Day 175! Alright! We’re all caught up to the present now. Today was a long day… I ended up having to dive more than expected and I started to get a sinus bug. But outside of those woes, tonight was a night of celebration for the dive masters finishing up their course soon. The famous snorkel test… but more on that later!

Even after a full nights sleep I was tired this morning and starting to not feel 100%. My eye was getting better but I had a sneaky suspicion a cold was creeping up on me.

But… I had dives to do this morning! And they were pretty crazy.

We got to the pier and unfortunately, the fried chicken lady wasn’t open. So I skipped breakfast and had some cookies on the boat.

Our first dive of the day was to White Rock… but this was the worst visit to this dive site I’ve seen. It was a pretty windy morning and the visibility was the worst I’ve seen it at White Rock. We saw three blue spotted stingrays (one of which I spotted myself), but that was basically it.

I drew up a map of the dive site and brought my compass along though and followed our route. After the 46 minute dive, Hector asked me our path and I was able to show him it! It was a great feeling that even without great visibility I had an idea of what we did.

Our second dive site I tried the same thing… but this was a dive even Hector got lost on.

We went to the dive site No Name, which should have lead us to a shipwreck. But because of the current and visibility, we got off course quick. One of the students was having trouble equalizing and because of the current we got pushed off course.

We circled around a rock, that I found out later wasn’t even the original dive site, and then attempted to find the shipwreck. 30 minutes later, Hector decided to surface since we weren’t having any luck and we were running low on air.

Turns out, we were VERY far away from the boat. Now, not a distance that we couldn’t swim, but the current took us way off course. But this distance was going to be a tough swim.

The waves were pushing us like crazy and we were waving our SMB (flotation device) to get the captain of our ships attention. He radioed over to another ship nearby and they came and picked us up! I was very thankful for this because we were only halfway and I was getting tired out from all the paddling.

The Scuba Club boat came to our rescue and brought us over to the Taco boat… but because of the conditions, they just took us all the way back to the pier. Apparently a couple of the Scuba Club instructors got lost too and they were all bonding over it.

Hector told me later that this was the first time a boat had had to pick him up and only the second time he ever got lost while navigating in Koh Tao! Pretty crazy, but we were all okay.

While we were heading back, a huge storm rolled in and then just as quickly went away.

I was excited to get back and have the rest of the day off… I was definitely starting to feel sick and was really looking forward to a warm shower and a long nap.

Butttt right when I got to shore, I found out I, at some point, was put on a double boat. Maybe I had just forgotten to check before I went to bed, but sure enough, on the schedule I was put down for the afternoon as well!

As my favorite quote goes, if you can’t stop the waves, learn to surf (in this case… dive)! So I rolled with the punches and hopped back onto the boat. But first, lunch!

One of the reasons I decided to stick out the afternoon boat, even in the doom and gloom of the day, was because my friend (and instructor) Pauline was the one I was assisting!

Pauline and I became friends while I was a volunteer and she’s been away for the last 6 weeks. So I was honored to be assisting her on her first course back. And I think she ended up being very lucky to have me along too!

Sometimes instructors have DMs on their course to help the DM learn more and improve their teaching skills… other times it’s because there’s a bigger group and they need an extra hand.

This group was originally 5 people but was actually only 4. But it was a tough group for Pauline to come back to. There’s one thing for students to not understand or not be good divers… I know that first hand from starting off really bad. But there’s also times where students are just disrespectful. I’m sure my parents can agree with being educators as well!

I don’t want to go into too much detail, because I don’t know any of these students personally. But they were a tough group. Luckily, Pauline had me to help teach them how to set up and remove equipment and to keep them in line during our skill dive.

Our first rainy dive was at Aow Leuk. We did all the skills just as we had done the days prior. And at the end of it, Pauline had me lead the group back to the boat.

Now this was my first time doing this BUT I was ready for the challenge. I kept an eye on the group (we had to stop a number of times for students floating to the surface) but we managed to make it about halfway before Pauline decided to call off the dive. We called off the dive because I wasn’t 100% sure where we were going… and also to minimize the headache of the rest of the dive.

Turns out, I was in fact headed in the right direction!

Our second dive, was the fun dive at Tanote Bay… I originally told Pauline that I didn’t think I should dive because by this point I was cold and starting to feel the sickness coming. But just before the dive I got a second wind and told her I would dive with her.

Thankfully I did.

When we descended down the rope to the start of the dive, one of the students floated back to the top. So Pauline went to assist her and I stayed at the bottom for the next 5-10 minutes entertaining and making sure the other divers were okay. I taught them how to make O-rings while we chilled at the bottom of the ocean waiting.

We eventually carried on the dive and cruised around the dive site. The visibility was really bad and at one point got super bad. But then I realized we had entered the school of fish that lived there, which made me chuckle.

However, I started to get really cold on this dive and when we came out I knew I was about to be sick. I’m glad I was there to help, but I immediately texted Chris and asked him for the day off tomorrow.

As tired and feeling sick as I was, the night was not over yet.

I got back to my apartment to take a quick nap before the nights festivities… and realized I had locked myself out. So as much as I wanted to just curl up in my bed… I couldn’t. Even better yet, they didn’t have a spare key for my room (I guess that’s a good thing to know). So they had to semi break my window to get the door open. But in the end they replaced everything and I still had time for a quick nap.

Tonight was the snorkel test for my fellow DMs: Ami, Lydia, Till, and Albert. The snorkel test is a form of “graduation” for dive masters as they finish up their course and move on to the professional world. The night is different school to school, but it usually includes silly games and trivia that are meant to embarrass the DMs. And the universal part of it is having to drink through a snorkel… something Kit and I get to look forward to in a couple months!

I was meant to be partying with them all, but drinking was not in my cards tonight. So I rallied my energy enough to stay for the entire snorkel test and then went home, took some Tylenol, and fell right to sleep hoping to feel better in the morning.

– Elie