Day 201! Today’s the big day! I have reached 100 dives and will hit over 100 by the end of this blog post. Now, there’s a big tradition in the diving world for your 100th dive… BUT after a little oopsies by my friend Lydia, Kit and my special dive was going to be postponed for now. I won’t spoil the surprise, but it’ll be worth the wait whenever it happens!

I woke up this morning super excited and felt like a million bucks. Today I was hitting 100+ dives, which is just crazy to think about.

Just under 2 months ago I had 0 dives… and now I have over 100 dives! Which is more than a lot of divers will have in their entire diving career. It’s been tiring and stressful at times, but very much worth it so far!

I went to Taco Shack ready to have a fun 100th dive… but something wasn’t right. Lydia had a fun diver this morning and she was nowhere to be found! We tried calling her and texting her, but we had no luck. So, the lucky fun diver got to join Kit and I today for our big day!

Now this did change our plans, because the 100th dive isn’t one we can properly celebrate with a fun diver. But we still got to celebrate by each leading our 100th dive! My first dive was dive 100 and our second dive was Kit’s dive 100, pretty cool that we’re on the same track!

Our fun diver, Gemma, was a fairly new open water diver. So no deep dives today, but that didn’t stop us from seeing some cool things!

For my 100th dive, I led No Name Pinnacle. This dive site is directly next to one of the shipwrecks around Koh Tao, HTMS Suphairin. Since we could only go down to 18m, we weren’t going to get super close to the wreck. But the visibility was great at this dive site, so Gemma was in for a treat seeing her first shipwreck!

I guided us around the ship wreck for a bit and was immediately cut off by another group (something a dive guide should never do). I pushed this annoyance to the side and we continued our dive.

We saw some very cute clownfish, that were fully outside of their anemone! I hadn’t really seen that before, so that excited me. Otherwise, the dive was fairly tame and there wasn’t anything super crazy that happened.

We ended our dive after 49 minutes and came up exactly where the boat was… key word was. The boat had moved for some reason, but I was glad I went to where it was originally because that meant I navigated the dive well.

For my 100th dive, I’m very happy it was a successful guided dive.

For our second dive, Kit took over guiding for his 100th dive. This dive was at White Rock!

Over the next 48 minutes, we wound our way through the big dive site. When we got to the swim through on the south side of the dive site, I found two very cute and colorful nudibranches.

It was another busy dive site and at one point, I saw an instructor with 8 students following them… that seems like a nightmare.

During this dive, Gemma had a problem cleaning out the water from her mask. She stayed very calm, but I could tell it was bothering her. As her buddy, and as a certified rescue diver, I knew how to help! I reminded her to clear her mask with two fingers on each side of the top and then tapped her nose to remind her to breathe out through it. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to assist her in this way.

With that, Kit and I hit 100 dives and we finished taking our 3rd fun diver!

After we got back to Taco Shack and cleaned up the diving gear, I went back to my room to shower, and then I met up with Lydia, Kit, Sina, and her roommate for lunch at Mama Tams.

Kit, Lydia, Sina, and I are the last DMT’s currently at Taco (for now). I love all three of them and it was super nice getting to hang out with them outside of diving. I’m hoping we do it more, especially before Lydia leaves the island in a week or two.

After a lovely lunch, I went back to my apartment for a much needed nap.

30 minutes later, I woke up and started reading my next course called Limited Visibility. This course was all about night diving and when the water is very turbid and hard to see in it. I’m not really sure what this added to the night dive course I did in my advanced, but I enjoyed it either way.

It started with a class at 4pm, where Iris led us through the dos and don’ts of night diving, along with personal anecdotes.

Then we went out for our night dive! This dive actually had some minor skills involved with it too. These skills included neutral buoyancy, navigation, and the lost buddy procedure. After the skills, we made our way around the dive site. There were three non-DMTs on this course with us. So Sina, Kit, and I were each buddied up with one of the divers.

I then made my way back to Taco Shack and got myself a scrumptious chicken quesadilla.

After chowing it down, it was time for bed.

Today was a special day… it could’ve been even more special with the special dive… BUT that will happen soon enough. Until then, you gotta keep sticking around to find out what it is!

– Elie