Today marked the opening of the Thailand Travel & Dive Expo , the largest travel show in Thailand. Along with official show supporters TAT, Wahoo Travel, PADI, and DAN SEAP, FiNS was invited to take part in the Opening Ceremony. In practical terms, this entailed having FiNS contributor Tony Wu go up on stage and do his best (unsuccessfully) not to look silly.

TDEX is a 4-day event, with literally hundreds of thousands of visitors. Even the first day, a Thursday, was crowded at times.

Quite a few booths were popular right from the get-go.

And of course the best part of this show is all the friends we were able to catch up with.

We also met up with Danny Wang, who together with his friend Zulkarnain Ng, recently published a new 160-page coffee table book called Deep Secret, a compilation of photos from the past 10 years of diving together. According to Danny, the pair published this book to “Thank the resorts who supported us, and also the many friends we’ve made. We have a dream of bringing people together through our mutual passion, and hope that everyone who sees our book will realise that it’s possible to realise any dream if you put your mind to it.” The book is available for S$85. For more information, please contact Zul: design@2blancom.com

Finally, after a very busy, long and successful first day, we grabbed a late supper with three of the Fabulous Five publishers of Pocket Divesite guidebooks in pink and orange T-shirts, mutual friend Nguang (blue shirt) and Jenny Lee from Roach’s Reefs resort in Sabah (brown polo shirt). Great noodles and lots of jokes, then we all headed off to crash and recover for Day Two.

Stay tuned for more.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 11:55 pm and is filed under FiNS News.