Puu doesn't seem to understand why I want to take pictures of her cooking pad thai.

This is the Thai go-to dish, one of the simplest things a Thai can prepare and one of the cheapest a budget traveler can buy.

 But I remember a few months ago a US-based friend of mine had bemoaned her current pad thai recipe and although I've eaten plenty of the stuff, I never really paid attention to how it was different from Chinese-style fried noodles.

So I follow good-natured Puu over to the alley-side mini-kitchen she opened as a business a few weeks ago and watch her whip up a batch of succulent chicken pad thai as matter-of-factly as if I'd asked one of my US friends to butter a piece of toast.

She does all of the cooking for her food stall, "Food Corner" in a big wok resting on a single propane burner.

First in the wok for pad thai goes a dollop of peanut oil to grease the bottom of the pan. Then, she sprinkles in some thin slices of chicken and agitates it in the heating oil until the meat is white on both sides. Then she breaks an egg into it and using a spatula whisks it around with the chicken.

Next, she adds some water--it looks like about a cup and a half--and throws in a handful of dried rice noodles. She uses the thin, flat ones, but explains that I can use thicker ones or round ones.

The water sizzles in the oil and the white strands of noodle go limp in the middle and change color through the steam.

Now it's time for the flavoring.

Puu keeps all of her condiments lined up on the counter. First, a second-long dollop of oyster sauce. Then, I'm surprised to see, some ketchup. Next, sweet chilli sauce and a sprinkling of dried chilli. The next label I can't figure out but I recognize the smell from our eating adventures in Vietnam--fish sauce. She sprinkles in a little salt, a little sugar, a spoonful of chicken bullion.

The noodles have all succumbed to the heat and moisture, but still seem springy in the pan.

She turns off the heat and folds in a handful each of bean sprouts and grated carrot.

While the flavors merge, she cuts a slice of lime and a few pieces of cucumber. You can add more vegetables if you want, she says, shrugging.

"That's pad thai," she tells me, holding up my plate full of steaming noodles and flavor. "Eat."



Go to our Food and Drink pages to see more tantalizing images of pad thai and other Thai foods!

Every morning we wake up to the squawking of our landlady's chickens. They live and lay eggs in some hutches behind our bungalow, and the grounds crew disturb them when they walk between the bungalows to hang up laundry or sweep windblown flower petals off of the concrete paths.



Most mornings, we retrieve our dried swimwear off our wooden porch, eat some breakfast prepared from our small refrigerator and get ready for another day of diving.



The dive master course will occupy us here on Koh Tao for a few months. I find that the longer we stay the more we sink into the rhythm of island life. Slower even than the slow travel we have been doing, life on Koh Tao is a readjustment. After months of subsisting out of our backpacks, it's strange to have a cupboard and drawers, but nice to have space in the bathroom and nice not having that last-minute packing adrenaline rush every other day.



The bungalows where we stay are a laid-back collection of wooden-and-concrete one-room houses on stilts. Ours has a TV and a fan, a hot water heater and two mirrors, a small table and a wooden slatted lounge chair. Mosquitoes generally keep their distance from our sprays and burning coils, but color-changing lizards find their way through the cracks in the board walls and visit us at night to snap up any stray skeeters with their long pink tongues.



As we walk down the hill to the waterfront dive center we can look out over the harbor and watch the first dive boats headed to the dive sites clustered around an outlying private island, Koh NangYuan.



After diving we head up the hill to shower and change and then go out again for dinner. We usually eat Thai food: Green curry soup with chicken and rice, spicy beef, green papaya salad, or just plain barbecued chicken. If we're feeling super hungry or are craving a little Western fare we venture a little farther into the touristy section of four-street Mae Haad town and wolf down hamburgers while watching a movie on DVD at Pranee's restaurant or order a pizza to share at Safaris. If we're tired or short on time, we stop at the restaurant closest to our bungalow, Bam Bam's. It's owned by a friendly local lady who works all day every day turning out spicy rice-y dishes for cheap.



About once a week we take a shared taxi (a pickup truck with two benches along the sides of the open bed) over to the tourist center, Sairee village. Sairee has most of the island's restaurants and shops, and is the party 'scene' we take the dive center's customers to if they're looking for a night out. On Wednesdays sometimes we go watch a lesson at the Flying Trapeze Adventures.



