My friend Mike from Thailand was diving in the ocean of Saipan

Mike mailed me this last week

Saipan - Diving the Grotto I went to Saipan last week to visit my daughter and her two sons. I took some time off to scuba dive The Grotto, one of the most interesting dive sites I've ever experienced. I first dove The Grotto in 1980 with the legendary local diver, Ben Concepcion.

The Grotto is a collapsed marine cave. You enter The Grotto by hiking down over one hundred steps through what was once the cave's roof. At sea level there is a huge rock which serves as a diving platform. There are three underwater passages from The Grotto to the open sea.

Please take a look at all Mike's pics!! and please give a comment, I will sent him all!! He will like it!!

The man from the other side

This last message on my web log for 2008 is a little note dedicated to my dear friend Mike.
5 years and 6 months ago, on the first of June 2003 I was browsing through some webcamsites to take a look at places as far away as possible. I found a homecam on the isle of Saipan, in the Pacific Ocean. I thought that was about the farthest place I could find, on the so called “other side”.
I saw orchids in a garden and a tropical pond. The webcam owner had a reaction form on his site, so I decided to leave a little message. Here’s what I posted:
Your Garden Looks Wonderful.Greetings From Henk
( I Live In Groningen Holland)
The answer came in a few minutes:
Hi Henk, Thanks for writing and thanks for your kind words. If you ever get to Saipan we'll have a beer on the porch. Mike.
We continued talking because we both had lots of questions and stories to share.
Over the last 5,5 years a lot has happened. Mike lives in Korat, Thailand now, with his wife Pat. We mailed each other about 800 times each and when we take special pictures we show them to each other. Our annual snail-mail Christmas gifts have become a good habit.
In the mean time we became 5,5 years older. Mike is retired. I’m not, unfortunately. But we’ve both gotten wiser, that’s for sure.
Mike, despite of the fact that it is sometimes hard for me to say the things I’d like to say, in a language that’s not my native language, I’d like to tell you that I really hope that we’ll continue writing. I think we’ve snet that many messages because of the fact that we like this way of communication very much. Have a very good time in Bangkok next week and tell me about it in the New Year.

Take care and kind regards from your friend Henk in Groningen (also the other side!)
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