Day 202! There’s a worldwide tradition in the diving community that your 100th dive is a naked dive. Now Kit and I had a fun diver with us… so we decided it wasn’t the best idea to do it then. But today, we had our own fun dive and were able to complete this hilarious and risqué tradition.

Today was my last day of a long string of dives. Tomorrow, I was going to have a day off. It was also a very special morning, because Kit and I were now able to celebrate our 100th dive!

It was disappointing we couldn’t celebrate on our actual 100th dive, but we were still very excited to celebrate it today.

I met all the other divers at Taco Shack this morning and we made our way to the pier to start our day of diving.

Our first dive was at White Rock. A perfect dive site to celebrate the 100th dive, the naked dive.

Why is that? This dive site is one of (if not) the largest around Koh Tao and there’s a lot of sandy patches on the outskirts to remain unseen.

We got to the dive site and there was only one other boat at the dive site! This was perfect. Kit and I also had Lydia, one of the other DMTs on the dive with us. All three of us were going to dive in in our swim suits and gear and then essentially strip naked once we were down below.

Traditions can’t be broken!

I was nervous about getting too cold, but we ended up diving for around 40 minutes.

To start the dive we had a fun photo shoot in a secluded sandy area. After a while and a lot of laughter later, we started to dive around a little bit. This didn’t last long since we all got really cold.

So we threw our swimsuits back on and started to make our way back to the boat. During this time we saw a very rare sighting, saddleback anemone fish!

We also got acquainted with a friendly remora. These usually ride larger fish like turtles, puffer fish, and sharks… but none were in sight. So it wanted to catch a free ride on us.

Unfortunately, it was hungry or something and was biting the heck out of Kit and I. Thankfully it’s teeth aren’t sharp, but it was quite unpleasant after a while. At the end of this video you can see it go crazy on my leg!

But it did look really cool though!

We had a great time laughing on this dive and it definitely bonded us all for life.

Sadly, today was Lydia’s last day as a dive master in training! After today, she would be a certified dive master, which is very exciting. But this second dive was her last dive for the program.

We were at HTMS Sattakut and before we dove in, we were told that there were whale sharks at Southwest Pinnacle this morning!! Just missed them again! Hopefully soon we’ll be in the right place at the right time!

Lydia led us on a deep dive around the shipwreck. This dive site was packed with divers and many inexperienced ones… it was a big cluster.

On the dive we saw a file fish (my first spotting), a great barracuda… it was ginormous (also my first real spotting), and at the end of the dive, we saw a giant school of fusiliers getting hunted by a school of crocodile needles fish.

It was a really good and eventful dive and a solid way for Lydia to round out her training! I’m so glad I could be a part of her last dive!

We made our way back to Taco to unpack bags and eat lunch.

Lydia, Kit, Pauline, Chris, and I all sat and chatted over some celebratory beers and tacos. We then went our separate ways for a short bit to rest up and I had to run some errands.

The first of which was getting my border run sorted out for the 25th. This will be my last border run of the year and also my last one needed for the dive master program. Visa laws just updated for Thailand too and we now get 60 days on arrival, which is awesome!

My second errand was stopping by a tattoo parlor to finally get the ball rolling on a tattoo I’ve been wanting!

This turned into Kit, Pauline, James, and Lydia all also coming to the tattoo parlor and we ended up having a fairly large tattoo date.

I’ve been wanting a compass on my knee ever since the start of my travel journey. I think it really encompasses (bad word play) my time of finding my direction… but that’s not all this tattoo was going to have. I’ve been living on Koh Tao, also known as turtle island. So this tattoo wouldn’t be complete without some Tao!

Everyone ended up getting something. But mine ended up taking the longest by far. It took just under 5 hours to design and tattoo this new addition… but it was totally worth it. I’m obsessed with how it turned out! The details on the turtles are insane and it’s exactly what I was hoping for.

This tattoo artist worked on the fly and throughout the tattoo was revising and creating new parts of it. It was amazing to watch and he was a super talented artist. I’m very happy with this new tattoo and glad I chose the artist I did!

After the tattoo was finally over, the night wasn’t over yet! Lydia, Kit, and I made our way to Taco shack where I scarfed down a plate of Pad See Ew. We then went to Bamboo bar, where Franco and his Latin band were playing! It had been a while since I had seen him play and I was very excited to boogie the night away!

After dancing for a number of hours we made our way back to our apartments to call it a night.

It was honestly a wonderful day. From a really goofy and fun couple of dives this morning, to getting tattoos with my friends, and finishing off the day with dancing to amazing music… it was just all around a great day.

All of this is just more reason why I love this island and glad I’ll be here for around another month!!

Tomorrow I have a day off and I’ll be using it to relax and hang out with more friends!

– Elie