The trapeze school is on a small lot near a busy pool-side bar and across from a backpacker hostel. We buy beer at a 7-eleven and then settle on bamboo loveseats to watch our friends Ayesha, Darren or Chris climb the three-story ladder to a small metal platform suspended above a safety net.



Whoever's flying dusts their hands and knee-backs with powdered chalk, grasps the trapeze and waits for the instructor's shout to fall forward into the air.



Over the next hour, the students learn to pull their knees up over the trapeze, back flip before landing on the safety net, and, if they're doing well so far, fly hands outstretched to the waiting arms of a catcher swinging upside down on another trapeze. I love watching it, but Dan and I are resisting pressure to try it for ourselves. We're keeping our Koh Tao experience to one adventure sport at a time; under the sea is enough for us at the moment.



During the soccer World Cup in June and July we went to a busy Aussie-style bar in Sairee to watch a few of the games our friends were supporting. I don't really care for soccer, and need the rules explained again and again, but I do love watching soccer fans. My favorites were the England games, when dozens of drunk guys dressed in red and white miniskirts and painted flags on their bare chests. High entertainment factor at the cost of a couple of beers.



Other evenings, we stay in the bungalow watching DVDs, petting the landlady's cat or admiring her pet monkey.


Island life is good.

Dan and I were last into the water, slipping down the buoy line on the Green Rock dive site.


Divemasters often work as dive guides, navigating paying customers around dive sites and pointing out interesting sea life. We'd been learning about this in our course, but this was the first time that Dan and I were going to try it out, on each other.


We went down slowly, feet first, looking down, checking the visibility and feeling our bubbles caress our cheeks.


The line was tied to a big granite boulder, a good reference point for us to find our way back to it. We checked our compasses and started swimming south when suddenly I inhaled so sharply my mouth hurt. I grabbed Dan's arm and, made speechless by equipment, pointed frantically at the rocks beneath us.


Dan turned to face me in alarm. His thumb and forefinger questioned me, looped in the OK sign.


I put my right palm over the back of my left hand and wiggled my thumbs enthusiastically—the dive sign for Koh Tao's namesake animal, the turtle.


This tao sat about 15 feet beneath us on the coral-covered boulders, chewing his lunch and completely unconcerned that we were there. Koh Tao might be named after turtles, but actually seeing one is not very common—I'd seen one the week earlier, and Dan had spotted one while snorkeling in December Each sighting is a cause for a lot of thigh-slapping excitement and jealousy from other divers.


So, all our plans of mentally mapping the dive site disappeared with our bubbles and we hovered closer to the turtle, just watching. Turtles eat coral, and lots of it. They eat in the sea like their landlocked cousins do—messily. For every chomp of its beak, a half-mouthful wafted slowly downward. Cautious parrot-fish darted in to catch the remainders before they settled on the boulders.


The turtle caught sight of me and hesitated a moment, a great yellow eye rolling in the socket. I kept still in the water, inhaling slowly so the bubbles from my exhalation wouldn't worry it. I looked harmless enough, I guess, because it continued eating the leafy soft coral.


After fifteen minutes we decided to swim away and try to circle the dive site, as we'd planned. We spotted nudibranchs, angelfish and anemone fish, but nothing as extraordinary as the turtle. Thirty minutes later we made it back to the buoy line and found it still lunching. We spent another five minutes with the turtle until our air supplies got low, and then we reluctantly headed surface-ward, contemplating the turtles of Koh Tao.

We've started, quite literally, a sea change.


Back in December, Dan and I came to Koh Tao, Thailand, for me to brush off my scuba diving certification and for Dan to sit on the beach drinking tequila and talking to people. Plans changed, as ours often do, and after chatting with the staff at the dive center, Dan was talked into starting his own PADI Open Water course while I went diving at the coral dive sites around the island.


After we left Koh Tao, having overturned Dan's conviction that he couldn't swim, we kept remembering the relaxed lifestyle of the people who worked at the dive centers we'd visited and the good food and smiley people in Thailand.


Hmm, we thought. I bet we'd enjoy being divemasters.


