Day 236! The day has come… the Kit and Elie show season finale. It’s been a wonderful few months hanging out with Kit and going through the dive master training with him. But today was the last day we’d get to see each other for a while. As all “see you laters” go, it was definitely sad, but a little more so since we’ve spent so much time together. But I’m sure I’ll be seeing him soon enough, maybe even early next year! We’ll see!

After a long day at Sail Rock, I could’ve taken the morning off. But instead I decided to pay 300 baht and go fun diving this morning on the pro list (me a pro diver?!).

This morning was the last time, for now, Kit and I would be able to share a morning boat together. He leaves tomorrow morning for England and won’t be back before I’m gone sadly. So today was our last day together.

Kit was leading two fun divers so I tagged along in the back for his two dives.

The first dive was to Southwest Pinnacle! It was an absolutely choppy ride out to the dive site this morning. I had a headache so I took some ibuprofen, that combined with the waves gave me some major seasickness and I did not feel the best. I was not alone in these feelings today… but I toughed it out and dove the first dive.

With the conditions, I assumed the dive would be cold and have a decent current… but it was the exact opposite. The dive was beautiful, warm, and no current at all!

Halfway through the dive, I remembered I lost one of my double ender clips at Southwest. I was looking for it where I believed I lost it, but either it had been picked up or lost in the sand, I couldn’t find it.

During this dive though… I was burping up a storm… the sea sickness wasn’t going anywhere and every time we ascended I got progressively more gassy. To the point I thought I might vomit under water. Which up to this point I haven’t done and really don’t want to do.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but I didn’t feel great, even after such a nice dive.

We got back on the boat and even with the grassiness, I was thrilled with how beautiful the dive was. Not many boats were at Southwest today, most were at Chumphon. But it turned out… Chumphon had TWO whale sharks at it this morning. GAH!

We’ll hopefully see one again, but it kinda feels like there’s a Taco boat curse or something. They’re always at the opposite dive site we are! Even if I don’t see another on this time around, I’m super lucky to have seen one already.

Our second dive was to HTMS Sattakut and I was not feeling the best on the ride over. My plan was to dive anyways and if I needed to ascend, I’d throw my SMB up and ascend myself. But thankfully it actually didn’t come to that.

On this dive my sea sickness wore off and actually became such a peaceful dive! The visibility didn’t seem like it’d be that good, but at the bottom of the wreck it was great! We even saw the ray.

Out of nowhere though, a thermocline rolled in on the shipwreck, which was really cool to see. This rolled into Hin Pee Wee causing some bad visibility, but the dive site was full of wildlife! It was a really beautiful dive.

We finished our morning on the later side and made our way back to the pier. We raced back to Taco Shack to pick up the afternoon boat and Kit and I didn’t have time to eat our lunch.

We got to the hostel with enough time to find our students and make sure their bags were all good. Then we were right back to the boat!

Kit and I ate our lunches on the pier while we waited for our boat to be ready and then we set out for our afternoon of teaching refreshers.

I had two refreshers today and Kit had one. It was my first time with two students at the same time, but I was excited for the challenge. Today I had Doreen and Taya, Doreen hadn’t dove since getting her open water, 8 years ago. Taya dove in January this year.

They both smashed the skills, but Doreen had a bit of a problem equalizing on both dives.

The first dive was at Aow Leuk, because of the wind and waves. After 20 minutes of going through the refresher skills we started our fun dive. We went along the north wall of the bay and actually saw a blue spotted stingray fluttering about. I also spotted a moray eel helping out some groupers! This dive site is fairly lackluster BUT you can find anything anywhere, which is really cool.

Our second dive was to Hin Ngam, which is the opposite wall of the bay. It’s been a while since I’ve dove at this dive site, but it was a very pretty dive!

We saw another couple of blue spotted rays, but other than that we saw a ton of fish swimming about. We also saw some beautiful corals and wove our way in and out. Kits group spotted a turtle!

Both of my refreshers had a blast and enjoyed getting back into diving.

But with the completion of the dives, it also meant Kit and I wouldn’t be diving with each other for a long time…

I’ve really enjoyed spending the last few months with Kit! We went through this journey together and because of that, we’ve become super close. It’s going to be a while till our paths cross again, but it’s for sure not a goodbye! And even so, we still had the rest of the day to hang out.

We got back to the hostel, cleaned up gear, and then went home to shower. Tonight we were meeting up at a restaurant called Gemini, that served noodles and dumplings. I had been before but had never ate there myself and decided tonight I’d finally try it.

We had a nice big group of us for a little going away dinner for Kit. Even though he’s coming back, a majority of us will have left by that time. So I guess more so, it was his “see you later” to us.

I got vegan dumplings, since they only served pork on the menu, and they were extremely delicious! But I wasn’t full. So I went to Taco afterwards and got myself a chicken taco to fill me up.

We all got a couple drinks and eventually karaoke night was in full swing. This was a perfect way to cap off Kit and my time together. Back when I was volunteering we sang karaoke together and we’ve done it a ton since while we were doing our DMT. We sang our hearts out to more songs than I can count…

But then the night came to an end and Kit went home to get some sleep before his long trip to Bangkok and flight back to England.

There was a bit of confusion on the diving schedule though before the night fully ended. I knew a fun diver wanted to go out tomorrow, but I didn’t see his name on the schedule… so it looked like I had the morning to sleep in. After getting in touch with him and the dive office, I guess he forgot to tell them OR they forgot to put it on the schedule. Either way, I was happy to have a morning to finally sleep in.

But I still have a refresher in the afternoon so I’ll still be diving… and getting paid?! I still can’t get over that.

– Elie