Day 172! After a very chilled and productive day off it was time to get back to diving! On my night dive today… I saw some CRAZY wildlife. Easily the best night dive I’ve had so far and potentially one of my favorite dives as well. But more on that shortly!

I wasn’t on the morning boat today, so I got the chance to have another full nights sleep! But with going to bed around 10pm, I was up at 9am ready to go.

I walked into Taco Shack and was confused why it was quiet, but of course… it was way earlier in the lobby than I’d been in a while (when people would actually be up, not 6am for the morning dives).

I got a muesli bowl and while I waited, I played the owner of the hostel, Kai, in pool.

He beat me… again, but yesterday and today I’ve been very close to beating him! I’m sure I will have a couple more chances to beat him before I leave the island.

I went back to my room for a bit prior to coming back to the lobby for lunch and diving. Some packages from Lazada came in today, I got a torch, SMB (flotation device that lets boats know we’re diving), and a compass! All for wayyy cheaper than on the island, since Lazada is the Amazon of SE Asia.

It was massaman curry day for lunch, so I got to enjoy another version of it, almost two meals in a row.

Today I was assisting Hector for an advanced class. I haven’t had the chance to assist or get to know Hector much, but I was super excited to! I’ve been poking fun at him that he’s been avoiding me, and now was the chance to finally get to spend time with him!

Our class was only one person, so they were getting bang for their buck! Basically a private lesson. I was there to of course assist in whatever way I could… but also Hector wanted me to participate like I was taking the advanced course as well, which I was more than happy to do.

The advanced course for me ramped up the skills like crazy and I was looking forward to seeing how I compared to when I did the course 2 weeks ago.

Because of the weather and waves, we had to go to the small pier on the opposite side of the island. We got there early and took a taxi boat to Taco’s boat. The boat was super empty today, which was a nice change of pace from our hectic past couple of weeks.

Our first dive today was at Aow Leuk. Since this was the advanced course, the first lesson was all about proper buoyancy. Hector, myself, and Ani (the student), went to around 3 meters and practiced different buoyancy skills for 70 MINUTES!

This was a crazy long dive but it flew by. We practiced all the regular skills that I’ve done with other instructors, like frog kicking, floating Buddha, going forwards and backwards through the pvc square, etc. But Hector had more games up his sleeves.

We pushed over a line of weights with our regulator, perfectly had a string between our thumb and index finger (can’t let the string touch your fingers), and a weight passing game to practice our buoyancy with different weights at different times. There’s definitely some I’m missing, but it was an amazing class!

Hector also taught us how to dive backwards!! I’ve been waiting for this lesson and I’m so happy it was finally here. It worked some muscles I’m not used to working, but I was getting close to getting it down. It’ll be a fun skill to keep working on.

We had a bit of extra time and air to spend, so Hector also taught us how to blow O rings in different ways! This was a lot of fun.

Our second dive was nearby Aow Leuk at Hin Ngam. Here Ani worked on her navigation and led us around a beautiful coral patch. Unfortunately you can see the effects of global warming and the coral bleaching. But while we were diving around, I spotted a blue spotted eel and made sure Hector and Ani saw it too! I also spotted a giant grouper swimming through some artificial reef cubes. It was quite the navigation dive!

The dives ran a bit long, so when we got back to Taco Shack, we didn’t have a ton of time.

So I scarfed down a chicken quesadilla because the diving wasn’t done yet! Dive three of the advanced course is a night dive. I was super pumped for another night dive, they have always been some of my favorite dives thus far.

Today’s night dive was going to be a shore dive. It didn’t make sense for us to take the boat out again in the choppy waves, so we set up our equipment at Taco Shack and loaded onto the taxi to the dive site.

The night dive was at Tanote Bay. We trudged across the sandy beach as the sun was quickly setting below the horizon. We didn’t know this at the time, but we were about to set off on an incredible night dive!

Hector, Ani, and I walked into the ocean, put our fins on, and started snorkeling out to a nice spot to descend from. We dove in and were met with some pretty coral right away. Not long into the dive, I spotted another blue spotted stingray. When I got Hectors attention, it had swam around a rock, but we were still able to see it after swimming a bit further.

We saw a ton of ginormous crabs lurking around too. It was really cool to see and they were my first crabs I’ve seen underwater in Koh Tao! I’ve only really seen them wandering around on rocks.

Later in the dive Ani spotted a freaking octopus! This was my first siting of one so far! It was a lot smaller than you’d think but still pretty sizable. Maybe like 1/3 of a meter max. It quickly darted into some coral as it saw us, but after searching around it with our torches, we saw a glimpse of it again!! So cool!

We continued on and then eventually settled down on a sandy patch to put our torches to our chest and play with the bioluminescent plankton. This time, unlike white rock, was unreal. It was really close to the videos you see on social media of it being a ripple of bright blue. It was still pretty scattered around, but it was such a vibrant color and way brighter than I’ve ever seen!

We turned back around and started making our way back. On the way back we saw, what I originally thought was a giant grouper… it was a giant puffer fish!! I was so excited to see it and we spent a couple minutes just gazing at its beauty and cuteness. I think they’re one of my favorite fish to see while diving!

The final thing I spotted was something I had also never seen while diving… or ever for that matter. It was a sole fish! These fish scuttle about on the sand floor and look exactly like sand so they’re hard to see. But this one was out moving and grooving and I luckily spotted it and got Hector and Ani to check it out!

As we came up after finishing our dive, we were all blown away. The dive was amazing and we saw the most beautiful and energetic night dive. But even with our dive ending, our luck wasn’t over yet! As we were snorkeling back to the shore, Hector got super excited. And out of nowhere he found a stonefish which was completely camouflaged into the shallow rocks.

This was a super rare siting since they are so good at blending in. But they’re also a super poisonous fish. Pretty crazy it was so close to the shore.

We wrapped up a spectacular night dive and it was time to head back to Taco Shack. Tonight was karaoke night and I had to stick around and sing a song or two… or three. Also tomorrow is my friend Lina’s birthday, so we were celebrating that as well!

My friend Jos and I played some pool as well and after singing a number of songs too, I called it a night.

I have to be up tomorrow morning for a morning boat to finish assisting the advanced course. I then have an afternoon boat where I’ll be assisting an open water course with my friend Theo!

Tomorrow I’ll be hitting 40 dives (actually 42)! Which means I’ll be officially starting my Dive Master in Training. That means I have a lot to start reading and learning about in the next number of weeks. Which I’m very much looking forward to!

– Elie