding island and the off-shore reefs which look really cool.


This is two photos put together again, the main bulk of the trees are coconut trees as alot of the work on the island is provided from the coconut plantations.

We have been pretty lazy here, but its just that kinda place, we spend most of our days swimming (or sunbathing in charlies case) and reading books


Charlie reading.........


Charlie sunbathing.........

The owners have two really cool dogs, one is a very old German Sheppard crossed with a Rottweiler and the other is a 3 month old Rottweiler puppy, Needless to say the puppy drives the older dog nuts, although when he goes too far the older dog shows him who's still boss:

Notice the giant and still very sharp teeth on the German Shepard!

Here is the puppy:

He is a crazy thing and loves driving charlie nuts by jumping on her while she is sunbathing and running off with her flip flops, Needless to say I think the puppy is a little legend........ It makes me miss my dog loads though......

We did manage to pull ourselves away from our little beach hut for one day to go to the north of the island for a bit of sightseeing and we had also heard that the snorkelling up there was savage.
On the way up we took it kinda easy and stopped off at the islands only lake (nothing special) although the place we stopped for a drink was kinda cool:




When we looked up the road to take on the map, there was a tiny bit on the map that showed the road turned into a dirt track for abit, Expecting literally a road with dirt on it, we were a little surprised when It turned out to be pretty much a total off-road kinda situation:




Well, It was pretty hairy and charlie had to get off a few times, but we made it through and we were pretty glad to see tarmac on the other side, we got laughed at a few times by locals who thought we were pretty crazy to be going on that road on that type of bike, Here is our baby:


If you have ever seen the "Long Way Round" with Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor, It was very much like that except we were on a 125cc Moped instead of a 1100cc BMW Off Roader and we had to travel about 10 miles as apposed to around the world, but apart from that it was pretty much the same......... Obviously It was my amazing moped skills that got us through.......

Anyway when we got there it was gorgeous, it was a nice long beach with a small sand-bar which lead out to a small little island:



I spent most of the day snorkeling, It was seriously cool and the water was sooo clear, I saw loads of cool shit, even a couple more sharks, I kept my distance from them as I didn't know what they were and they were pretty fucking huge, but its mad looking down and seeing all these amazing looking fish just swimming around you... I cant wait to start scuba diving in Ko Tao!
When I got out I found charlie reading while sitting on a cool swing:

Its a pretty cool picture if I say so myself.....


Trying to get a similar shot of myself turned out to be a bit harder...

After being forced I made a nice face......


I hope everyone is keeping well, We are off to Ko Tao tomorrow (monday) and Ill be doing my open water diving coarse, I cant bloody wait!! Charlie will be updating the blog soon, because from a few emails I've gotten, It pretty clear that everyone wants to hear from her and for me to stop talking crap........

Hello,
The reason we have not updated in a while is very clearly shown in the photo below.....
We are staying in an amazing place on Koh Phangan and cant be bothered...... but I promise ill do it soon...... Well maybe not too soon........


Not a bad spot to wake upto every morning.......

Hello again,

Just a quick one. It was my twenty-sixth birthday yesterday (yay me!), thanks to everyone who sent emails and texts, it was deadly getting so many!!
As fate would have it, we had to do our visa run yesterday. We were collected at our hotel at 4.30am and we then travelled straight for 16 hours on ferry's and minibuses across Thailand to the border with Burma and straight back again. We spent a grand total of 11 minutes in Burma, but I do now have a stamp from there with my birth date on it so that's cool.

One thing did surprise myself and charlie was the other people doing the visa run. We expected to be with other back packers and maybe having a bit of a laugh with them, but it turned out we were sharing a minibus with the more seedy side of Thailand's visitors, old men who just didn't look right, while we were on the 6am ferry. We spotted a couple of them drinking a few beers and generally looking like they have just crawled out from under a rock. As the day dragged on it became clear the guys were seriously dodgy and looked like the kinda men that may have been over here for reasons other than sunshine and sights. It was a real eye opener and myself and charlie spent most of the time (outside of the minibus) staying the hell away from them. I don't know if they were the kinda guys who may have a problem staying away from kids, but they gave me the creeps and made us come to the conclusion, if your going to encounter a problem over here, its more likely to be from another traveller rather than a Thai person. The Thais are really nice and friendly and its quite surprising when you see some of the shit they have to put up with from certain travellers. They really appreciate when you speak a little Thai to them and just generally be polite, a lot of asshole travellers (backpackers and fortnighters alike) really do treat them like idiots and behave like they are their servants, Its a nasty side to things over here, but it just makes you aware of how you behave and treat other people.