Fast forward five months, and we are stepping off the ferry back onto Koh Tao, shiny with sweat and excitement. We signed up with Master Divers, in our view the friendliest of a few dive centers we'd contacted, to do a six- to eight-week intensive divemaster course.


Under the Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) system, a divemaster is the lowest professional rating. A divemaster is able to take people who are already certified to dive on an underwater tour, to teach snorkeling, and to assist dive instructors.


But before we could start the main stuff, we needed to take a few prerequisites.


* * *


John turned around, his finned foot resting on the edge of the Master Divers boat, scuba tank in place and regulator mouthpiece in hand. “The second rule of scuba,” he intoned, lecture-serious. “Is to look cool.”


And with that, he somersaulted into the twilight water.


Giggling, we followed him in just as the sun sank. It was our first night dive.


Besides making sure we remembered the rules of scuba (the first one, more practically, is 'never hold your breath') our instructor John took us on the five 'adventure' dives that make up the Advanced Open Water course. As well as night diving, we practiced underwater navigation and buoyancy, learned the different families of tropical fish, and experienced deep diving.


Two days later we were certified to go to 30 meters/100 feet deep, and ready to begin CPR training and our Rescue Diver course.


***


“Oh!” Thom screamed, his head disappearing into the blue bay.


“I can't swim!” he yelled when he gained the surface, arms splashing helplessly.


Dan and I looked around desperately for something to throw to Thom. Nothing looked very buoyant. While we searched, we heard another 'plop!' and then Chris starting to holler.


We groaned. “There went the other one,” Dan said. “Get the life-jackets.”


I ran to the back deck of Master Diver's boat to grab the blue-and-yellow jackets, but found them in a cubbyhole above the toilet--too tall for me to reach. Another diver stepped out of the toilet. “Could you be tall for me, please?” I asked, hoping he wasn't too alarmed by all the screaming for help. “Sure,” he said, handing me the jackets.


I jogged back to the front of the boat, where Dan had thrown a line attached to a small blue buoy to Chris. The other divers looked on, laughing and joking as I threw first one life-jacket to Thom and then the other. Both fell short about 10 yards so I grabbed my fins and mask and threw myself in after them.


“Diver, Diver, I'm a rescue diver!,” I shouted to Thom, as I proffered one of the jackets. He grabbed it, spluttering water.


“Are you OK?” I asked.


“Oh yes,” he replied, hanging on to the jacket. “I was looking at the fish and I forgot how to swim.”


I sighed.


Charlotte, our instructor, was waiting at the ladder, ready to take my fins.


“Good rescue,” she said. “A bit faster next time.”


After two grueling days of rescuing Charlotte's assistants from their suicidal tendencies of throwing themselves overboard at any moment, we were all set to start the real course we'd come to Koh Tao for—the divemaster course. To complete it, we'll need to study two books, participate in five lectures on dive science and theory, take nine exams, undergo tests of our in-water stamina, demonstrate the 20 basic scuba skills perfectly and assist instructors teaching lower-level dive courses. And, have a lot of fun.

Five weeks ago, Dan and I were on safari in India. We planned well for our daily adventure, looking for wild tigers in their Jungle Book habitat. Every day we checked our bag: Mosquito repellent, extra water, sunscreen, monocular, extra batteries for our cameras, scarves to keep out the dust. (Read Dan's blog about this from April 5)


What I should have packed was a pillow. Something nice and cushy, to suspend my tailbone a few inches above the rattling jeep seats.


Four weeks ago, we were in Kolkata, sweating in the high humidity and 100-degree-plus temperatures. To get there, we'd taken two full days of bus rides and an overnight train. Again, a pillow might have been handy on those hard bench seats.


Three weeks ago, we flew to south Vietnam, planning to stay for two weeks and then head north and west to Laos, then south through northern Thailand, eventually ending up back in Koh Tao, where we'd pursue our new goal of being PADI-certified divemasters.


The tale of my painful tail started the day we went to the Thai consulate in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to apply for visas. The pack I have carried daily since China started to bother me. When I stepped, it bounced on my lower back, which, as we walked away from the consulate through the leafy scooter-lined streets, felt more and more tender.


