Day 152! Just like that! 3 days of diving, 6 dives in total and one of them going down to 30m below sea level… it’s been a wild three days but I’m now officially certified to scuba dive with a buddy! It’s pretty wild that I can now just go dive with another person, but for now I’ll stick to diving with a guide or instructor…

My alarm went off at 6am… the earliest I’ve been up in a while (outside of my visa run). Today was the final day of my open water certification and immediately the excitement started coursing through me.

I got ready and made my way over to the Taco Shack lobby. I was the first one to arrive and I waited for a bit before others finally awoke and came out of bed.

This morning didn’t have many divers, in fact, it was almost just a whole boat for myself, Franco, Lydia, and Marte. There was one fun diver and a couple other Dive Masters as well.

Around 6:50am we made our way to the dock andddd our boat was nowhere nearby… apparently the captain had fallen asleep!

The dive coordinator flagged down a small speed boat and they went and woke our captain up!

Eventually it came around and by this point we were a bit behind schedule. This actually came to our advantage later.

We hopped on the boat and set off to our first dive site, Sattakut. At this dive site, there’s a sunken WWII battle ship, which was a gift from the US.

Normally, we’d only be able to go down to 25ish meters with the open water certification. But since Franco thought Marte and I were prepared, he suggested we pay a little more so we could go down to 30m and get certified to dive that deep anywhere in the world!

So we got our gear ready, strapped it on, and went into the ocean to dive very deep.

This dive was INCREDIBLE! We started descending into the depths of the ocean and I started having a mild anxiety spike, like yesterday. But since yesterday had happened, I knew better how to deal with it!

After getting over that we met the ocean floor and saw some amazing sea life and a really cool submerged ship.

We got to swim around the ship and even got to go through the captains quarters! There’s even more to explore of this ship, but that requires a ship wreck penetration course… maybe someday.

We saw beautiful coral, clown fish popping in and out of sea anemone, ginormous groupers, and many colorful fish I don’t know the names of. Marte and Lydia saw a spotted stingray moving about… but neglected to tell Franco and I unfortunately.

We also saw schools of hundreds (if not thousands) of fish, it was crazy!

Hitting 30m was pretty surreal, ESPECIALLY only after diving for 3 days. The colors of my wristbands faded due to absorption (lack of sunlight), the temperature got a bit cooler, and there was so much more to see.

The visibility started out a little bad… but then it became crystal clear. It was really cool and I was enjoying myself to the max!

By the time I surfaced from the dive I had around 15 bar left of air out of my almost 200 I started with… cutting it a bit close but my instructor wasn’t too concerned! It just made me have to work even harder to stay within the decompression limit on our safety stop (you need to stay under 4m and above 6m for 3 minutes to help release the nitrogen from your body).

We got out of the water and unpacked our gear and then headed up to the top deck to relax, debrief, and enjoy a little picnic of snacks we brought since we left so early.

Franco saw me using proper buoyancy so he challenged me to take off a weight from my belt, bringing me down to only three! This felt really good, since only two days ago I was wearing 7!

We hung out on the boat for a bit, letting our bodies rest before our next dive. The next dive site wasn’t that far away. We were going to dive at white rock again!

This dive wasn’t going to be as deep, only 17m, but it was going to be a bit longer since the air would not be consumed as fast.

We swam around fascinating corals, swimming through small cracks between massive walls of coral and even a cave! Depth perception is a bit skewed under the ocean (things are around 33% larger), but Marte and I did a great job keeping up with the pace Franco set and the challenges he put infront of us!

After 41 minutes under water, which flew by, we resurfaced and Marte and I were officially open water certified!

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of me under the water, but I do have another course coming up soon, so hopefully I will get some then!

We went back to the hostel, where we cleaned off our gear and hung it up to dry. Then to celebrate, a group of us went out for breakfast!

Marte, Ami, Pi, Albert, Till, Lydia, Olly, and I enjoyed a cheap (but good) meal at a restaurant called Bingo. It was Marte and my first time there but everyone else had been here many times and I saw why!

After a very nice meal, I headed back to the hostel to do my volunteering duties until 2pm. But before getting to the hostel, I stopped by 7-Eleven to top off my SIM card, because it had been a month since I last got it! Time is flying!

I hung out in the lobby playing a ton of pool and chatting with the travelers who were just arriving. We had a lot of people coming and going today, so it was fun meeting all of them! I also helped a few people take their bags to their room too, which the staff rarely needs help doing.

2pm rolled around and I was starving again! I guess swimming with heavy equipment for hours would do that…

I got a chicken burrito before heading to my room to shower and nap.

I ended up needing the afternoon to myself. I was drained and had a pretty low social battery. So I sat in my bed and watched a few hours of The Last of Us.

When 7pm rolled around, I got out of my cocoon and went to do my nighttime volunteering. Today was technically my day off, but since I took pretty much the last 3 days off, I decided to obviously still help out.

I played some smashball with a few travelers I’m friends with, Holly from Australia, Travis from England, and Alice from England.

I then ate… again.

And after scarfing down my meal while chatting with a couple new travelers, I hosted another successful trivia night!

We had 6 teams that all battled hard, but in the end by a half a point, one team won.

I think trivia night is one of my favorites but karaoke night gives it a run for its money and that’s what we have planned for tomorrow!

I ended the night by playing a few more games of pool and then crawled into bed. I promptly passed out which is why this blog post was a little delayed… but it had been a long and tiring day!

I am so pumped to be scuba certified! This was never really a bucket list item of mine… but it sure is now! I can’t wait to see what the advanced course has in store for me, but I’ll definitely need a couple of days to recover from the past three days of diving. I’m very excited to add another fun skill to my list!

– Elie