I have reached this familiar point again where so much has happened that I am not sure where to begin. And beginnings count for so much in stories.

I will begin by saying the mundane: for the last four days I have been in Phuket Town, which is the oldest city of an island on the west-coast of Thailand, bridge-connected to the mainland. What has life been like? On land, it has been recklessly fast. Underwater, time seems to stop still, and patience cures all. This speedup/slowdown, for me, has never been so separate. The days end with sleep that comes quickly, the product of a mental fatigue that brings me back to days of college.

As mentioned earlier, I was on the hunt for a scuba shop to acquire an Open Water Certification, as part of this year's broad education in the culture of "what could be down in the water." More people every day choose to scuba as a way of fulfilling this curiosity.

However, in Phuket, there are dozens of scuba shops and all of them seem appropriate, but when you're about to learn something this important and potentially dangerous, you cannot help but be fastidious. The trouble is that you don't understand enough about diving and so it's hard to know what to be fastidious about.

So I decided to hit a farang bar here and see if I could meet any local expats to give me some advice. And to that effect I ran into Kevin, a top-bloke from Wales, who had just finished his Advanced certification. He recommended a company called West Coast Divers, although he also mentioned that many companies do essentialy the same thing and perhaps for a better price. I was best to go to Patong where most of the shops where and price around. I would also need to find a way to get to Chalong Bay, which formed a triangle with Patong and Phuket Town. Taxis back and forth can be expensive, strangely, more expensive even than renting your own motorcycle.

So, in the end, I decided it was time I learned how to ride a motorcycle. I know, mom, you are going to be angry at me for this one, but it had to happen sooner or later. At least I'm not driving during monsoon season.

Kev took me to the place he rented his bike, we bargained down to a good price and in a matter of minutes I had my own. Taking me over to a back alley, I practiced a few times back and forth. I can hardly say I had confidence for when I was out on the road, but I felt the time was ready, so out we went. This was my first opportunity to see Thailand with my own transportation, and it really does make a difference. Kev has a bit of a project going on photographing Thai signs with names that sound humorous in English. Before long we had decided that we would assume new names - he is now Dr. Thiti (you can guess the pronunciation), and I'm Dr. Pornsak. Forty minutes later, I had made the trip on my Pornsakmobile to Patong, and it wasn't as bad as I had feared - more on, it was phuking phantastic.

Aye-yie-yie, I'm Still Alive

A mathematician must have some respect (and suspicion) of statistics. Of Thailand's roughly 65 million people, there are 13,000 road fatalities per year in Thailand, mostly from motorbikers, and 1,000 alone around New Year's holidays, and 1,000 alone from the island of Phuket - for y'all morbid ones, about 3 per day in Phuket alone. Yeehaw. To be fair, I'd like to see how America compares statistically.

What we have in Thailand, however, is a road system that is designed to accomodate the fact that around two-thirds of its passengers drive on motorbikes - which makes renting them much cheaper than renting cars. And since there are more bikers than cars they generally will either move in flocks across a whole lane or hug the shoulder if moving relatively solo. At a red light, all the bikers slip in between the vehicles and proceed to bunch up near the front. At first to an oustider, the mob of bikers, all traveling within a few feet from each other, feels patently insane. But after a while, it's the massive lane-demanding SUV's that seem insane, as they careen past you on the right (since you're driving on the left side). Yes, there are SUV's in Thailand. Quite a few. If you own a car here, you're rich, so you'll at least have an SUV.

En cualquier, I now have spent the last four days buzzing around the triangle for my scuba courses. All in all it only takes about 40 minutes, but it really does demand full attention. I won't deny, it is a speed rush.

It would be hard to find a starker contrast to this than scuba diving. Under the water, any frenetic movement will either get you nowhere or make things worse. Breathing quickly not only depletes your air faster, it complicates buoyancy. Any immediate landllubber intuition - which could devolve into a panic - has to be checked against the strange new physics of living underwater. Think slowly... breath slowly... move slowly.

As many of you know, I'm a poor-breather when it comes to swimming, and even mildly panicky. I tried to complete the swim-test and failed. Fortunately, the alternate test is to swim around a boat severl times with wet-suit and fins, and that I can do.

So what is someone like me doing scuba diving? As I am glad to find out, breathing from a regulator and air tank completely alleviates the problem I have with water. And, as a result, I find scuba diving not only comfortable, but enlightening as well. After three days of coursework and three full hours of my life underwater (which seem to have passed like half an hour) I have learned more than one contingency plan for any problem. I have become completely at-ease with scuba, and think it is a relatively safe, if expensive, endeavor. Certainly much safer than driving the roads of any country. Honestly, where's your contingency plan for when a drunk driver swings into your lane?

Here in the Andaman Sea, the mysteries of the deep teem with life intricately in balance. Bannerfish, triggerfish, parrotfish, trumpetfish.... so many varieties and personalities. An inquisitive juvenile school of barracudas was particularly interested in us (not in an appetite kinda way though) We even saw two rarities down below: a swimming leopard shark (harmlessly without teeth) and a young moray eel. Add to this the variety of the corals and you have more than enough to astound you at each step. My favorite was probably traveling underneath a short tunnel where thousands of small orange fish made way, surrounding my body as I passed through. This is unreal.

Which is, if I have a fault with the enjoyment of scuba, it is exactly that. I don't think it was until my third dive that I fully understood that this wasn't a video game. It's almost impossibly surreal. The human body hardly seems made for this sort of exploration. Certainly, we've learned much about how to prevent "the bends" but long-term effects of scuba are too difficult to calculate. On the day of my final dive, halfway through the evening, I thought the building was shaking due to an earthquake. I even briskly walked downstairs before I realized it was probably a combination of sea-legs and confused eardrums. Add to this the fact that my entire breathing pattern is noticeably different now. It's wild what the body does in response to diving. Tango changes my walking, scuba changes my breahing - what more will the Watson year change in me?

At the moment, I'm considering doing some more diving, perhaps the Similan islands, now that I'm officially certified. In less than a week I fly out of Bangkok, which is unfortunate because this land of smiles has really been beyond my expectations. You tend to grow a bit more attached to a place you've learned the streets of, and this definitely applies for me in Phuket. The wandering soul soon moves on...