Underwater

I have taken some video while diving so I compiled some of them and added some music. Hope you enjoy! (Watch it fullscreen)

We usually don't have the camera with us so we don't have pics or video of all the stuff we have seen like the whaleshark or loggerhead turtles. The videos are taken in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Thailand. Music is Awolnation - Sail. Yeah, it's kind of overused but I like it anyways.

-Olli

Feels like normal vacation - Scubadiving in Thailand

After a nice week in Hong Kong we flew to Singapore with a plan to go dive somewhere. Most likely Indonesia. But plans change and we decided to stay one night in Singapore before flying to Phuket. Yeah, I know. Phuket is tourist hell but the flights were cheap and we wanted to do some diving near the island.

First we went to Phi Phi island. It was full of drunk and high backpackers (mostly swedish), bars and restaurants (Pilalla – ihan pilalla ;). Luckily we found a quiet place to stay. We did 7 dives there, they were average but visibility wasn't so good. We dove at King Cruiser wreck where visibility was 0.5-3 meters which is really poor for tropical waters (In Finland I think it would be normal?). On other sites we saw black tip reef sharks, turtles, sea-snake and mantis shrimps and after first dive we had private group (only we and Dive master) so it was easier to avoid other divers. We just did our own thing. Btw. Phi Phi islands are famous because of the book and movie “The Beach”. The beach movie was filmed on a beach called “Maya” on the small Phi Phi island. Maya is full of day tripper tourists during the day and we didn't care about that. But we saw it from the diving boat during surface interval. Looks nice.

The next week we spent on Raya island which is 23 km from Phuket.

It is really nice, small and quiet island. There is just a couple of hotels and restaurants. During daytime there is a lot of tourist having a day trip from Phuket. But afternoon there wasn't too many people. Raya is a little bit more expensive island so there is no backpackers around. We still had clean and nice fan room for 1000 baht (25 e) so it's not terribly expensive. We dove first time with very well known finish company, Raya Divers. We did 10 dives (one night dive) there. Diving was good and everything worked well with Raya Divers. We mostly had a private group or group with another experienced diver so we did long and slow dives. Just the way we like. Btw. We heard that the underwater scenes of the movie “Beach” were filmed in Raya island waters.

For the last week we went to Koh Tao which I guess is the most popular place to dive (or to do a dive course) in Thailand. There are about 48 dive shops on the island and diving is really cheap there. We were there 4 years ago first time and realized that business has grown since that. We chose one of the biggest company, Big Blue Divers. I have never seen so big dive school before. About 20 people every day started an open water diver course. There was training pool under our balcony and there was 2-3 groups all the time practicing their first diving skills. Anyway we had really good diving around Koh Tao. They put us to small group with other experienced divers so we had long dives (max 71minutes). All dive masters we had were excellent. We were really surprised how good diving still was there. There was a lot of coral (no damage) and reef fish. Chumpon Pinnacle was the best dive site and we saw a WHALESHARK there (also Olli saw it this time)! We also saw for example massive groupers, barracuda tornados and school of cobias (looks like a shark but isn't). We did one night dive and saw a small octopus (it's very rare there) and turtle sleeping under a rock.

Diving was really cheap, we did 11 dives and it was 700 baht / dive and we paid 300 (7,5 e) baht for nice, quiet and clean fan room / night.

We are now in Bangkok and next destination is Singapore after few days. We'll meet Olli's parents there and then go to Langkawi Malaysia together.

Merry Christmas and happy new year to all of you!

Hyvaa joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta!

-Maija & Olli

We have loads of frequent flyer miles so why not try CX first class product for "free". Pretty awesome seat! 

Fine dining at 11km altitude :)

Phi Phi Pier

Phi Phi Island Beach (not Maya, but the one on the bigger island)

Madventures: "Hajotkaa pakkaseen"

Maija's new friend

Hermit crab

Find the Scorpion fish

Coral and fish... duh...

Slightly easier to find the scorpion fish when they are hanging around on the sand. 

Nudibranch. There is a book that covers only the different kinds of nudibranch. It is thicker than a bible ... There are just soooo many different colors, sizes and shapes of these fellas.

Normally Olli dives without a wetsuit, but change is refreshing.

Maija never dives without a wetsuit!

Butterfly fish

Lionfish (can't catch these in SEAsia)

Maija is having a bath 32meters deep :)

Cleaning shrimp

Cool Mantis Shrimp. We like these guys.

Praying mantis

New York, a 16h flight and Hong Kong

We only spent three nights in New York this time. We've been in the Big Apple (does anyone call it that anymore?) once before but we haven't see all it has to offer. You could spend many weeks there and not see everything so we didn't really worry about sightseeing or anything like that as we had such a short time to visit. We simply relaxed and did our own thing. During the two full days we spent there we walked quite a lot around Manhattan. Maybe 35km altogether.

We stayed slightly north of the famous Times Square at Sheraton hotel because we got a good deal from hotwire.com. You don't know the name of the hotel when you reserve it via hotwire (only after you have paid for it), but you can figure it out quite easily. I actually never reserve anything via Hotwire if I can't figure out the name of the hotel before reserving. Anyways, in the end we paid 50USD/night less than it would have been on other sites.

Last time we were in NY we ate at Katz's Delicatessen and had two sandwiches but this time we were smarter and we only took ONE huge pastrami sandwich. It is expensive at Katz's (15USD) but well worth it. The pastrami is sooo tender. We also found an excellent deli closer to our hotel with cheap and delicious food. I have to tell that Yelp.com has proven to be pretty good at helping to find good places to eat.

