Marco-YOLO

Diving in Phuket

Phuket, Thailand - Beachy stuff, scuba diving and underwater photography. I got to do my first wreck dive on the King Cruiser wreck. That’s me jumping in the water above.

Fair warning. Lionfish may not let you use the restroom on King Cruiser!

Bangkok, Thailand – Jarisara and Tsvetan’s wedding at the Mandarin Oriental.  We also went wat-hopping and did other touristy stuff.

Siem Riep, Cambodia – Fun times on Pub Street. I also walked into a Buddhist temple’s attached dormitory and helped some young monks with their English homework.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia – A spectacular ruin of one of the largest pre-industrial cities in the world. That’s me at the bottom of the first image.

Posing with friends in front of ruins at Angkok Wat.

This was a 10 day road trip along California’s famous coastal highway in a convertible.

San Francisco – Met up with old Capital One friends, Tsvetan and Jarisara, for lunch, took my cousin Alizeh, a freshman at UC Berkeley, to dinner, and did some tourist stuff again.

Carmel – I love the vibe of this town, relaxed and happy, a great place for the low-key kind of Dolce Vita.  It was also near Pebble Beach, which was cool to see.

Hearst Castle – This may be the coolest building I’ve seen in the US. The beauty and opulence of this mega-mansion is something to behold and crown jewel for m was the pool, maybe the most iconic in the world.

Pismo Beach – Just a stopover, nothing special.

Los Angeles – LA is a fairly known quantity so not much to say. At Colleen’s behest, we took a TMZ bus tour, which was the corny guilty-pleasure type fun you’d expect it to be. I also rode a mechanical bull for the first time and did miserably.

San Diego – Nice city by the bay. Highlight here was a shore dive into the kelp forest off La Jolla. It was my first cold water dive so I was wearing a 7-9mm wetsuit with hood, gloves and shoes. The hood confused a playful seal (photo below) who initally though I was a giant awkward seal, but even after he figured out we weren’t seals, he still hung out with with us for several minutes. But the oddest thing was being 40-50 feet under water and seeing birds swimming by you like rockets. Cormorants seem remarkably at home under water for a flying species, and the amazing thing is some Cormorants can dive to three times that depth!