Stuck in the middle with Foo

This morning I set out at 6:15am with Bernie and Sheella for some early morning snorkeling. Now I’d been snorkeling before in Thailand and found the whole experience unpleasant. Bobbing drowsily up and down on waves while often inhaling mouthfuls of salty, foamy liquid without even so much as a glimpse of a fish. The whole experience felt like one big awful oral encounter to me.

But the water here is like glass. It’s so clear and incredibly calm, so I thought I’d tag along. Bernie is an accomplished diver, so I felt safe enough. She generously gave me her mask and snorkel as she had goggles and flippers and is a great swimmer. I splash about a lot, but never really go anywhere. Anyway, what I saw this morning was mind-blowing. It was like the first time I’d been to the theatre or stood up by myself on ice skates. Something inside me sang and I felt totally peaceful and full of curiosity and hope. I know that sounds silly, but it’s how I felt.

I porpoised about in the water and followed the other girls fingers with my eyes and was continuously amazed. We saw blowfish, black and white clownfish, triggerfish, angelfish, sharks and loads and loads of Nimo’s Dory. This was all just outside of the villas. And we were the only ones on the beach. WHY?! Why aren’t there hundreds of people in the water?

From this first encounter I was hooked and Bernie signed me up to go out on the boat to the big reef a few hours later.  I was super-excited when I boarded the boat and took my seat next to a girl with candy floss hair. Our guide told us to stay seated until we reached the reef and proceeded to try and tell us about the types of fish we might see and how far out to swim. One of the other people, whose name I found out was Foo, stood up in the middle of our guide’s explanation and tried to get to the front of the boat. All of his friends started to laugh. The guide asked him to stay seated and he plopped down like an angry child, not in his seat, but at the feet of our guide. At this stage I realized that I was about to have no fun on this trip and most likely going to try and drown someone.

Our lovely guide proceeded to try and tell us more about the fish, but Foo wouldn’t shut the hell up and refused to keep his ass touching a surface, so our guide gave up. My heart broke a bit for him as he must have such an incredibly hard job and these jackasses couldn’t even be bothered to shut up for five minutes to listen to the advice, which of course could save their lives.

I was one of the first off the boat armed with Bernie’s underwater camera and a belly full of expectations. What I saw dwarfed any of my preconceptions. Coral for miles. All different kinds, colors, textures and I imagine from the way the fish were nibbling, flavors. There were red fish and blue fish and neon-finned fish and big lethargic fish and quick nimble fish. Fish that came at me for a closer look and fish that swam faster away form me than they would a predator. I was having such a nice, peaceful, meditative time under the water until CRASH!

The water exploded around me and dropped a curtain of bubbles and foam. The beautiful creatures I’d been observing all disappeared. I turned my own head to see Foo, having cannon balled into the sea now flailing around like an idiot, nearly drowning himself despite the life jacket that strained around his middle. My submerged head was just shy of his jerking limbs so I swam sideways to escape him. Then, one by one, in spite of our guide’s instruction to NOT jump into the sea under any circumstances; the bodies of Foo’s crew all cut through the water amidst a cacophony of screams. Even under the water I could hear them shouting, laughing and splashing. The fish had retreated.

I lifted my head long enough to locate them all and try to get as far away from them as possible, but they were fast. Swimming backwards, the current was sweeping them my way and none of them were paying a damn bit of attention the where they were going. A young German took a flipper to the mouth as I fled further out to avoid this circus of idiocy. From behind, our guide glided effortlessly and with incredible speed towards someone on the other side of the reef. Within seconds he had retrieved the bemused explorer, sputtering on a lifesaving raft.

All this calamity made me nervous and I couldn’t catch my breath. I managed to pull myself through the waves, thick like butterscotch but nowhere as sweet. I checked as I gulped down mouthfuls getting to the boat. I boarded the vessel, dropped off the camera, grabbed a life vest and got back onto the water. These fuckers were not going to ruin this for me. I placed the open vest under my belly and kicked far out to the other side of the reef and instantly regretted not taking the camera back out with me. There were whole new shades of blue and purple, red and green. All around me and all alive. I floated like that for a good fifteen minutes before Foo and his crew came and shat on my day again.

I got back on the boat, exasperated with the behavior in the water only to find some of Foo’s crew spraying each other with a water hose and paying no mind to other people’s belongings, which they were saturating. They pulled on the pathetic contents of their speedos and then promptly all picked their noses as if it were a choreographed routine. Cursing my luck at choosing the wrong boat I waited for our departure. Our lovely guide clambered back onto the boat after having to go and fetch another of Foo’s crew who’d gone too far astray.

At this juncture Foo approached our guide and thrust his camera too forcefully at the guide’s delicate chest. “You!” Foo exclaimed and then motioned for the guide to get back into the water. The adorable guide, clearly used to this kind of treatment dropped back into the crystal waves and proceeded to dive for the beautiful photos Foo was too inept to capture himself. He did this for over 30 minutes and when he finally reappeared he was greeted with a lukewarm “thanks”.

Foo stumbled clumsily over to candy floss hair and the rest of his gang who had now all re-boarded the boat. He scrolled through the photos excitedly, all the while stomping on my foot as he shifted his massive weight with the waves. I can safely say that I did not like Foo. His presence and the presence of his awful friends nearly ruined my experience, that is until the boat started up again and Foo fell over on his face. After that the world was a beautiful place again.