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It is also wine, cigars and good food! The Frog is coming to town in a week (or two).

Udom Porn, our third boat, is back from the shipyard. After a slight face lift she is now much more comfortable compared to last year, and we got more tank racks. By making the windows possible to open we lost the sauna down stairs though. And for divers in distress she now offers TWO toilets! We tried to figure out what Udom Porn actually means, and the closest we get is "Big blessing". Of course our western dive masters and instructors with their degenerated humour calls her "The Love Boat"!!!

We did open the shop on the 15th of October, and we went on our first dive trip for the season on the 21st. But we can?t really claim that we opened until we had the yearly Grand Opening Party on the street outside the shop. And this time it was a little bit special as it was the 10th opening party in Lanta diver history. Lots of people were invited and even more people came. Mia and Lee made sure that 130+ guests got enough food and beer. I am afraid that the event is best described through Brendons photos from yesterday evening. Especially note the portrait technique he used, where he wanted people shake their heads roughly when he took the photo. Why? Because this is the kind of thing Brendon finds funny!!

For different reasons, I choose to blame technical difficulties, it has been a little bit up and down with this blog. I am still trying to keep it updated, even if it divingwise is same same. The diving is OK considering it is October but the rain keeps pooring down. It is still quiet but we have to keep in mind that the season doesn't really start until the 1st of November. Maj-Britt and I are in Bangkok to get some stuff including a new pick up truck. The truck we picked up today and was happy for approx 3 hours untils someone managed to make a half meter long scratch on it on a parking lot. That's the reason of the "double Arrgh" in the title. Otherwise life treats us fair.

F****ing computers, Windows, internet in general and myself in particular!! I went up 5.45 this morning to avoid to long time between the blogs. It is now 8.45 and the computer just decided to restarted itself. Did I push the freaking save button once during the last three hours? No!! Did I turn on the auto recovery in Windows? No!! Did it happen a lot the last few days to write about? Yes!! Did I write long colorful descriptions in both English and Swedish about this?? Yes!! Will you ever know about it?? No, because I will not rewrite it one more time as in order to avoid throwing my laptop in the pool or in the wall I will spend my day as far away from my it as possible!!!!

8 am, Octobre 1st, 2008 our tenth diving season started. Lanta diver 1 (that means our ?big? boat) left our pier, of course with the traditional firework, heading for Koh Ha. The diving? Not a clue as I am right now in an hotel room in Phuket and didn?t get any reports at all. Tomorrow we are going to Koh Bida.

Our dive centre in Saladan is looking more and more like a real shop each day now. It feels good to be the one to announce that the old faithful brownish half collapsed wooden shelf has at last found it's righful place - the garbage dump! It is with slightly moist eyes that we are now admiring our brand new creation, design Emma Watson.  Almost makes us feel like shopping ourselves!

??..or maybe on the blog! Teddie arrived on the 15^th of October with the moral support of web master Johan and a bit more steadfast help from Caroline. A few minutes later he, that is Teddie, had his own website www.teddie.nu and to be on the safe side also an email address. Our guess is that he within one year will have 5 cameras, a non working strobe, eat chocolate balls, have seen around 15 countries and about twice that amount of airports,  be a  single handicap golfer, have dived with sharks, bought a new car at least twice and he will now exactly how to handle grammatical irregularities. However, we would like to announce that there already is a semi militant group formed which ? if Caroline should buy one single pink garment for the lad, - immediately will abduct him and place him in black neoprene therapy. Brendon is toying with the idea of making a new tech diver outline and to sign off the world?s first junior Tech diver. Eck is working 24-7 in order to fill a baby bottle to at least 100 bar. By using the bladders from two giant Tunas he has already produced Lanta divers first BCD made out of 100% natural material. As it has proved rather difficult to find equipment in Teddies size we are grateful for all forthcoming ideas as long as they are not PINK!

Apart from this we would like to congratulate both the new parents on becoming parents as well as Teddie to his choice of mum and dad. We nicked a couple of photos from Teddie.nu and hope this is OK.

The website has been up for a few days now but as we are busy starting up the rest of the stuff as well we almost haven't had time to check it ourselves yet. But this evening I checked the guestbooks and found many "good old friends" been there already. The majority Swedish......! Isn't it time to change that?

Thomas, Patrik, Henrik, Rohan Carys, Egg and May, Erika, Cazza, Bamon and Per have now joined Ulf and Maj Britt, Queen, Marie and Brendon who were here already. Soon we have enough for a good party!

A new hole in the wallA new star on the Saladan restaurant map! Many of you already know Preecha, , the friendly and jolly owner of Park Way the restaurant across the street from Lanta Diver. Now he has opened a small restaurant right opposite Lanta Diver. Three tables and a 50 course menu. A great place which might at times get a bit crowded if more than 12 persons try to fit in at the same time. Preccha serves also serves breakfast, cocktails ans has a wine list containing all the wines from Jit Minimart next door. Well worth a visit!

Breaking news, our beloved old boat Macha Nou has now been retired and replaced by a gleaming white 36 foot 400 horsepower fiberglass Steppa Craft. For the past ten years we have said that we do not like fast boats. However, after a test run outside Phuket Yacht Haven Ulf and Maj britt decided that we were not above changing our minds and ideas, this was serious fun! We have been working on a whole load of professional, businesslike explanations in order to warrant this decision but somehow, deep down we can not deny that the real truth about the acquisition is the fact that it that the boat is really cool! And that is a reason as good as any!

Breaking news, our beloved old boat Macha Nou has now been retired and replaced by a gleaming white 36 foot 400 horsepower fiberglass Steppa Craft. For the past ten years we have said that we do not like fast boats. However, after a test run outside Phuket Yacht Haven Ulf and Maj britt decided that we were not above changing our minds and ideas, this was serious fun! We have been working on a whole load of professional, businesslike explanations in order to warrant this decision but somehow, deep down we can not deny that the real truth about the acquisition is the fact that it that the boat is really cool! And that is a reason as good as any!

Some people might argue that the old website was quite OK, and the need for a face lift was more a matter of looking in the mirror than at lantadiver.com.
However, our old habit to of avoiding mirrors and the fact that a website facelift was a) cheaper and b) felt safer (At least if left in Web master Johan Almblads capable hands) made us stick to the web site alternative. So WELCOME to our brand spanking new web site. We don?t for a minute think that you will not find a bunch or errors here and there, but we trust you will let us know. The fact that we wrote all the text and that we checked everything forwards and backwards doesn?t change the fact that all complaints will immediately be forwarded to Johan, while we ourselves will take credit only for positive feed back.

A revolutionary change is that the old diary (which we usually updated once every second month) will now be called a ?Blog?. We don?t really understand the difference but it sounds much more 21st century compared to Diary which has a pinkish, teenage, girlish tone about it.