Day 185! Today was an awesome day! I had two incredible and beautiful dives this morning. The visibility was unreal and we saw some cool sea life. I also got to lead the second dive which went great! I also had time to run some errands too, it ended up being a very nice day!

Well, with Taco Shacks boat going to Chumphon for servicing… it means we get to sleep in a bit! Usually we’d need to be at Taco by 6:50am, but now it’s 7:15am.

This is because we’re using the Dive Point boat now and they have strict on boat times. So after every dive we have a deadline on when to get back, which makes the trips out very punctual!

On our way out of the pier this morning though, we saw our captain taking the Taco Boat out of the pier as well!

We made our way out to our first dive of the morning, Hin Pee Wee. This site is also nearby the HTMS Sattakut wreck.

Chris took us through the dive briefing and he wanted me to pay extra attention to this brief because he wanted me to give the second dive briefing (and lead it… but more on that soon).

Today was the first day of doing free descents for the divers, since yesterday had such a strong current. But today’s visibility was freaking unreal! We could easily see 30 meters in all directions. It was beautiful!

I also brought along my GoPro to try and capture some more underwater highlights.

Immediately as we jumped into the water, we found a humongous jellyfish floating around near the boat! I got a picture of it from above and Chris got one from really close to it. It was absolutely majestic to watch.

We then spent the next 36 minutes going around the shipwreck and winding our way through Hin Pee Wee.

On this dive we saw a massive school of barracuda,

We even saw two trigger fish doing a mating dance which was very face paced and absolutely stunning. Watching two giant fish swim very fast and around each other was a unique sight!

When we came out of the water, the students were over the moon with how cool of a dive it was. It’s really fun seeing their reactions and watching them get more and more into diving!

But they were in for a treat, because the second dive was just as pretty (if not prettier) than the first!

The second dive was at White Rock, and it was my job to lead the dive. So I gathered up our squad and lead them through a dive briefing on what we were going to do, see, and expect! It went well and they all understood the plan.

Till and I then did a fish ID for all the new Taco Divers. And then it was time to dive!

We started our dive descending down to just above 18 meters. I started leading the dive on the far south of the dive site, which contains a nice and easy swim through. I took the students through it and watched as they all came out one by one.

I then took them towards the north side, weaving my way through the beautiful coral patch in the middle of the dive site.

We then made our way through a busy area of divers that lead us to the northern bite, the actual white rock! It’s cool because on the surface you can see this rock and it helps you know where you’re at and navigate the dive site.

Throughout the dive I was checking on their air consumption, making sure they stayed on my level, and made sure they stayed near their buddy.

Before we ended the dive, Chris noticed a moray eel swimming through the water. So he grabbed our attention and we found it again hiding in a patch of coral. I didn’t get a picture but these guys are very cool to find!

We ended the dive with practicing our air sharing ascent again… and the two I was helping did it very wrong. So I had to pull them back down a bit and have them redo it. On the second time around, they did it perfect!

We successfully made it back to the boat and with that, marked another dive lead and another group of open water certified divers!

I was starving after this morning, so I got a quesadilla at the hostel and sat with the dive squad from this open water course. It was a nice way to start and end the morning.

I promptly went right to my room, showered, and took a nap after finishing my lunch.

When I woke up, I had an important errand to run.

My mask I bought a month ago had a bad buckle on the strap. So I needed to take it back to the shop to get it replaced. I was hoping they’d do it for free and thankfully they did!

Also while I was there, I bought a rechargeable battery for my torch. So I’m not at the mercy of our dive shop’s batteries anymore.

I then came back to my room, read an entire section for my next diving course called Science of Diving, watched some tv, and played some guitar.

All of my friends were busy or tired tonight. So I went to the restaurant, Blue Chair, on my own because I was craving their massaman curry.

As much as I enjoy hanging out with people, it’s always nice to have a little personal time. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, the food was absolutely delicious. Easily one of the best massaman curries I’ve had in Thailand.

After dinner, I went to Taco and played pool with the workers for a couple hours before calling it a night!

I’ll be diving in the morning, but in the early afternoon I’ll be having the first class of Science of Diving. The content is a lot of physics I had to learn for engineering… so I’m getting some major throwbacks to then.

– Elie