Jet Lag for Babies and Scuba Diving Thailand

Week one of our trip abroad is in the books, and it was wonderful. We have been scuba diving Thailand, and trying to figure out how to deal with jet lag for babies. One of the above has been amazing, and the other… not so much.

We arrived in Thailand on Saturday, February 13th. If you missed it, my last post (‘Cheap Flights to Thailand’) was all about the ins and outs of the trip over. But, that’s behind us now… Anyway, the first part of our week was spent in Karon Beach on Phuket Island. It was a great little place. The beach is gorgeous, with really nice snorkeling right at the south end of the beach. Although it is touristy, it’s not even close to Patong Beach just up the road. From the first day we arrived, I was reminded of everything I love about Thailand. It can only be described as ‘organized chaos’. Somehow it all just works; from the complete chaos of mopeds zooming roadways, to the ridiculous number of power lines buzzing in your ear at seemingly very low heights, and the numerous street vendors selling the same goods as the booth next to them, to the amazing food carts selling their delicious food for $0.28 – $2.24 USD… it’s all different from our normal, but it’s a very good different.

15 hours ahead… that’s the time difference between California and Phuket. I’ll do some simple math for you. Back home when Freya goes to bed at 8:00pm, in Thailand it is 11:00am (the next day). Or, in reverse, when we are trying to put Freya to bed in Thailand at 8:00pm, it is 5:00am back home… that’s is just an hour or so before her normal wake up time. This has been problematic!

We have Googled ‘jet lag for babies’, and ‘jet lag remedies’, and really only found one source (http://travelmadmum.com) that described jet lag for babies and a true remedy: it sucks, but tough it out. The first two days Freya woke up too many times to count during the night, and then decided that 5:00 – 5:30 it was time to get up. I took long walks around the town super early in the morning, but it was a great way to see a lot of our surroundings without the heat of the day beating down. After the second night in Karon Beach Jannika and I started alternating nights. She or I sleep in one room with Frey Frey, and the other would sleep in the second room with my mom. Freya has been getting progressively better, but she still isn’t fully sleeping though the nights. We’ll get there.

Since my mom is with us for the first three weeks of our travels abroad, this first leg of our trip is all about scuba diving Thailand. We’re trying to get as many dives in together as we can while my mom is here to watch Freya during the day. In our first week in Thailand Jannika has logged 7 dives, and I have logged 8 because I did a night dive one night (it was Jannika night to sleep with Freya). It has been amazing. Our first three dives were booked out of a dive shop in Karon Beach. It was a 3-dive day trip with our own dive master, just to get our feet wet and get a good refresher before doing some tougher dives. It was a great day, but the dive boats are packed! Throughout most of Phuket, dives companies go out of the same pier (Ao Chalong), and it is absolute chaos… organized chaos, bordering on sheer clusterf**k. Picture hundreds of tourists and scuba divers trying to follow their respective tour leader or dive master through the crowds of other chickens with their heads cut off. Dive masters are frantically trying to find the gear their supposed to have for each diver, but there are hundreds of divers going to different dive sites, on different boats, but sometimes from the same dive shop… our dive master threw up his hands and said, “Well I hope your stuff gets on the right boat.” It did. Problem averted. Dive on!

After our first five nights in Karon Beach, we took a ferry over to the Phi Phi Islands and booked dives from there. Dives from the Phi Phi Islands are 1) on smaller, less crowded boats, 2) quick half-day trips because the dive sites are much closer, and 3) way cheaper!  The visibility has been great (up to 60 feet in some areas), and the currents have been very tame, making for some long and relaxed dives. We have seen an amazing array of marine life, including our first sharks! There were a number of black tip reef sharks off Bata Nai Island, which is just south of Koh Phi Phi Lee. My mom and I booked a sunset snorkel and dinner cruise one evening, and I even saw a black tip reef shark while snorkeling in Maya Bay (that’s where the movie The Beach was filmed, as every single tour shop in Phi Phi will point out).

Well, the journey continues, and there will be more scuba dives logged in the next two weeks. Scuba diving in Thailand is so cheap. I’ll keep you posted on Freya. She continues to be a ‘tourist attraction’ by herself. She’s a tourist, locals are attracted to her. She gets a lot of oooohs and aaaahs, so she loves walking the streets and blowing kisses to the shop owners. She has also grown fond of the stray cats.