Swam with a whale shark yesterday, and it was SO AWESOME!! Definitely in the top three of coolest and most beautiful things I've ever experienced... we were out diving in the morning and it was already a great day since the visibility was awesome and it was just my dive instructor and I exploring and finding scorpion fish and blue spotted sting rays. We got back on the boat after diving and someone spotted the shark, so we all jumped in (not my first instinct, haha!) with just fins and masks and swam over to where it was! It was apparently small for a whale shark, but it was about 5 or 6 meters long, which is almost 20 feet!! We were all swimming right next to it and it was just hanging out up on top of the water and swimming all in between us... I went underwater and Bridget (my friend from South Africa) was going to take a picture of me with it in the background but then it came right on top of me and I freaked out! She isn't sure if she got the picture or not so we'll have to wait and see, but it was incredible to be right in the water with such a huge and amazing animal :)

Last night we watched the dive video since everyones course was over, and we had a few drinks at the hotel before going to Lotus, a live music bar/club a little ways down the beach. There were about ten of us, and all the people here are really cool - there are two girls from South Africa who are taking a holiday from teaching English on the mainland of Thailand, and a bunch of English guys who are super funny and sweet. Anyway, it was really fun and there was a guy playing guitar and a crazy fire show once it got later. Then we went to this other bar and I had my first bucket, which are famous in Thailand and really quite dangerous, haha! We all had much too much to drink and went dancing at some other bar and decided it was the perfect time to go for a swim in all our clothes... I also thought a guy was really cute at the first bar, but Natalie said that he was too skinny and that his torso was the same size as my thigh, so that didn't go anywhere haha. I have some battle wounds on my shins from the coral and we all had awful hangovers this morning but it was really fun :)

Just a couple days left here, and we're diving tomorrow and the next day before going to Koh Samui and then finally heading home. Love and miss everyone back in the US!