ארבעה ראשי שנים הם... באחד בשבט ראש השנה לסינים

Greetings from Koh Lanta, on the Andaman Sea (west coast of Thailand)! When I arrived without a hotel reservation, I was warned that due to Chinese New Year the island was packed with Chinese tourists, and I would not be able to get a room. That was very clearly not the case, and I am staying at a lovely and reasonably priced bungalow (a significant improvement over my Koh Tao accommodations), surrounded by what I think are mangrove trees. There are a fair number of Chinese tourists, which makes me appreciate that as vexing as it is when only one of the two parties is a fluent English speaker, communication becomes comically impenetrable when neither party is a fluent English speaker.

Unlike Koh Tao, which is an island entirely devoted to diving, there is much more diversity in the kinds of tourists on Koh Lanta—lots of families, people hanging out on the beach during the day instead of just lining up to get on boats. Koh Lanta is majority Muslim, with lots of hijabi women, restaurants that don’t serve alcohol, etc. I am staying down the road from a local mosque. The beach does not feel overdeveloped at all—it’s all very laid back. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised to find that I don’t feel like I’m treated as a giant American dollar sign—no one tries to aggressively sell you anything, locals go to the same 7-11 that tourists go to, etc.

Backing up to last Monday….

On Monday and Tuesday, I completed my advanced open water dives on Koh Tao. Unlike my one-on-one open water dives with Gus, the advanced course was with two German girls, aged 20 and 25. 25 year-old German girl complained about absolutely everything: water temperature, air temperature, the stickiness of her wetsuit, water in her ears, seeds in her watermelon (I kid you not). Still, it was nice to feel like I was part of a cohort going through an experience. In addition to working on buoyancy skills and navigation (I can read a compass!), the advanced open water course involved a deep water dive (~30 meters), a night dive, and a shipwreck dive at the HTMS Sattakut, a WW2 era US ship that was first donated to the Thai navy, and, once taken out of commission, given to Koh Tao for divers to explore.  On Wednesday, we did three fun (i.e. not for course credit) dives—two at Sail Rock, and one at Shark Island, though, sadly, we did not see any sharks. After our third dive on Wednesday, my left ear started feeling not-so-great, so I decided it was a good time to leave Koh Tao, and head to Koh Lanta, with the hopes that my ear would clear up over the weekend. It is now Sunday night, and while my ear is feeling much better, it is still a bit clogged. I am planning on diving tomorrow (Monday), so here’s hoping it feels better by 8 AM, when my boat leaves.

I opted for the overnight ferry from Koh Tao to Surat Thani on Wednesday night, and then a minibus from Surat Thani to Koh Lanta (the ferry to Koh Lanta can carry minibuses) on Thursday morning.  I assumed that the overnight ferry to Surat Thani would be the same as the morning ferry from Chumphon to Koh Tao that I had taken last week: rows of hard wooden benches. Lo and behold, when I opened the door to the main deck, there were three rows of 30 bunk beds covered with orange sheets. Probably due to the three dives from that day, I slept really well!

On Shabbat afternoon, as I lazed on the sparsely populated beach, a French couple came up to me and pointed out a nearby pack of monkeys that had just stolen their lunch. After ensuring that all of my belongings were present and accounted for, I got to enjoy my own personal entertainment troupe as the monkeys staged a wrestling match, and showed off their climbing skillz.

Some unfortunate news: as most probably know, you are not supposed to wear shoes into Thai homes and some businesses. Since the dive boat captains live on their boats, you are also not supposed to bring your shoes onto the dive boats; everyone leaves them on shore. This led to the mysterious disappearance of my good hiking sandals L Also, as I was leaving Koh Tao my cellphone was stolen. I am interpreting this as a sign from the Ribono shel Olam to spend less time on Facebook/checking email. However, since Shabbat ended I have been unable to tear myself away from the following the horrors of the Trump immigration executive orders. I have been following all of the airport protests, and feeling horrified, inspired by all of my badass activist friends, powerless, incredibly guilty for being here and not there, and a fair amount of despair. I am hoping that once my ear clears, and I can get back to my regularly scheduled 2-3 dives per day I’ll go back to ignoring the world around me. Or maybe not.

Question for y’all—some people have been asking if it’s possible to get automatic notifications when I update my blog. Is there an easy way to add my blog to an RSS feed, or some such thing? I am entirely tech stupid in the blogging department, so if anyone knows how to do such a thing, please mention it in the comments.

*Title is based off of the first Mishnah in Masechet Rosh Hashanah which describes the 4 “Rosh Hashanahs”. Little did you know that the first of Shvat is Chinese Rosh Hashanah.