Here is a photo I took a while back of an Elephant:



He kept on staring at me and the look in his eye was very weird, it looked so human. You could see the intelligence in his eye. Either that or he wanted the banana I was holding......


Well, You try getting a decent photo of charlie on a ferry at 6am.......


This is just before day-break over looking Nathon on Ko Samui, It was pretty cool watching the sun come up, as it did we spotted Ninjas training on the pier, Well I'm pretty sure they were ninjas, although charlie seems to think they were old ladies doing "Tai Chi". Either way it looked deadly.


This is sunrise over Ko Samui, I normally take a rest from my daily morning run (just like in the Bourne supremacy) to watch the sunrise....... Its so peaceful at that time of day.......... *cough* don't mention this to charlie, I sneak out of bed every morning and she never See's me *cough*


This is the border of Burma, Its pretty complicated, but its not a place your meant to visit as any money you would spend there would be helping the evil military dictator (Than Shwe) and generally not helping the people of Burma, who actually need it, Oh and by the way never call it Myanmar as that's the name he has called it, Its still Burma. He may not be as bad as his predecessor, but he's still a pretty big gobshíte towards the ethnic minorities of Burma.

Right, enough boring stuff.......

What else do you do on your birthday when your too wrecked to go drinking? You go to the local store and buy your own height in Explosive fireworks of course........


Just look at that........ Each one of those little red things is a banger, and the thing on top, you guessed it, is an even bigger banger....... Sweet.


Charlie was NOT pleased.........

In a country that laws are "optional" fireworks are not really a problem, what is a problem is that in most major cities there are markets called Russian markets, These are kinda like the "black market" except worse. It is possible to walk into these places and buy machine guns, mines, grenades and even rocket launchers, I kid you not. a brand new MP5 Machine gun is roughly about 900 Euros, So on that note if anyone wants any Christmas presents, just let me know........


Sean and Charlie.

Hello again, Thanks for everyone who has sent us emails, its deadly to hear from you all, so keep them coming and people who have not sent any, well, you better have a good excuse......

This is quite a big entry, so get comfy and give it your full attention. I think I've said this before, but if you click on the pictures, it will show them slightly larger.

Since the last time we moved from Ao Nang to Krabi town (just down the road abit!) and we stayed there for about 3 nights, Its not a very nice looking town, but it does have a certain character that we liked, not too sure if it was the giant rats in the streets or the stinky street stalls but, its a kinda likable town, anyway the place we were staying in was made of wood and was on a main street, so instead of a good nights sleep, we were kept awake by the sound of very large trucks, who's engines sounded like smalls nuclear reactors...... very bloody loud, one nice thing did happen in Krabi town, it just happened to be a full moon and there was a local festival that basically wishes away the monsoon season and welcomes the good weather, so everyone (us included) goes down to the river and places a little handmade "flower floating thing" (I cant remember the name, just look at the photos below) into the water and watch it float away, it has incense on it and a little candle, which when there are loads of them floating down the river, look cool.


Here is our room in Krabi Town, it wasn't that bad, but the sound of the traffic was just insane!!



This is that "flower floating thing" I was talking about. They make them in the days coming up to the festival, very cool looking. (also, Charlie will be available for hand modelling when we return to Ireland!!)

After Krabi we got the bus (3 hrs) across the mainland to the east coast to another small town called Surat Thani, which is basically another crappy town you pass through to get somewhere nice, well that somewhere nice is an Island called Ko samui about an hour off the east coast of Thailand, its pretty big, about the same size as the isle of white, It has a few really nice beach's, but its also alot more touristy and there is alot of seedy bars and McDonald's/KFC/Pizza huts (not that I'm complaining about easy access to a big mac now and then!) but we were really lucky when we picked our place to stay, its on a smaller beach and away from the main road, so the only sound we hear at night is the sound of crashing waves!! I also really like it as there is a sweet little pool over looking the sea, which is handy as the sea is fairly rough at the moment and dangerous, so I can get my daily swim (or 5) in. Check it out:

Oh yeah, and its also only 5 euros a night to stay here...

