Day 219! Today was a fantastic day! I got to finally go to a dive site that has been dodging me ever since I got into diving. Unfortunately, the name didn’t hold true to what we saw while diving, but it was still great! I also got to do my first fun dive with friends… where we literally rented tanks and just went diving. It’s pretty crazy I can do that!

It’s finally time to dive Shark Island! I’ve been teased with the idea of going to this dive spot a few times this week. Usually current is the reason we don’t go, but today the conditions looked good, we had a small crew on the boat, and no one was calling it off.

My fun diving crew today was Michael, my DMT friend Sina, and a pro diver Krys who has been diving a lot with Taco Shack. It was going to be a fun morning and a great crew.

Shark Island is a short boat ride around the south side of the island. We moored up and got ready to dive!

Immediately as we jumped in, we started seeing a ton of bat fish swimming around. Not only were they beautiful, but they were massive as well!

Randomly, I looked up and saw why there were so many stray bat fish… there was a school of almost 100 of them floating near the surface! I couldn’t get a good picture unfortunately and I wanted to go dive through them, but they were too shallow and too far away, so we just had to admire them from afar.

Because Shark Island is known for current, we tend to stay on one side of the island to avoid it. Also the island is a bit too big to dive around the entire thing. So we stayed on the east side, headed south, and as we got to the southern tip this is when the current came to play.

I felt it tugging a bit so I made the call to turn around. When we started diving back towards the boat we came smack into a little current. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t experienced before, but it was definitely annoying to have to dive into.

Sina and Krys were fine, but I could tell Michael was struggling a bit. Because of his affect and the type of diver he is though, he would play off his breaks from kicking as if he was looking at something that wasn’t there. But I didn’t mind, he was paying for the dive so he gets to enjoy it (mostly) the way he wants to.

We eventually got to a point of the island where the current subsided. And enjoyed the rest of the dive. This dive site was another one that really felt like we were in an aquarium. There was so much marine life to see and the visibility was good as well.

Our second dive was to HTMS Sattakut and Hin Pee Wee. Now you might think I’d be getting bored of this dive site, but I’m really not! Over the past couple of days a giant school of fusiliers has made the shipwreck their home. This has brought big schools of Trevally to come hunt them… not only big schools but BIG Trevally. I even saw a completely golden one today.

The bottom of the shipwreck still had a massive thermocline, so we couldn’t attempt to go see what was underneath it today. But we enjoyed circling the middle and top of the wreck and watching the show of fish darting around! It was spectacular.

We eventually headed over to Hin Pee Wee and unfortunately didn’t see too much there. But it still was a great dive overall!

We got back to Taco Shack, cleaned up our equipment, and then I made my way home to shower and take a quick nap. I was meeting up with Kit and Chelsea for a lunch that was going to bring me a little taste of American comfort.

For maybe $4 I got a Nashville hot fried chicken sandwich. This was one of my favorite meals to get when I was eating at bars or basically anywhere that had it on the menu. I LOVE spicy chicken sandwiches, and it’s not something I’ve gotten since leaving home. There’s a place in Kansas City called Mother Cluckers which was one of my favorites to get this same thing… but it was easily $15.

I’ll take the $4 version any day!

We chatted for a bit while we ate, Chelsea had to go teach a React Right class, and Kit and I set out for some more diving! But this diving wasn’t through Taco Shack.

We were meeting up with James, Pauline, and Kiki for a fun dive off the shore of Tanote. We brought our own gear (Taco let me borrow some for free) and all we had to do was rent a tank from a dive center on the beach.

Today was James birthday and this is how he wanted to celebrate part of his day! This was also my first time diving outside of Taco and just diving with friends!

In most of the world, you can do this. But in Thailand you have to have a professional with you to go diving. So good thing we had 2 instructors and 3 DMTs!

We had an insanely gorgeous dive in Tanote. The school of scad fish were still there in masses, we saw around 7 blue spotted stingrays swimming around and hiding, we saw a puffer fish cozied up in between two rocks, and we saw two moray eels! It was awesome.

Not only was the wildlife awesome, it was fun just goofing around with friends while scuba diving. I didn’t have to worry about clients or making sure anyone was okay. We were all each others buddies and all checking in on each other, but also able to focus on ourselves and enjoy the dive fully!

Pauline has a phone case she can bring down to 60m that she brings along while diving. And we got a cute video of her writing out “Happy Birthday” to James and surprising him with it.

He didn’t really react too crazy, but it was still cute nonetheless.

It was a really fun dive and I’m looking forward to diving more with just friends rather than with clients. Also I’m looking forward to diving elsewhere in the world and just being able to sit back and enjoy… but of course also make some money and guide!

After a very fun afternoon, I went home and showered and then met back up with Kit at Taco Shack.

Old Chris, young Chris, and Chelsea were all there as well, so we hung out, chatted, and played pool before heading to a beach bar I hadn’t been to before called Maya to watch the sunset.

We enjoyed some drinks and chatted, we also met some of Chelsea’s friends from her time on the island. Maya beach bar is allegedly a more local bar for the people that have been on the island for a while. It also cooked up an absolutely stunning sunset for us!

We then went back to taco shack where I had a couple of tacos and played more pool. Then the birthday boy texted us and asked if we wanted to join them at a bar called the Smoking Dead, which I also hadn’t been to.

We went there for a bit before James and his friends went off to the Leo Beach Party. Kit and I didn’t really want to go, or pay to go, so we went back to Taco to play a little more pool and hang out with other travelers.

By the time I got to bed I was insanely tired. So I immediately passed out!

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching my second refresher course, and this one is a special one too! One of our receptionists at Taco Shack, Nui, is finally getting back into diving! Her and I have been friends since I started volunteering so I’m super excited to be the one getting her back into this amazing activity.

– Elie