Day 218! Today ended up being an absolutely GORGEOUS morning of diving. We changed dive sites last minute and did a really special 2nd dive… but more on that later. I spent the rest of my day enjoying time with friends and relaxing!

I woke up nice and early as usual for a morning of leading fun divers! Today I had two, Flynn and Michael. Michael you may remember from the other day of diving… he specifically requested me and was very excited to be diving together again.

I decided, it’s good practice to deal with a fun diver like him AND by the time I’m getting paid for fun divers, he’ll still be around. So at the very least, I know I’ll have one fun diver who the dive center will always put me with.

I stopped by the minimart next door and picked up some mini donuts for a snack. The fried chicken lady had been closed the past week so I was planning on that being the case again today… but she was open today! So I also got to enjoy some fried chicken for breakfast again.

We got on the boat and as we set off, we found out we weren’t going to Southwest Pinnacle. One of our instructors was teaching a deep diving certification and wanted to go to Chumphon Pinnacle instead. So that’s where we went!

I guess we’ll have to save Shark Island for another day… again.

But this turned out to be an amazing switch! Our first dive at Chumphon was about to be spectacular.

But before we got to diving, I had to do a dive briefing with my two fun divers. Today, Michael was a bit toned down from his “I know everything” attitude, but it was still there. Unfortunately, it had a little bit of an effect on the dive, but I think I was able to explain to him after the dive what the roles of the dive were.

While we were descending on the dive, Flynn was having some troubles equalizing. Michael then tried to step in and “help” Flynn with this problem. Now… that’s great he wanted to help, but it’s not his role of the dive. He’s a fun diver and isn’t responsible for these situations OR trained to help. So I had to step in and underwater tell him no, stop, this is my responsibility.

I then helped Flynn slowly ascend till the pressure decreased enough for him to equalize. It took a bit, but eventually he was successful and we made our way back down towards the dive. When we got back down tho, Michael decided to pat Flynn on the shoulder or hold on to his shoulder for encouragement… I’m not really sure what, and accidentally was pushing Flynn further down.

I had to say hey, stop… spread out a little bit and stop being on top of each other. But thankfully this was the only major frustration of the dive.

Our first dive was spectacular. The visibility was amazing and there were more fish in the massive school of fish than I have ever seen at this dive site (or ever)! There was also a giant school of bat fish floating around, they were so so so pretty.

I also found a moray eel hunting with a pack of groupers! We got to see it swimming around and eating a ton, it was wild.

I couldn’t catch it on camera, but we saw a school of chevron barracudas, they each were easily 1 meter long!

Now of course we were hopping to see a whale shark… but that unfortunately did not happen. It didn’t take away from how amazing the dive was!

The dive was SO good, we decided to stick around and do a second one. Now… why is this so special? No dive schools do Chumphon second. They either do it first, double dive it, or they don’t come to it. Today we were lucky and had no requirements about going to a shipwreck so we were able to stick around! It was a private dive site for us!!

This was super exciting, not only was the first dive so good that the second most likely would be as well, not only were we the only ones at the dive site… there was an exponentially greater chance of us seeing a Whale Shark.

But of course, these are wild creatures, so there was no guarantee.

For the second dive, the wind picked up a bit and so did the current under the surface. Interestingly enough, the current under the sea was in the opposite direction of the waves on the surface.

For this dive I led my divers to barracuda rock. We circled around it and then spent the rest of the dive cruising around the giant schools of fish and seeing the sea of sea anemone.

Everything was good on this dive until the end. As we were ascending to finish our dive, I spotted the school of barracuda again and pointed them out to my fun divers. Immediately Michael starts descending fast to get a closer look.

This is something we absolutely don’t do… especially because he was low on air. But also, this can be a cause for DCS, as I learned in my tour the other day. I motioned for him to come up pretty sternly and when we surfaced I told him what happened.

I think the more I dive with Michael, the more he’ll continue to listen to me… but we’ll see. I told him if he wants to continue diving with me, we have to do it safely, otherwise this won’t work out.

Outside of those two things, the morning was great! I thoroughly enjoyed our double Chumphon day!

We got back to the dive school and Michael offered to buy me a beer, so I took him up on that. We chatted for a bit and then I made my way home to shower. I came back to Taco for lunch and devoured a quesadilla!

I then played young Chris in pool for a while before heading back home to take a much needed nap.

When I woke up I played some guitar and also started the process of contacting my Australian friends that I’ve met whilst traveling! I’m super excited to see all of them again and also have couches to crash on for the beginning of my time there.

I got a message from Kit, who had just gotten back from his visa run, asking if I wanted to hang out. So I went over to Pauline’s house to hang out with Kit and her.

After hanging at her apartment for a bit, we headed to our secret sunset spot (the one I went to yesterday) and watched a stunning sunset!

Hector came and joined us for a bit too. He’s unfortunately leaving the island soon, so I hope I can hang out with him a bit more before he leaves.

We then all went to have dinner together at a Khao Soi restaurant nearby and played cards as we waited for our food.

I’m not sure if it was because I was really hungry, but the Khao Soi was really really good!

After dinner it was time for bed so I went home and got ready for some much needed sleep.

Tomorrow I’ll be leading my fun diver Michael again. Hopefully I won’t have too many problems, but we’ll see! Allegedly, we’re doing Shark Island first… we’ll see if that sticks! I hope it does.

– Elie