Day 226! Wow, another fantastic day on this amazing island! I’m not sure what’s in the air, but it’s been a spectacular week so far. Today was no exception! I had some insanely pretty dives today and a wonderful time hanging with friends.

Today was a beautiful morning for some dives. I was leading our new DMT, Tom, on our two dives this morning. I haven’t had the chance to dive with him yet, so I was looking forward to it. I also was excited to lead him since my friends Albert and Lydia did the same for me at the start of my DMT.

We were going to one of my favorite dive sites today, Chumphon Pinnacle. Last time I was there, the visibility was fantastic, but there wasn’t much wildlife going on. This time was MUCH different.

We dropped into one of the most beautiful dives I’ve had in a while. The visibility was fantastic and there was the largest school of fish I had ever seen. There was a decent current today too so it made for a very interesting dive.

Tom had never been to Chumphon before, so I took us through the swim through with the plaque for the diver who passed away a while back. But when we came back out the current was enough for me to change the direction of our dive. This led us back to the giant group of fish and we basically spent the rest of the dive with them.

There were thousands upon thousands of fusiliers today. I’ve truly never seen anything like it. I would lose the pinnacle constantly because of the fish and the fish connected from both sides of the pinnacle. It was truly incredible.

Outside of that, there wasn’t much going on, so I’m glad I changed course on the dive. But MAN, was this cool!

Tom is still very new to diving, so our dive was on the shorter side. But this was a fantastic first dive on the day!

Close to the end of the first dive, I started having a headache… I asked my mentor Chris to smell my tank after the dive and sure enough I had a bad one. One of the few downsides to having no sense of smell is I can’t always tell when a tank isn’t 100% clean. This isn’t the most dangerous thing, but it can cause headaches, dizziness, and other conditions like those. But if the tank smells rubbery, oily, gassy, it’s not okay… it should just smell like nothing. Thankfully the headache didn’t last long and after breathing fresh air and drinking water I was okay.

Our second dive was another one Tom hadn’t done, but he’ll get to know very well over the following months, HTMS Suphairin.

The visibility was incredible here as well! So much so, we were able to go to the bottom of the shipwreck and swim underneath the front of the wreck. We also found some of the purple nudibranches and went hunting for some pipefish at No Name Pinnacle, but couldn’t find any.

(I was told two days ago where to look but still have yet to find them)

I enjoyed diving with Tom this morning and look forward to getting to know him better over the next month or so!

I then went back to Taco to clean off the equipment, shower, and then I joined my friends Chelsea, Chris, Kit, and Sina at Blue Chair for lunch.

After an amazing meal, at arguably the best massaman curry restaurant on the island, we were all in need of a nap. So we went our separate ways for a bit.

When I woke up, I was insanely disoriented. I was so confused why my alarm was going off at 2am… when in reality I read 14:00 as 2am somehow. Once I realized it was actually the afternoon, I laughed at myself.

I finished up reading my Nitrox material, since our class is going to be tomorrow afternoon. And then my friend Chelsea needed help grabbing her friends bike from across the island.

The fun part about this was I got to go down a new road on the island to help her get the bike. It’s one I’ve seen by Aow Leuk and Tanote many times but never had drove down. It led to a pretty nice view though!

On my way back home, I passed by French market. It was past 4pm so their buy one get one free deal was on. I hopped inside and grabbed a cookie and a crookie!

I hopped into Taco Shack to snack on my goodies and share them with the staff that was hanging around.

I then went over to Echo Hostel to hang out with my friend Immy! She’s planning on coming to Australia around the same time as me so we were discussing plans. We’re potentially going to try and find an apartment together with other travelers or locals! Pretty crazy to think that we met in Vietnam, met back up in Thailand, and might be hanging out more in Australia!

We found some websites and Facebook groups to try and find roommates, so hopefully something hits! But we have plenty of time to figure things out.

While I was hanging out with Immy, I received some photos from Chelsea from a past photo shoot she did!

She’s such a great photographer and we’re very lucky she likes to practice taking photos on us!

I then made my way to Maya Beach Bar for my friend Pauline’s farewell sunset! She’s leaving the island in 2 days. It was a really nice gathering of friends as we watched another great sunset. It’s sad to see friends leave… but it crazily will be me in less than a month!

After the sun set, a group of us went back to Taco to hang out more. I also got some dinner before calling it a night!

This week has really been a great one! I’m not sure what it is, but every day has just been stellar. Maybe it’s the weather, the good people I’m surrounded by, pretty dives, or all the above… I’ve really enjoyed these days and looking forward to the rest of my days on this island!

Tomorrow I’ll be waking up early for some more fun dives, and I can’t wait!!

– Elie