Anyways, New York was just a short stop for us before flying to Asia. So on 22.11. early morning we made our way to JFK airport (I love Maija, but why do we have to be at the airport 3h before the plane leaves?!). I've BAEC Gold card so I and Maija have access to the First class lounge which in JFK is pretty crap to tell the truth. Finnair lounge in Helsinki is better even if it is "only" a business class lounge. In any case we ate some breakfast at the lounge before making our way to the boarding gate. Ahead of us was a 16h(!) flight to Hong Kong in Cathay Pacific business class. I have flown Finnair business class before but Cathay Pacific was quite something else. The service was excellent, food amazing and movie/tv-show range and selection overwhelming. The latter becomes important due to the fact that you can't sleep the whole flight anyways. In fact I only slept two hours and Maija even less...

So, we arrived to Hong Kong at 15:00 or so and with a totally screwed up jet-lag. The time difference to New York is 13 hours but at least the temperature is much better at slightly above 20 degrees compared to NY's 10 degrees.

Due to the crazy jet lag we haven't even tried to have strict plans on sightseeing or anything like that. We have taken it very slowly and not stressed about seeing as much as possible. Every day we do only one thing like visit "the peak" for sightseeing or eat at the world's cheapest Michelin star restaurant. We also discovered that our hotel, Wharney Guang Dong Hong Kong Hotel, has a proper Finnish sauna! I've been there thrice already.

I mentioned the Michelin star restaurant. It is called Tim Ho Wan and it is a very small place serving excellent food, hence the one Michelin start. We paid 193HKD (about 19EUR) for our lunch but that is only because we ordered WAY too much food. The amount of food that we ordered was enough for at least three probably four persons but we didn't know that until it was too late. The owner was really nice as well and showed us how to cut, mix and eat some of the spring or rice vermicelli rolls. He really seemed to be passionate about his food. Tip to those who want to visit: Go there before 10am because otherwise you might not get a table that day. They do not take reservations.


This is out last night in Hong Kong and tomorrow morning we will fly to Singapore and then the next day maybe to Indonesia. No plans yet, but I would really like to visit Togean Islands in Sulawesi. We will be back to HKG in January but only for two days and we will be staying in Macau instead of Hong Kong. In between we will also travel in Malaysia with my parents for few weeks. It'll be great to see them after almost half a year!

- Olli

Time's Square. Muchos turisticos...

They serve excellent sandwiches here.

Empire State tower

Long flight ahead of us...

Nice touch from the crew.

So close to Helsinki.

As a snack I asked for dumpling noodle soup. It was superb as was the red drink you see here. 

Jet-lagged?

Pretty nice views from the peak.

Views are good, but Hong Kong air quality is not the best...

This is how you order at Tim Ho Wan.

In front of Tim Ho Wan waiting to get seated.

Everything we had was excellent

Especially the pork and shrimp dumplings

Something old and something new in Costa Rica

We were in Costa Rica a little bit over year ago with our friends Philip & Amber and we loved it and had so much fun. The reason why it was on the list this time was because we had plans to go scuba diving to Cocos Island. Diving in Cocos island is extremely expensive (it's 600 km out from main land, 10 days live-abroad) so we decided to not do it this time.

Instead, we rented a car (4WD is must here in some places, roads (if there even is a road ;)) can be very bad) and did a road trip. First we checked out the Sloth Sanctuary which is rescue / rehabilitation / education center in Limon, Caribbean coast. Last time in Costa Rica we saw only one wild sloth and for me it looked like a termites nest on the tree so this time Maija wanted to make sure she really sees these lovely creatures. We took a Buttercup tour which included a boat tour on the river and then we met couple of sloths and went to sloth nursery.

We spent one night in Puerto Viejo and then drove via Turrialba to Pacific coast. In Caribbean we had heavy rain and cooler weather all the time but in Pacific coast the sun was shining and weather was hot.    We spent one day in Uvita walking on the beach and relaxing in the Flutterby house which is nice eco-hostel by the sea. They have very basic accommodation in tree houses and cabinas. We found this hostel in our last trip.

Water was very warm.

Just downloaded the new Grisham novel to Kindle

Our accommodation in Flutterby house.

We continued to north and spend one day in Hermosa beach which is very popular surfing beach. Then we drove to Monteverde Cloud Forest and did some hiking.

Playa Hermosa

Waterfall in Monteverde Cloud forest

Suspended bridge, Monteverde Cloud forest

Natural umbrella in Monteverde Cloud forest

Today we'll drive back to Alajuela which is small city near airport and tomorrow we'll fly to New York for couple of days.

-Maija & Olli

Surprisingly good diving in Cozumel, Mexico

We spent a week in the island of Cozumel near Cancun, Mexico and did ten dives there (5 days, 2 tanks / day) with Blue Magic Scuba. We didn't expect a lot but we were positively surprised how good diving was! We saw something "special" with every dive: school of black tip reefsharks (7 sharks), hawksbill and loggerhead turtles, sting and eagle rays, lobsters, seahorses, etc. There were also more and bigger reef fish than in Utila and Little Corn Island and coral were more colorful and in better condition.

Cozumel itself is quite touristic place. Huge Caribbean cruise ships (also finnish built) comes there every day and stay for one day so there is a lot of tourists during day time. Otherwise it is the low season right now. We stayed first two nights in nice boutique hotel and then moved to cheaper hostel where we got private studio apartment or 35 USD. We found cheap and good restaurants outside off tourists streets.

Hawksbill turtle and hungry angelfish

Lobster

Seahorse

Going to dive

There are huge cruise ships in Cozumel every day (excluding Sundays)

Nice wall art in the boutique hotel

Maid wants some tips in the hostel

This flag was HUGE

Strawberry Margarita 

We are now in Playa Del Carmen for two nights and then we go back to Florida for weekend before we fly to Costa Rica which is our last stop in Central America.

-Maija