Day 230! Three more days until I’m officially a pro diver! In four days I’ll be doing my snorkel test as well. So if you happen to be on Koh Tao on the 22nd, swing by Taco Shack to watch the festivities.

The schedule said I was taking a fun diver named Lauren out for dives today… but Lauren always requests her friend to dive with her, so I was a bit confused when I saw this.

Sure enough when I showed up this morning, Lachi, her friend, showed up to take her. So I didn’t have any fun divers. This meant I was going to most likely fun dive myself!

Krzysztof was on the boat today, but he ended up feeling sick so he didn’t dive. So I lead Chris’s open water group to practice guiding a group of four!

Our first dive today was Shark Island! I was excited to be back at this dive site, especially with how pretty the last dive here was. Unfortunately, today’s dive was nowhere near as great.

To begin, there was a fairly strong current. Now, I’m at a point where I’m getting used to Koh Tao currents, but open water divers aren’t. On top of that, one of the students was having trouble equalizing which slowed our descent a lot.

I had to take the student up a little and then back down a couple times before we were able to start our dive.

The visibility wasn’t that great, but not as bad as it could’ve been. There also weren’t many fish to see compared to last time as well. When we drifted to the south side of the island, I turned us around for a kick through the current.

The dive last 42 minutes and we only saw the east side of the island this time. Even though it was a lack luster dive, it was still fun to be in the water and glide around with the current. Kicking back into on the other hand, not as fun.

My friend Chelsea was diving and taking pictures today. When I was getting back into the boat she took a couple cool ones of me climbing up the boat’s ladder.

For our second dive, we went to HTMS Sattakut and Hin Pee Wee. We used the line to descend this time but we still ended up having to wait a bit for the same girl to equalize. Eventually though she was good to go!

Thankfully all of their air consumptions were good, so we were still able to have a 46 minute dive!

The shipwreck was beautiful today, but there were a lot of groups diving around. One of the schools, Davy Jones Locker, had some groups out that were constantly getting in my way… it was very annoying.

One of the times they crossed our group, which is a huge no no, because that’s how you lose divers (they join other groups).

Outside of that though, we had a nice second dive and finished off our morning of dives!

I went back to Taco Shack to help clean gear, as always. Then I went home, showered, and played some pool until my friends were ready for lunch.

Today, we wanted to have something other than the hostel food. We decided to go to Blue Shark, where I was able to get a delicious grilled cheese sandwich. A favorite of mine from back home!

Post lunch, it was time for a nap! And once I awoke from this nap, it was time for some guitar playing. I’ve started writing a new song and also played a lot of the songs I like to listen to as well.

I then got a message from my instructor friend Kiki, telling me about some of her plans falling through for work back home. So myself, young Chris, and Kiki met up at Taco to hang out and be good friends in her time of frustration.

6pm rolled around and it was time to meet up with mentor Chris at Secret Bar to watch the sunset. Not only was there a beautiful sunset, but the full moon tonight was extra big!

After enjoying the sunset and the moon, we went back towards Sairee for dinner at a restaurant none of us had been to yet. We ate at the Lazy Coconut. It was an okay meal at a cheap price. I probably won’t be going out of my way to eat there again. But it wasn’t bad!

I capped off my night with a video call with my friend Dylan! We’ve been very consistent with our Monday chats which has been super nice! A great way to start the week!

Tomorrow marks two days left of my dive master training! I’ll be leading a fun diver tomorrow and Kit will be the fun divers buddy. We’ll be going to the same dive sites as well, so hopefully it’s a bit of a better morning for diving!

– Elie