Day 173! Oof! I fell behind a bit… but no worries, I’ll get back up to the current day soon enough. Today was another full day of diving, so let’s get to it!

Today was another day of double boat diving… and if you forgot what that is, it means two dives very early in the morning and two dives directly after in the evening.

This morning, I was finishing up assisting an advanced course with my friend and Taco Divers instructor, Hector.

The last day of the advanced course is a wreck dive and a deep dive (sometimes all in one).

The dives this morning were to HTMS Sattakut and White Rock. Two sites I’ve frequented a lot over the past couple of weeks.

For our first dive we hit 28.2 meters and stayed under for 40 minutes! We cruised around the ship wreck, showed Nia what it was like to go deep into the ocean, and then made our way around some corals before heading back to the boat.

Since it was only Nia in the class, we were dive buddies for these dives. This gave me the chance to enjoy the dive and also be right there to make sure she was all good during the entire dive.

The second dive was to White Rock, one of my favorite dive sites in Koh Tao. This dive was around 13m and we dove around the ocean for over 50 minutes! The visibility wasn’t the best on this dive, but we still saw sting rays and a number of types of fish.

The weather was starting to get bad today, which caused lots of waves and poor visibility. But that didn’t stop us from having a couple of fun dives!

With that, we had another certified advanced diver! It was also time for me to quickly eat lunch, as I was getting right back into another set of dives.

Now unfortunately, because of the weather, our motorbikes were at different piers than the boat. So we all hopped into the taxi and had a very tight squeeze of a ride to the pier. This time, not on top of the taxi.

In the afternoon, my dives were again with Hector! He was stuck with me all day. An open water course was starting and I was assisting him.

We started off our dives at Aow Leuk, where we took each student through the basic set of skills. Before we hopped in the water though, I got to explain to the new students all about how to unpack and set up their equipment! It’s pretty cool that I’m at a point now where I can effectively explain how to properly start a dive.

We spent an hour and 3 minutes in very shallow waters going over the basic skills like air sharing, lost regulator, mask removal, etc. My responsibilities haven’t changed a ton since now “officially” starting my DM, but I now have to mimic the instructor while they are teaching so I can eventually be ready to teach refresher courses in a number of weeks.

I also was still sheep herder and had to make sure the students were okay and paying attention.

After Aow Leuk, we went a minute to the other side of the bay to a dive spot called Hin Ngam. Here we spent the next 36 minutes putting the skills into action. This was just a “fun” dive for the students and I trailed behind them as we went to almost 12m and showed them cool corals and fish.

Unfortunately the visibility on this dive was even worse than the morning dive, but all of the students were stoked to be taking the course and excited for day two!

I personally was very excited for a nap and dinner. So I quickly took a nap and made my way to the Taco Shack lobby for a chicken quesadilla.

I was joined by Hector, Chris, and Kit as well! This wasn’t just for a nice dinner, but Chris wanted to meet with Kit and I to have an official meeting as new DMTs. He’s our instructor/mentor through this process and he wanted to make sure the expectations were clear on both sides of the course.

Some of the new expectations were, getting to the pier before the taxi, always helping people take bags on and off the boat, making sure all students made it on and off the boat safely, and when entering and leaving a dive site be a pair of eyes to watch out for divers bubbles below the ship.

We told Chris that we expected constructive criticism, updates on our progress and how we’re doing, and to help us get to a point where we can take this to a professional level!

It’s going to be a fun, challenging, and exhausting couple of months!

Kit and I then went to join our friends in celebrating our friend Lina’s birthday! They were all at High the Moon, which is a sunset spot. We were a bit after sunset but it was still a very enjoyable evening!

A huge storm rolled through, trapping us at high the moon longer than expected. But we made the most of it by chatting and playing mafia, a game I haven’t played in years!

We eventually escaped the restaurant and made our way out and about the rest of the night and stayed up far later than I had expected.

But a fun night nonetheless!

– Elie