Day 221! Today marks 140 dives and my friend Hector’s last day on the island. My day was really really good. It started out with fun dives, met with hanging with friends, into more hanging with friends, and watching an incredible sunset! A truly wonderful day on Koh Tao!

I didn’t have any fun divers to guide or refreshers to teach today. So the night before, I asked my mentor Chris if I could fun dive in the morning and he put me on the schedule.

This morning I dove with Krys, he joined a fun dive I lead the other day. Today it’d be just him and I! For our dives today, we were going to two different shipwrecks, Suphairin and Sattakut.

Krys had no desire to lead so I was on navigation duties. He’s a very eccentric and free flowing man (over 40 I believe), who’s dove over 300 times but decided to stay a DM rather than get his instructor. He’s a super nice and fun guy to hang around and I was looking forward to diving with him.

We got to Suphairin and jumped in for our first dive of the morning.

We made our way around and under the shipwreck. I kept my eyes peeled for the purple nudibranches and found two hanging out on some rope attached to the shipwreck.

We continued diving around the shipwreck until we headed to No Name Pinnacle to finish it out. It wasn’t the most eventful dive but it was a fun 49 minutes of diving!

The boat was really empty today so we were the last ones back on the boat and even so, we were still way ahead of schedule. We moved onto Sattakut and spent almost an hour waiting on the surface to start our next dive (usually the boat ride is enough of a surface interval, but we were directly next to the next dive site).

Our next dive was Sattakut… and I’ve never realized just how much bigger this shipwreck is in comparison to Suphairin.

I noticed, mainly, because we did them back to back. But I also noticed because I tried a new navigation to the wreck. We were moored to a buoy that I had never used to get to the shipwreck and Dawid, one of our instructors, said it wasn’t hard to get to the shipwreck from.

He wasn’t wrong and it was cool to swim up to the shipwreck rather than descend directly on top of it… it made the ship feel much bigger.

We spent a lot of time at the bottom of the wreck and not only did we see the massive Jenkins ray that has taken up residency underneath, I also found a double ender carabiner!

I’ve never found anything while diving. Some people find GoPros, computers, torches, masks, etc. So today was my lucky day! It was no go pro, but it was a nice way to save a couple hundred baht on a nice double ender.

A big school of fish has made this shipwreck their home as well. This has brought a ginormous school of trevally to come and hunt the fish which is crazy to watch. Not only are there a lot of trevally, they are really big as well!

With this dive logged, I have hit 140 dives! I have a feeling I’ll get pretty dang close to 170 by the time I’m done… but we’ll see!

We went back to Taco Shack and after cleaning our gear, I went home to shower and then went directly back to Taco to eat lunch.

I ended up playing some pool against Myo and then started playing against Alex, a traveler from San Fransisco, California. He just finished university at UCLA and we chatted about college basketball, post grad life, and traveling. It was a really nice chat but I needed a nap. So I went back to my room and passed out for an hour.

When I woke up, I played some guitar and started writing a new song. I’m hoping to make a little EP or album from songs about my travels. I think it’ll be a fun project.

I then took my motorbike to the mechanic. My back tire had come loose and many other motorbikers had pulled up next to me to let me know. So I decided it was time to get it looked at and fixed. For 700 baht, I had to get my inner and outer tire replaced. But at least I’ll be safe!

While I was sitting and waiting, a Thai man pulled up next to me and said “hey do you remember me?” I honestly didn’t and the man reminded me that he was at the tattoo parlor when I got my last tattoo! Once he said that I remembered and he had turned back around to come say hi and see how the tattoo turned out. It was a very sweet interaction!

My friend Pauline texted me asking if I wanted to hang out at a pool and restaurant called Koppee. I decided to be social and headed out to hang. Kiki, Gracie, and Pauline were all there and then a bunch of their friends from the dive school they all used to teach at were there as well.

I spent the next couple hours chatting and hanging with them by the pool. While I was there though… guess who randomly found me there as well? Michael… he ended up chatting with me for around 30 minutes. When he left everyone asked who he was and I told them the stories of him as my fun diver.

Outside of that minor annoyance, it was really nice afternoon!

I went home for a little bit to hang out in the AC, but then it was time to meet back up with friends! My friend Hector, one of the Taco Shack instructors, is leaving the Island after being here for a long long time.

A group of us met up at Secret Bar to watch the sunset with him. It was a really nice way to wrap up our time together and we also had an AMAZING sunset to watch.

Even though the sunset, the night wasn’t over yet. We made our way towards the pier for a meal at a restaurant I’d never had before.

Now even though I’ve never had it, I knew the owners. Every day when I go diving, we walk through the restaurant as a shortcut to the other side of all the buildings. I say high to the owners every morning and take a look at their pet tortoises from time to time. They also share a space with the fried chicken lady I frequent most mornings as well.

The owner saw us arrive and was very happy. And then once she realized I was finally eating at the restaurant she got super excited! She even gave me a meat skewer for free as I walked in because she was so excited. It was another really cute interaction!

Hector suggested this place and told us to get the yellow curry on rice with a fried egg. It was super good and only 80 baht! I’ll definitely be coming here more often for food!

We also ended up playing some Shithead to finish off our night of hanging out and sending Hector off.

I then went to Taco Shack to fill up my water bottle and when I arrived, karaoke night was in full swing. I stayed for a bit behind the bar singing along to songs and then I noticed only one of the microphones was being used for a song I knew. So I hopped on the other one and sang along.

It was a really busy night at Taco which was fun to see!

I then called it a night as I’ll be doing another fun dive tomorrow morning. This time with Kit! There’s a lot of instructors fun diving as well since it’s a pretty slow morning. So I think it’ll be a really good couple of dives!

– Elie