We spent a few hours at the War Remnants Museum (Read Dan's blog about this from April 14). I shifted my bag from my back to my front like a Chinese schoolgirl. Outside, Dan took pictures of the fighter jets, helicopters and tanks and I perched gingerly on a concrete bench. A part of my body I rarely think about, the area between the flesh I sit on and the waist band of my pants, was starting to give me some real discomfort. It felt tight, and hot, and a little bit itchy but at the same time like it should, under no circumstances, be touched. There seemed to be only one immediate solution: beer.


Luckily, near the museum we found a Czech-style microbrewery pub which sucked the rest of our day's budget away in a nice sudsy foam. Dan carried my backpack and his own, and we went back to the hotel just a little bit fershnickered.


I didn't know it at the time, but my body was trying to tell me that I, along with some 80,000 soldiers in WWII, had contracted “jeep seat,” basically an existing sub-skin cavity irritated by sitting, sitting in a jolting vehicle, sitting in a jolting vehicle in high, sweaty temperatures.


A few days later we arrived in Can Tho (Read Dan's blog from April 17), to look at the floating markets. Boats, rivers, floating stuff--I love it! But, after the increasingly painful five hours on the bus from Saigon, I decided to sit out the boat ride back in the hotel popping Paracetamol tablets. Except I wasn't sitting. Laying, lolling, reclining, yes. Sitting, no way.


We went to a local hospital to see if they could help. A nurse saw me, talked to a doctor, and came back with a cream and some antibiotics. Total cost, about $12.


Hopeful that this would cure it, we booked an 18 hour bus ride to Nha Trang, a diver's paradise on the middle coast of Vietnam. We were going diving!


Well, Dan was. (See his blog from April 26)


We reached Nha Trang at 5 a.m. Dan found us a hotel while I waited, standing of course, on the curb, and then we went straight to the nearest hospital. My backside was red in parts and purple and yellow in others. I could barely walk.


The doctors looked at my derrière for about five seconds and, through a translating nurse, told me to get on the bare metal table, 'cause they were going to cut me open.


The fun that followed I won't inflict upon you, Alaskan Kangaroo readers. Other sufferers of this condition have written online that their experiences rivaled childbirth or unanesthetized root canals for pain. I prayed to faint.



They sent me back to the hotel with a diaper-sized bandage taped haphazardly to my bum and a bag full of medicine and told me to come back in the morning. And the next morning. And the next. And . . . Total cost, about $50.


For ten days we stayed in Nha Trang, across the street from a six-kilometer-long beach and around the corner from cheap beer bars. Our hotel sold $4 snorkeling excursions that featured a floating bar where everyone sits in inner tubes and drinks plonk.



Instead of pursuing beach-goers' paradise, I sat in our hotel room; drank water; read books; took vitamins, antibiotics and pain pills; watched bad TV and climbed on the hospital's metal table every morning so the brisk and ever-changing staff could re-dress the wound with varying levels of tenderness or cleanliness.


On the tenth day, we decided to come back to Saigon. There was no way I could weather the bus ride out to Laos and then down through Thailand. All of the things we'd wanted to do in Laos involved lots of bus rides, boat rides, hiking or inner-tubing in rivers. Plus, mass protests in Bangkok didn't make us want to spend any time transiting through there. So, we booked a mid-May flight to Phuket, in southwestern Thailand, and decided to eat our way through another two weeks in Saigon. 'Cause, at least, I can still eat.


We visited an international medical clinic in Saigon where I saw two English-speaking doctors who explained the problem, the procedure and wound care. They prescribed me more antibiotics and gave Dan instructions so he could start dressing the wound. It would be slow, but the deep, inch-long wound should be healed by May 20, when our dive courses start. These visits total cost: $125.


“This is one expensive bottom!” the nurse exclaimed on our second visit.


Yep.


For the last ten days, we've lazed about Saigon's District One. Thanks to a great foodie blog Dan found after following a reference from Anthony Bourdain's travel show on Vietnam, we've explored some back-alley cuisine that saved us money and put protein back in our diets.


In four weeks in Vietnam, I haven't seen much more than a small collection of hotel rooms and a wider variety of restaurant menus. To me, Saigon shall remain broken rice, barbecued pork, freshly made custard apple shakes and daily trips to Yogurt Space, a serve-yourself frozen yogurt extravaganza where the staff now give us a 10 percent discount for being faithful customers.


I'm trying not to think of it as just a pain in my ass.