What’s the last thing you want to find in your room after a long day out? Termites… or at least as far as I could tell, with a bit of googling, that’s what they were.
We had come back from a day diving with Mojo and found our room had little fly wings abandoned all over the floor. Literally hundreds of them. Near the front door, near the window, in the bathroom, behind the bed, everywhere. And crawling in the curtains and on the walls were little bug things that were presumably the ones who had lost their wings.
It’s not an issue to complain when it’s justified, and I feel that bugs everywhere is a pretty straightforward justification. But the thought of packing up all our stuff and moving was exhausting. However, having these things crawling all over the place would stop us feeling comfortable enough to even remotely get a good night’s sleep, so we went to find a hotel staff member.
They were very good and came to see what’s going on. We hadn’t left the doors or windows open all day as they suspected, which is why we were so confused as to how so many had gotten in. They looked genuinely confused by the little critters too, so went off to find us another room.
We packed up, trying to dust any wings or stow away bugs off our clothes. Shoving everything in bags and then humping it up a short flight or stairs, we followed them to a new room. This one is in a concrete building next to the pool. It’s a bit larger room which is nice and has direct access to the pool, so it’s a welcome upgrade for the hassle.
Settling in we unpacked and made ourselves comfortable again. But immediately Aimi managed to spot a huge cockroach in our bathroom hiding in a hole in the wall. I can deal with a few bugs, or ants or small spiders here and there. I’m a bit scared of wasps and wary of bees, but a fucking cockroach… that’s too much. We figured if we could just remove it, we would be safe, so Aimi got the bin ready and I blasted it out the hole with the bum-gun. She managed to trap it and then confine it to the bin with a plastic bag while she took it and flung it outside.
Needless to say, a relatively restless night’s sleep followed. Not what you need after a great day’s diving. Again, I hadn’t researched dive schools on the island. I just went with the company Mike worked for and I dived with last time. They were great before and the kit modern and well cared for and this is still the case. Although they have moved location so they took a bit of finding. The hotel they are now working from is not super well organised. Like many things in Thailand, it’s put together a bit higgledy piggledy.
I’d worn my Mojo t shirt again and had a good chat with the chaps about the last time I was here. They very kindly gave us little red turtle necklaces and a good price for the diving!
I needed to do a refresher session and Aimi, who I thought had already done her open water, was just doing a “try dive” alongside me. A Thai instructor took us out called something difficult to pronounce, so had given himself the nickname Game. He ran thru the drills with me and it all came back pretty quickly. I’m still going to take some time to refamiliarise myself with the dive tables so I have an understanding with what’s going on.
Actually in the water, we saw some incredibly large coral. Mostly they looked like huge mushrooms with little fish zipping across the surface. There were also some forearm length black knobbly things that looked like over sized caterpillars crawling around on the coral. Having a quick Google now, I think they were << insert name when found >>. As with anything down here, I’m not going to touch it so I don’t disturb it or get some rare flesh eating disease. I didn’t bring my gopro camera on this dive because I wanted to focus on the skills.
In the end, it was my air consumption that made us surface. Aimi was still on 120 bar while I was reaching the safe minimum of 70 bar. This is probably because I’m just a larger person than she is, but also I was struggling with bouyancy. I think my legs are just dense so sink easily meaning I have to keep moving around to keep myself laying flat. Aimi’s bouyancy was perfect and she just floated along, barely breathing apparently.