Day 181! Today is basically the last day on the island for my friend and fellow DM, Ami. She’s heading back to the US for college. So we celebrated her tonight. But today was a big and beautiful day!

I wasn’t in the morning boat today, so I got to sleep in a little bit this morning.

Because of that though, it meant I either needed to sit in on a class or help with setting up bags in the morning. I chose the class today and it was being taught by Hector, who I was assisting this afternoon.

But first, I got a muesli bowl!

Hectors class lasted around 2 hours. He spoke on all the important details the divers need to go before going out for the first time. He had me teach them hand signs for when we need to communicate under the water. Eventually I will have to give the whole class to my mentor, so I’ll need to attend more often to retain it all.

After class it was time to eat and then start the afternoon of diving!

Today’s class had 3 students, Hector, and myself.

On the boat ride to the first dive site, I instructed the new divers on how to setup their equipment! Hector thought I did a good job, which is nice to hear. I really enjoy the little bits of instructing I already get to do, and it didn’t stop there on today’s dives.

We started off in the shallow end of mango Bay, where we worked on the introductory skills.

Since I’ve officially started my DMT, I’ve had to start imitating the instructor behind the students. Today I was doing that and then Hector wanted me to start helping him “instruct” a little bit.

For a couple of the exercises, he would take two of the students and I would take one and I’d show them the skill again and then they would do it back. I also had to help remind them about little things they forgot or missed.

This made the open water day one a lot more enjoyable. And it was cool to be helping out with something I learned not too long ago!

We then went on a short dive around the rest of the bay… and ended up diving for an hour and 9 minutes!

The visibility on the first dive was beautiful, it felt like I was swimming through an aquarium. The second dive was almost equally as good.

This dive was just a fun dive for the students. It was at Twins Koh Tao, which is a dive site I haven’t been to in a while.

On our descent, I led a controlled descent. This is when we go down a buoy line and take our time equalizing the whole way down. Thankfully I and our divers were all able to equalize successfully.

Over the next 45 minutes, we dove around the beautiful corals and twin peaks this dive site has to offer. We saw loads of tuna and groupers hunting, which usually means there’s an eel around, but we didn’t see any.

I did see a blue spotted stingray. But outside of that it was just a nice dive through the extremely blue ocean.

After two good dives, we made our way back to Taco Shack.

Kit and I had dinner at the hostel and I had a chicken quesadilla. A classic dinner of mine now.

I’m always starving after a dive and the quesadilla is the perfect meal to carb up after a long day.

While I was eating, my instructor friend, Franco, came by! You may remember him because he taught my open water course. He doesn’t teach at Taco anymore, but it was really nice to see him!

I then hustled home to shower and get ready for the night! Tonight, we were all going to Bamboo Bar for our friends Lina and Ami. They are both leaving the island in a day or two, so we wanted to have a little hangout for them.

We went well into the night hanging out at this bar. At Escape Jungle Hostel, they had a snorkel test going on for their DMTs, so after hanging out at the first bar, we made our way over to the hostel to watch some newly graduated DMTs embarrass themselves.

After a few hours it was time for bed!

Tomorrow I’ll get to sleep in a little again and I’ll be going to class again. Then I’ll have an afternoon boat assisting Hector again. And then a night boat for another night dive!

– Elie