Publisearre: 27.01.2019
On the last island of our island tour, Ko Lipe, we finally did what we had been considering the whole time: we took a diving course. We learned the hand signals to indicate if we had a problem underwater and the signals for diving up or down.
Just before the first dive
It took me two seconds to get used to breathing underwater, during which time I held my breath. But after the first few breaths, I forgot what I could be afraid of because suddenly we saw a large moray eel opening and closing its mouth and showing its sharp teeth. Large, colorful fish swam by and we dived past coral reefs where clownfish lived. The three of us swam behind each other, with a dive instructor in front and behind. We sank deeper when the instructors gave the signal and pumped air into our vests to float back up. But the most important thing for diving up and down is not the air-filled vest, but the breathing. If you breathe out all the air from your lungs, you will sink, and if you take a deep breath, you will rise, similar to a balloon filled with air. Once I understood that, all I had to do was take a slightly deeper breath to dive past sea urchins with their long spines.
As a team of three, we helped each other into tight wetsuits during the diving course, practiced hand signals underwater, and took turns taking off and putting on the diving mask at a depth of 12 meters and pumping the water out of it. After two days of floating in the water, falling backwards into the sea with all our equipment, and a test, we each left the island with a diving license in our pockets.
The sea was very rough as we crossed from Ko Lipe to Trang on a speedboat. Each person on the boat had their own strategy for dealing with it. The Spanish children slept and some passengers hid their faces in their hands and thought of another place. Empty plastic bags were passed around and I stood up to be able to fix my gaze on the horizon while the boat flew high and crashed back down into the sea. One partygoer found it amusing and raised his arms like a wave every time the boat was thrown up. Battered and relieved, everyone eventually landed on shore.On the way to the cave in a tuk-tuk
We finally swayed into the cave in a boat and lay flat in the boat as the rock approached from above, while the two boat boys rowed ahead.
We thought we were now swaying towards the exit in the boat when the boat boy said "very, very exciting, lay down, sleep." I thought, of course, we can do that now too, this cave is actually more relaxed than we thought. However, if Thais say something is exciting, it is almost unbearable for European tastes. The awareness of danger is completely different in Asia. I thought of this as we rode back into the dark cave and the beam of the flashlight showed that there were now only twenty, ten, and then five centimeters separating us from the rock above us. The rock was not smooth, but stalactites hung down from above. The sides of the boat became even narrower, so I turned my head inward, in order not to see this centimeter work. Two screams came from our boat as the rock came so close that we were sure we would have to fly directly to a facial surgery clinic in Bangkok after leaving the cave. Feeling slightly disconnected from the world and in disbelief that we had survived the whole thing unharmed, the three of us staggered towards three cool coconuts and watched a monkey steal a mandarin and eat it blissfully in the treetop.
Our next stop was Bangkok, an unknown place for Rieke and me. We strolled through the old town, unable to speak complete sentences because our entire attention was focused on all the colors, the tangle of cables above the streets, the red lanterns, the street stalls, the trucks full of coriander, and the colorful tuk-tuks.
Among all the chaos, Bangkok hipsters strolled by, Chinese women sold skewered innards, vendors carved pineapples and shaped bites, and dusty children rode plastic toy bikes through narrow alleyways.
Next to street stalls cooking on fire, there are skyscrapers with a skybar on the roof. In the elevator to the 43rd floor, you will meet people wearing sneakers that cost as much as a week's earnings for the street food vendor.
At the time when we were in Bangkok, the air was so bad that we, like the locals, wore masks.