Day 207! Not many pictures from today, but lots of stories! After a long day of a visa run and many days off from diving… it’s time to get back to our regular schedule program.

Today I woke up nice and early. Not because a boat was dropping me off… but because it was time to dive again!

Today the plan was that Kit and I were going to lead two fun divers and our mentor, Chris, was going to evaluate our briefings and our dive guiding. Since we’re already taking fun divers, it’s important to double check and make sure we’re doing things correctly. Not only for safety but to ensure we don’t build bad habits!

But of course plans change… and this is what happened.

We made our way out to Chumphon Pinnacle. Kit and I decided that he would go first since I’ve had a number of days off from diving. So we listened to Kit’s briefing, geared up, and jumped into the water.

As we started making our way to our descent point… the o-ring in my air tank burst! This is a rubber circle that seals the tank air hole to the first stage of our regulator (the device we breathe through. Thankfully this happened before descending, but I did have to swim back to the boat, change tanks, and then swim back.

After that excitement, we continued on with our dive. It wasn’t the best visibility at Chumphon, but it wasn’t the worst either. Kit led us around the dive site and since the two girls he was leading were advanced certified, we stayed around 25m for a bit. We also made our way through the swim through at this dive site for our first time. It’s not a really crazy swim through, but there is a plaque in memory of a diver, which is quite interesting to see so deep below the water.

(I don’t believe they died there, I think maybe just buried there)

The dive was going great until the very end. We started doing our safety stop over a bunch of divers… they weren’t directly below us, probably at least 10m, but their bubbles were the problem. Bubbles tend to make divers float up, ESPECIALLY a lot of them. And this is what happened to me… I started floating up and lost a bit of sense of direction.

Luckily my dive buddy, Lydia, noticed and hung around to make sure I was okay as I struggled to descend again. By the time I got back down, the rest of our group was gone… they hadn’t realized what had happened. Thankfully this wasn’t the biggest problem because all we had to do was ascend to find our group again… it was just unfortunate that it happened.

Apparently a few other things went wrong after this, but not really my story to share, especially because I wasn’t there with the group to know.

Lydia and I surfaced and found the group and we swam our way back to the boat. I was super thankful to have Lydia with me and to be a calming hand in the hecticness. Just another learning situation to remember and to avoid doing in the future!

Because of these incidents, Chris told Kit to lead the second dive to try again with the evaluation. I’ve seen Kit lead very successful dives, so we all knew on the second one he was going to kill it. Chris told me I’d do my evaluation the next morning, which was okay with me.

Our second dive was at No Name Pinnacle… where crazily enough, a whale shark was seen at the day before (but of course did not mean one was going to be there today).

We made our way around the ship wreck that is nearby the dive site, diving fairly deep again, and then once we were satisfied with our time at the wreck, made our way back over to the pinnacle.

The craziest thing we saw on this dive was a swarm of fusiliers being attacked by a couple of fish. Other than that it was a fairly tame dive, with no mishaps!

It was great getting back in the water after a few days off. I also got to test out wrapping my knee with the supplies I got yesterday, and it worked great! I’m very happy that I can still dive and keep my tattoo dry and protected.

We took our big group picture and had to give Kit some jabs about his favorite pose. I was very happy for him that he was able to pass his evaluation and I’m hoping to do the same tomorrow!

After we got back from the dives, we all quickly got showered and then met back up for some lunch at Mama Tams.

Lydia, Kit, Chris, and I all enjoyed a scrumptious meal. It was also fun getting to hang with Chris more. He’s definitely a great addition to the team!

But my day of diving was far from over, as I still had to lead a night dive later that night.

However, I had the afternoon off. So after lunch I took a nap and then played guitar for a bit! I actually just wrapped up writing a song, so maybe I’ll share that on here at some point. It’s about my time on Koh Tao and I think I’ll start writing more, it was a fun process and I feel like it’s a decent tune!

My friend Chelsea told me she was hanging out at our friend Pauline’s apartment, so I finished playing guitar and went over to hang out with them.

Pauline actually just stopped working as an instructor at Taco Shack. Her visa is ending soon and she has an internship coming up, so she unfortunately will be leaving in a couple weeks. I’m happy for her, but sad she’ll be leaving!

We hung out and chatted for a bit and then eventually Kit and Lydia joined us as well… but 5:25pm rolled around and I received a text saying that they wanted to start the night dive early tonight because it was cloudy and rainy. So I quickly made my way back to my apartment, wrapped up my knee, and got ready to go!

I had ordered a basketball leg sleeve from Lazada, but it hadn’t come in yet… until today! So I tested it out on the night dive and it worked even better than the one I bought yesterday.

On the night dive, I led Sina and Chris (both DMTs) through my favorite dive site, White Rock!

I have led White Rock a number of times… but never at night! This posed to be a pretty big challenge. I went through our dive briefing and we made our way into the water to start our dive.

Navigating at night proved to be a big challenge, but for the most part I feel like I did a decent job! I will admit, I got lost at times. But we started at the north east of the dive site and I found my way to the south east of the dive site. We weaved in and out of corals, seeing giant groupers hunting, and I did spot one active spotted stingray. But that was about it for wildlife.

It was a pretty strange feeling being the front of the group and just diving into the darkness. But Sina and Chris both had a fun dive and enjoyed my guiding. We made our way back to the north and when I thought we had found the boat we surfaced.

Turns out, I was one boat off! But for my first night dive, I was very happy with my performance. Even though I thought I got lost, I kept my cool and found where I needed to go.

A random thing happened on this dive though. Near the beginning, there was a random group of divers on their knees. And then out of no where, one started VERY quickly diving straight at me. I was very very confused and so were Sina and Chris… so I led us around them. It was quite odd.

When we surfaced, it immediately started raining. This made the wind and waves pick up and we scrambled our way back to the boat. It was also super cold at this point too!

The leg wrap again worked super well, potentially even better.

When I got back to my room, I took a very warm shower and then made my way to Taco Shack for dinner.

It was also trivia night, so I helped Yi out and was the MC for it for the first time in a while. We ended up having 8 teams and 4 of the teams were super good! They were all within a point or two from each other.

It was fun helping out again, but I was tired and had to dive in the morning again. So after it wrapped up, I went back to my room and got ready for bed!

I’m looking forward to my briefing and guiding evaluation tomorrow! I hope it goes well but even if I have to do it again, I’m learning!

– Elie