22nd January 2017

A Belated Happy Birthday to our brother in-law Rob.  

We hope you're having an amazing time in Turkey with Jan, Joel & Amie.

If only we were all there!! ;-)

This past week has been pretty quiet.  I took Thursday off as I had no paying customers for ECO courses and having only DMT's to take out and only a couple signed up for afternoon dives, I thought I'd give it a miss/cancel.  So instead I joined Simon on his morning walk, cycling slowly behind and walking usually on the last part of the journey as it's either a climb or so steep that even walking is a mission. It has been lovely spending quality time together.  We do have a new buddy though.  He's called Cuthbert and he's Simon's cat.  I finally gave in and bought him one for Christmas.  Now that he's house trained and been kept in for the last few weeks, we thought it would be good to take him out for some fresh air. So far he's been well behaved,

Cuthbert getting a piggyback

Cuthberts newest friend  ..he's not shy!

I'm looking forward to this week, it's certainly going to be a busy one.  We've an Island wide clean up, Dive clean ups and all sorts going on and on Thursday Katy & Darren arrive, just for a couple of days :-D So we are very excited to see people from home! :-D  

15th January 2017

It's Sunday today and the weather recently has been really nice.   I have been out on the bike for a cycle or tow and I'm trying to get back into the swing of swimming, at least every other day.  It's not so easy when you've got a pretty steep hill to climb on the way home, everything wet and heavy  ..a poor excuse but I'll stick to that one at the moment :-D   It's been lovely sunbathing at the Regal Resort, it's not been too hot and luckily, it' has been fairly quiet ;-D

Simon has been gettting back into his walks.  As he's not the best sleeper, he goes early in the morning while I'm still in the land of nod. It's nice and cool then.   Recently it's been more like a paddle with the amount of rain we've had :-D

It's 5.30 pm and I've just finished a bit of housework and have tidied outside. Someone is clearing the land next to us.  It feels a bit open at the moment as the side of the house used to be completely hidden from the road. I really hope that they're not going to built.  I'll have to do a Donald Trump impression and build a wall :-D

Tomorrow it's back to the office, Reef Check to some of the DMT's  ..just a 1 day intro to coral reef monitoring.

12th January 2017

Dear Rosie,

Many Happy Returns of the Day!! 

Hope you have a lovely Birthday.

We'll be thinking of you!

Sending lots of Birthday hugs

Jenny & Simone

X X X

6th January 2017

Happy Little Christmas everyone!

It's been a really wet new year so far  ..we're getting the brunt end of a storm which passed over the Philippines and it's been torrential rain for the past 36 hours  ...flooding and water up to a meter in Chalok and Sairee.  The run off into the ocean has been horrible.  We went diving yesterday and the first couple of meters was like diving in mud, you couldn't see a thing but below that was fine, 5-8 meters.

Early evening with facebook video's / reports that some roads had been closed, water too deep and rapid like, we didn't even attempt to ride the bikes.   I think it was around 8.30 when the rain seemed to ease, we headed home.  We were shocked at the force and the depth of the water in some parts.  It's a good job that we live up in the hills.

The next morning, after a heavy night of rain we spent most of the time indoors only venturing out to see what chaos the rain had caused and to collect our bike / motorbike from Crystal.

The pictures below are from our journey into Crystal.

The weather is supposed to clear by Monday.  Even though it's still raining outside, it does look a lot brighter :-D

our road is nearly non existent now   .just been washed away

There used to be a drain there....

Koh Tao falls 

The top road shin deep

A1 bungalow at Crystal just balancing

Beach covered in litter

Crystal bar beachfront