The adventures of a Kon-Tiki Intern – second week

Hi, second week now and Daniel is back in the shop! This month all the male staff are saving a mustache. We are saving a mustache because November is the month to raise awareness for prostate cancer, also known as Movember. To show that we care we let our facial hair grow for a month. The one that got the biggest mustache the end of the month wins.

This Friday I was with Charlie at Sheraton, staying by the pool and offered guests to try SCUBA diving. We also were in the shop that they have at Centara, selling tours and answered to all kinds of questions. This Saturday I stayed with Mauro at our Sheraton office. Both Centara and Sheraton is pretty similar, at Sheraton we also were in the pool and then the shop. The only difference was that Sheraton offered lunch and the hotel is much bigger than Centara. But both of the places are amazing!

This Sunday me and my friend Martina went out and watched Loi Krathong at Ao Nang beach. We watched people dancing and playing music. We also dropped a Krathong down in the water to bring someone happiness and to pray for others. A Krathong is like a basket with flowers and candles, which you lit together with someone special and send off in the night as the tide is turning. People also light balloons to bring luck as the rise up in the evening sky. Loi Krathong takes place on the evening on the full moon once every 12th month. In the western calendar this usually falls in November. I think this tradition is very beautiful day. Everyone is happy, it’s dark outside and there are candles and music all over town.

The adventure of a Kon-Tiki intern!

Hello! My name is Daniel Nilsson and I am the new intern at Kon-Tiki here in Thailand. My intern started two weeks ago and I am going to be here until the 20-12-13. During my time here I have been in the shop, copying papers, marked fins and talked to customers, cleaned the windows and helped out in any way I could. But this isn’t all I have done, I have also been on some of the boat tours, assisting the snorkel and dive guides, helped the guest to find equipment that fits them, like mask and fins. I am going to write on this blog once a week and talk about what I experience and what I am doing. I hope you will continue reading about my time here at Kon-Tiki.

Kon-Tiki Krabi´s International Beach Clean Up – 2013

As with all the previous years we always look forward to September with excitement, the clean-up day is here.

We prepared ourselves with all necessary equipment like rubbish bags, gloves, fruit and drinks, data sheet, 1^st aid kit and of course all of the prizes from our generous sponsors. After all the banners were in place, prizes displayed, rubbish bags and information posters were in place, we got started.

We welcomed all of our volunteers, dive guests, KRABI tourist police, and a team of almost 14 people from Macro, Paulo, the owner from Long tail boat restaurant, and some tourists. All in all we were about 50 people gathering rubbish on Ao Nang beach, willing to make an impact for the environment.

Everyone got divided into teams and was provided 1 big rubbish bag, 1 big ice bag (for more dangerous materials) and latex gloves to use when picking up all the garbage with. We also informed and provided our collectors with data sheets from Project AWARE, so we could record all of our findings. This information will send to Project AWAREs database, being an important tool for Project AWARE, as they lobby different governments on what is happening and how the environment is affected. But also to keep statistics if we get more or less debris as the years goes by.

The day was a great success and just this morning we managed to collect 106 kg of rubbish in just 2 hours.

To make it more exciting for our volunteers we made the day in to a small contest with our sponsors handing out the following prizes.

1^st prize – Aqualung Departure bag (value of 6890 baht) donated from Aquamaster in Phuket

2^nd prize – Dinner for two at Carnivore Steak & Grill (value of 2000 baht) & Pepeete Snorkeling set from One Stop

3^rd prize – Mix of swimming goggles, rash guard from One Stop and many different items from Blue Mango Restaurant

There were of course the Project AWARE diplomas, as well as other small handout to other participants, like the Krabi tourist police and to MACRO who all helped out with the beach cleaning.

It was a perfect day with small glimpses of sun, even though the rain was pouring down on us.

Kon-Tiki Krabi would like to send a big thank you to our Sponsors

More happenings coming up in high season, so keep posted for “Dive for Earth” and “Divers Night”!!

Kon-Tiki Krabi

Kon-Tiki Krabi´s Instructors is swimming for the sharks!

Yesterday we showed the world that we take the fight for the sharks by implement our Finathon.

What is the Finathon™? Like a swimathon, fun run, cycle race or marathon – the Finathon is a great way to bring the community together, raise awareness and funds to support this unique cause. With your help and support can we:

Fight to stop shark finning

Insist on full protections for critically endangered sharks

Negotiate stronger policies to ensure a brighter future for all sharks

Shark fishing is largely unregulated around the world. Overfishing, bycatch and finning – the cutting of sharks fins and throwing away the body at sea – kills thousands of sharks every day. Project AWARE has recently helped close loopholes in the EU finning ban and secure international trade protections for 8 of the world’s most vulnerable sharks and rays. But, to ensure the survival of sharks, stricter, enforceable controls are needed for more species at national, regional and global levels.

Two of our finest instructors accepted the challenge to swim for Ao Nang beach to Poda Island if we raised 500$ but we didn’t reach all the way to our goal and ended up at a little bit over 300$. But our instructors still felt that they had to do something, they swam from Ao Nang beach, pass Tonsai beach to Railey west and then ending up at Phra Nang Beach, a distance of around 4.5 kilometer in the time of two hours and forty minutes in rain and wavy weather.

We at Kon-Tiki Krabi would like say thanks to all people who donated money to our event and help us spread: Extinction is not an option!

If you want to take action and fight for the sharks, you can find more information about how you can make a different at http://www.projectaware.org/

 

 

The last adventures of Kon-Tiki Trainee Iman

My last week started at Sheraton with Therese, where it was very quiet, but it was very nice to be with Therese and I will thank her very much for the nice time with her.

Then I was in the shop with Ida and there was the same very quiet, but a lot more thing to do. On Wednesday it was the 5 Pearls and with Ida it was very sunny day and I helped her with the briefing and thanks for everything Ida I had very fun with you. All the other days i have been at the boat and of course that is the best thing. Thanks you Kon-Tiki Krabi and all their staff to have made my 3 week for the best weeks ever. Nikko yes you are one of the beast snorkel instructors, but Conny is better hahah ;D
Johan thanks that you made my last day the best diving day 🙂

Iman, a Kon-Tiki trainee from Real Gymnasiet in Malmø.