PADIshack

Finished my PADI open water yesterday with my friend Blakely. Really pleased. It was quite an intense 3 days, but really challenging and fun.

We went out to celebrate and this was some food:

Note the rice is shaped like a fish. Seems a bit unnecessary when it's already a fish dish.

I felt quite peculiar last night, a combination of diving and tiredness.

I wore a shirt and trousers to dinner last night. My two companions wore dirty t shirts. They said I was "uptight". I just explained that I was English, and there is nothing wrong with a bit of class (they are both American). I thought that being from opposite sides of the US, I could play them off against one another. Unfortunately, they have both sided against me. I resolve this by asking them what language they're speaking. "Yes that's right." I say, "English. ENGLISH." This does the trick.

Here is a friend I made:

I'm referring to the dog. No idea who that woman was, or why she was holding onto her dog so fearfully. LET ME PET YOUR DOG, WOMAN.

No that's not true. She was a nice girl called Jill - a Guernseyian who videoed us on our last dive.

She did the classic sales pitch which I sort of fell for, but I was really happy with the DVD she made. I will try and upload it if I can sometime.

My cynical American friend, Rachel was not impressed by this, and suggested that I should spend some money with locals instead of white privileged Brits. Out of guilt I bought a local homeless man a bottle of vodka. Hopefully that should redress the balance.

Today we went kayaking and snorkelling around some amazing corals. Videos soon hopefully, though the Internet pipes are very narrow in this part of the world.