One thing which I'm very impressed with is that the whole island is covered in wireless Internet access, so for a tenner, you get access to broadband where ever you maybe!! It sure as hell beats trying to do this in Internet cafes....


Normally we travel around to beach's and stuff by local buses, but they are very unreliable and have left us at the mercy of taxis (10 times the price) plenty of times so, because the island is fairly big, I decided to get myself a "HOG":


Its 3 euros a day, which is a bargain especially when they make you look so cool and manly......


I was gonna go for a bigger model, but the steering was a bit "wooden"..... (I'm sooo sorry)

Yesterday, we went to a beach called "Big Buddha beach" well they have a pretty good reason for calling it that:


He/She/It was bloody massive and covered in Gold.


Here is a slightly fancier shot, It was a really cool place, you had to be quiet and respectful and not "act the maggot" but typically there were a few people around the place who didn't get where they were and ran around and generally were rude and not respecting the monks.


I paid that monk 2 euros to stand there for this photo....... (only messin' it was 20cent!! the sucker!) (I really hope Buddha doesn't read blogs.....)

Across the road from the Buddha was a very confusing group of figures in the water, Ive tried my best to establish what was going on:


The little guy seems to be heading off to work (on his dragon/fish/horse) and that's his wife waving him off (It must be a tough relationship, unless I'm grossly mistaken about mermaids)


This cheerful old Codger is waving him off as well. (Just out of shot is a naked Fred flintstone).

Right, enough messing.


Waterfalls. I hope you like them, because by the end of this you'll probably be sick of looking at them.. Today we went for a spin to the center of the island around an area that has a few cool waterfalls, Ive never really seen a big waterfall, so I was pretty excited, the day turned out to be my favorite day so far (we have now been away for 1 month!!), We went deep into the jungle and got muddy and got to climb and scramble up the side of a huge waterfall.


This is actually a smaller one at the side of the big one, the colours were crazy and the water was very cold (Or so charlie tells me..)

The big waterfall was a 9 tier waterfall, so you cant actually get the whole thing in a single photo, but what you can do is climb up the side of it with the help of a nice guide and see the main tiers or pools the water travels through,


When I said climb, I meant it, behind charlie is what we were going up, its was really cool hanging onto vines and ropes, you could hear the roar of the water but you couldn't see it till you got to the top, which was deadly.


This is one of the tiers, each one was massive and loud!!


The guide who was helping us, mainly stayed with charlie making sure she was OK, thinking she was the least able of the two of us....... He was totally wrong as I was slipping and sliding everywhere while charlie was hopping from rock to rock with the grace of a ballet dancer (while wearing flip flops!!)


This was one of the coolest tiers. It was very high up and the jungle enclosed it and just made it look really special.


The view from the top was breathtaking, We knew we had climbed loads, but we didn't realise how high we were up over the island.


This is the little pool at the very top of the waterfall, the guide just stripped down to his boxers and hopped in, so both myself and charlie followed suit and jumped into the pool. The water was a weird grey from all the minerals in it, which is meant to be very good for your skin and hair, there were even small fish who started having a nibble at charlie, how they got this far up a waterfall is beyond me....


Both myself and charlie swam into that cave under the waterfall (using that very handy rope) and got drenched by it, its a serious amount of pressure, slightly more than a blast from a power shower.....


This is charlie running away with a local boy.... It took me a while to catch them, but don't worry, they wont find his body....... Only messing, this was our very nice guide.


On the way back down, the sun was just setting and it just looked amazing.

Well, that was our last few days, hope you liked looking at it.

Oh, I nearly forgot, my mammy wanted a picture of me so here I am on a long tail boat:



I hope everyone is keeping well and keep the emails coming and If anyone wants my bank details for any particular reason *cough, birthday* 16Th November* Cough* just let me know......