Day 241! A day I’ll remember for a long long time… I kinda spoiled it in the title, but today I spotted my second whale shark! It was incredible… which is honestly an understatement. Also today was Sina’s last night on the island, so we celebrated her as well!

I woke up this morning for some fun dives! Today I didn’t have any fun divers myself so I paid 300 baht to join the boat (150 per tank, the cost Taco has for each tank), not a bad deal.

We set out this morning for Green Rock and we were going to have an unforgettable dive.

I was diving with Sina (leading us) and Flavio, my fun diver from the past few days. We got very close to the dive site and only one boat was there already, Black Turtle. Our Cappy starts yelling at us and making a wave hand motion with his hand. This confused me because there were no waves this morning… so it wasn’t choppy.

My friend Kevin thought he was trying to tell us there were dolphins. But we looked and looked and didn’t see any. And then our boat boy, Nei, said, “whale shark, whale shark!” And we all immediately threw on our gear as fast as possible.

Apparently the captain of Black Turtle radioed all the captains and told them there was a Whale Shark at the dive site.

We saw a guy snorkeling on the surface and a lot of bubbles below him, so we jumped in and descended around there.

As we went down… we saw nothing. And we unfortunately dove straight into the trigger fish nest, also known as a “trigger pit.” So not only did we not see a whale shark… we started getting harassed by trigger fish.

All of them immediately threw their indicator fin up and a few started coming towards us… one charged us. But we made it away from them and continued on with our dive.

Not long after this, we saw a ginormous great barracuda. It lifted the spirits a bit, but I could tell all three of us were a bit disappointed that we missed our chance to see this amazing creature. Especially my friend Sina.

It was Sina’s last day on the boat and ahead of was heading home tomorrow. She also hadn’t seen a whale shark yet, so this was pretty much her last chance to see it Koh Tao for a very long time.

We kept diving and then we randomly ran into my friend Ash, she works for another dive school. She asked my if I knew where the whale shark was… which made me more disappointed, because we hadn’t seen it and her school changed dive sites to try and see the whale shark (they rarely go Green Rock for some reason).

We dove around the dive site, hitting all the swim throughs, and ending it around the wall of the island. As we started our safety stop I had this weird feeling something good was going to happen.

A whale shark was spotted at Green Rock a couple of days ago and it returned to the divers on their safety stop… sure enough, as we headed back to the boat, we heard the biggest clanging on a tank from an instructor and saw two groups converging on a spot. So we followed.

And we saw a freaking whale shark.

It was a bit of a chaotic, happy, and exciting moment. At first there weren’t many people and then everyone at the dive site was by the whale shark. Also my friend Ash appeared out of no where and our two groups were right next to each other as it passed by us (super closely).

New boats were coming to the dive site and the whale shark was moving nearby parked boats… so it turned into a semi unsafe situation for a little bit until it moved a bit deeper and further away from the boats.

We followed the whale shark for a bit since we all had plenty of air left and watched as it twisted back and forth as it swam. It was majestic… I was so glad to be able to hang out with it longer than the last one I saw!

Ash was crying, Sina was shaking with excitement, Flavio and I were high fiving the heck out of each other, and everyone around us was just buzzing with energy.

There was one moment where the whale shark made a quick turn and came right at Ash and I. It thankfully kept turning but I thought for a second it was going to come straight at us! It was wild!

The whale shark started to descend much deeper than we wanted to go since we were already at the end of our dive. So we finished our dive by ascending to the surface and cheering utter joy!

More boats were showing up as we got onto ours, but we had already seen it! And we were some of the first to see it.

This time around, EVERYONE on the boat saw it. So we could properly celebrate! We jammed out to some celebration songs and danced our hearts out (or at least I did) as we made our way to the next dive site.

Everyone was super keen to see the videos and pictures people got, so we shared them around for everyone to get a look.

What was really crazy and special about this siting… it was Sina’s last day and chance to see one, Kiki (one of our instructors) was teaching her last course before she goes back to Switzerland, this was Flavio’s last fun dive and we missed the one from a couple days ago, DMT Chris saw his second in a week at the same dive site, DMT Tom saw his first one with all of us, AND this happened on my 180th dive!

Oh… and to get even wilder…

August 30th (today)… is freaking international whale shark day!? Thank you universe and thank you whale shark tattoo! It all worked wonders today!

Originally the plan was to dive at HTMS Sattakut for our second dive. But we were also right next to White Rock. So our squad decided to dive that instead. Our hope was the visibility would be better than the day prior… but it wasn’t much.

We dove around the dive site but didn’t see anything super crazy. Honestly, this dive just couldn’t compare to the prior one, so I personally used it as a time to just breathe and enjoy being under the sea. But on our safety stop as we headed through the big blue back to the boat, Sina spotted another great barracuda!

Not a bad way to start the morning!

When we got back to Taco, I enjoyed a celebratory beer with Flavio (his thank you for all the dives and of course seeing the whale shark together). And then I showered and came back to munch on a Taco.

They accidentally gave me the discount… and I only ordered one because I thought it’d be full price. But oh well! I’ll take it.

I then took a ride close to the pier to meet up with a friend, Mikey. Mikey works at another dive shop called Escape Divers. Since I’m “freelance” now and not working for Taco, like I thought. I decided it’d be smart to go see if other dive shops need a DM or at the very least, make some connections before I leave the island.

Mikey introduced me to some of the Escape dive shop workers and I chatted with them about if they needed another DM. They told me they’re really slow on work right now but they’ll text me if any comes up… so maybe something will, maybe something won’t, but it was worth the try!

I also have a few feelers out from friends asking friends for me. So we’ll see if anything happens in the next week and a half.

I then drove to Koppee to meet up with my friend Ash! We wanted to share videos and geek out about what happened this morning. A bunch of other people showed up while we were hanging out too, people from her shop, DPM, and some of the Taco Shack crew came as well!

We hung out for a few hours in the sun (and some light sprinkles at times) and in and out of the pool at the bar. It was a really really nice way to spend the afternoon.

After a bit though, I needed to finally take my afternoon nap. So I said my goodbyes and made my way home. When I woke up, I went to the tattoo parlor, NOT for myself, but to hang out with my friend Chelsea as she got her tattoo. She hung out with me as I got mine, so it was the nice thing to do.

When that finished up, it was time to celebrate Sina’s last night on the island. We all met up at our secret abandoned building viewpoint and watched a gorgeous sunset fall over Koh Tao.

We were all getting hungry, so we made our way to a new restaurant called Chalok House Restaurant, that Chelsea suggested. The vibe was very similar to Baby Rasta and it had a bunch of fun seating on the floor and in hammocks.

We played some Shithead and enjoyed a dish called Chiang Mai Noodles… which was just a variation of Khao Soi.

We finished off our night at Taco Shack, singing our hearts out to karaoke. A perfect way to wrap up a truly amazing day!

It’s really sad seeing Sina go, but I’ll be heading that way shortly as well. But over the past couple of months, her, Kit, and I all got super close. All three of us had each others backs through the entire DMT course and we will all be bonded for life going through it together.

Here’s some cute pictures Chelsea took of us the other day. I’m really glad I met Sina and we became friends. I can’t wait to visit her in Germany at some point and look forward to hearing of her stories from her master degree and working!

Tomorrow I’ll be leading a fun diver, Dom! My friend who just did his refresher. We’ll be going to Green Rock again… so who knows… maybe we’ll get lucky again!

– Elie