They say pictures are worth 1000 words. Well, I'm screaming those 1000 words right now, and it sounds something like this: "Woooohoooo!" In a move that some might view as dad pushing son into something, I'm here to say that's not the case. I have never told David he had to go SCUBA diving. (Was I hoping David would like SCUBA? Yep. Very much.)  In fact, we just happened upon an opportunity about a month ago when we were staying in Pattaya for a family weekend at a new hotel with a waterpark. When David and I were swimming together one day, a local dive shop had set up in the pool and were offering 30 minutes of blowing bubbles in the pool for 500 Baht. David said he wanted to try it. Who am I to stop my son from trying SCUBA. He liked it so much he wanted to do it again the next day. I say it's the best 500 Baht I've ever spent. (Yes...you could argue I spent 1000 Baht. But Devin was with David the second day...so she spent 500 Baht also. Details...)

We've had a family trip to Phuket planned for quite some time. This is our last big trip in Thailand before moving to Romania.  I get a few days of diving, and we planned a family snorkel trip. But after David's fun with SCUBA, I asked my friend Marcia (From Gekko Scuba Divers) if she could do a Bubblemaker with David. She called around to the dive ops here and found us a day where David could dive from the beach. (That's been an issue for David...he's been hesitant to jump into the water from a boat where it's deep.) Anyway, Marcia set up the day for us. So David's first dive was on Koh Racha Yai. The PADI specs require David to go no deeper than 2 meters. So I dove under and around David and Marcia while they dove. And Devin snorkeled around watching the whole thing. It was a very cool family moment for all of us. And David loved it. He can't wait to get more dives to fill his new Bubblemaker Log Book.