After being exposed to the wonderful world of Scuba in early 2006, I realized that a 25 year career in the restaurant industry should be reserved for crazy insomniacs, with little or no respect for their health and well-being. It was not long before I qualified as an instructor, and started investigating opportunities in the Scuba industry. Val, at this point also started warming to the prospect of getting out of the rat race after being in the Training industry for many years. We both actively started looking at a number of places where we could settle, and after many months of traveling, diving and scratching around in places such as Zanzibar, Mozambique, Mexico, Malta and Australia, we decided that Thailand was our best option. We had, after all, visited here before and fell in love with the country, the people and their customs.

Our daughter Dominique at this point, had also taken up the challenge and had decided to embark on a career as a dive instructor. She too, got to the point in her life, where she realized that Island life would suit her down to the ground or “water” in this case!

I came across an advertisement for a dive shop in Thailand and we all agreed that it would be crazy for us not to investigate it further. With that, we booked our tickets, got on a plane and came to have a look. Well, the rest, as they say, is history! We arrived, loved what we saw and decided to put the wheels in motion. I stayed in Thailand to get to grips with the operation, Val went back and started planning to dispose of all of our unnecessary assets (or liabilities, depending on which way one looks at the trappings of modern society).

Dominique arrived here on December 31, 2008 and we have been in heaven ever since!