Day 167! Today is the last day for this advanced scuba diving course… but it’s the end of doing 7 dives straight! This is such an exhausting hobby and diving every day is A LOT. But I’m enjoying it and trying to take care of my mental and physical health! Also today… I saw my first puffer fish!! But more on that to come.

Today was started off pretty slow. After 5 dives the previous day I was super tired. But I still had a morning dive to do to finish off the advanced class I was assisting.

So I went to Taco to start my day.

We were on the dive point boat again. The boat wasn’t leaving till 8:30am but we still had to leave with the Taco taxi. So once we were at the pier we set up our equipment and then went to a nearby cafe to hang until it was time to leave.

This group of divers had been super fun to work with so far and I’m glad I got to do my first advance assist with them!

Today was just fun dives with the advanced group. So we got on the boat and set out for the first dive of the day, HTMS Sattakut, the shipwreck.

On this dive we took the divers to around 30m. Theo brought an egg with him, which cracked on my advanced dive so I was excited to see what happened… and… it basically compressed into just the yolk and it floated around like a ball in the air. It was super cool and we passed it around by pushing the water.

We then dove around the shipwreck and on this dive I saw my first puffer fish! It wasn’t any old puffer fish, it was a GIANT puffer fish. This guy was easily 3 or 4 feet long, it was so cool!

We had a nice 34 minute dive and reach 29.4m!

The second dive of the morning was at my favorite site, White Rock. Theo then asked me if I wanted to guide the dive site… I was a bit surprised and I think he could see it in my eyes and I politely declined this time. But after doing the dive, I think I’ve been here enough times to find my way around, especially with an instructor with me!

Theo did make me draw out the map and use it to mark down landmarks I saw and help orient me on the dive site too. I also correctly drew out route on it after the dive.

During the dive, I was also on GoPro duty! One of the students had a GoPro and since Theo wanted their hands free, it was my responsibility to, A. Not lose the GoPro and B. Take cool videos of the fish, coral, and divers!

This dive ended up being 52 minutes! It was insane, 10 more minutes than our night dive here… and we reached a depth of 17.6m. It was such a fun dive!

We then went back to Taco and enjoyed some celebratory gin and tonics. I also had a chicken quesadilla!

It was then time for a nap! 7 dives in basically 24 hours was a lot and I was ready to pass out.

After a nice and long nap, I went to a dive shop to invest in a better pair of dive boots. My current pair are not kind to my feet and I want to make sure my feet are happy! They’re quite important.

After finding the winners, I went back to Taco for dinner, then took another nap, and then went back to Taco to host the pub quiz!

Yi, the night manager, asked if I could help and I was more than happy to… but afterwards I was very ready for bed.

Diving has really taken it out of me, but it’s been a really rewarding exhaustion. I’m seeing some amazing sights and getting to explore a whole new world I never knew about! I’ll have a day off soon when I’ll fully get to recover. But until then, it’s time to sleep, eat, and hydrate as much as I can!

– Elie