phuket, thailand over chinese new year was a great idea! we were able to stay 5 nights and 6 days in thailand enjoying all the delicious thai food and cheap beer! the first three days were filled with nothing but scuba diving and enjoying the surrounding islands. we dove with a german dive company, sea bees diving (http://www.sea-bees.com/ ), which turned out to have a fabulous boat and excellent dive guides. apparently dirk and christina dunlap sound very german so we were paired with german speaking people each dive... scuba diving has its own language therefore this wasn't a problem at all... well, until they start speaking german to you and expect you to understand... much like my russian experiences (if i haven't mentioned this before... everyone in singapore thinks I am russian, they come up to me speaking russian in the malls). again like bali, indonesia with the russians, cambodia with the japanese, now thailand with the germans... it is funny to see the masses of people from all around the world in such remote holiday locations... being an american is very much a minority and I really like it that way. the kids seem cuter when they are screaming in your ear on the air plane in a different language... and yes, there were plenty of rug rats running around!
so our underwater adventure was AMAZING to say the least... it was our best diving yet! we did three days with a total of 8 dives including one night dive. we were able to see plenty of fish but some that really stood out were: gaint emperor angelfish, cuddlefish, frog fish, tons of lionfish, leopard sharks, stingrays, barracuda, and sea turtles. our dive guide was very thorough and after each dive got out a book and showed us all the different life we saw... i was upset that we didn't get to see a seahorse... that is on my list of things next or maybe the whale shark too.
one night for dinner we went to a cultural theme park, FantaSea ( http://www.phuket-fantasea.com/ ), and saw the show about thailand. they had all types of animals you could hold, pet, and take pictures with. the elephants were my favorite... they are everywhere too, i would say they replace the horse in texas.
ko phi phi island... the movie "the beach" was shot here
view from our hotel: patong beach
trumpet fish 
leopard shark 
king cruiser ship wreck
crocodile fish... hard to see
triggerfish that attacked dirk... he actually got a picture of it before it attacked him
big-eyed barracuda
squamous giant clam
black spotted pufferfish
excalibur our boat
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