Day 248! Ahhh! 4 more days! Today I had a great day of diving and relaxing. I probably should start slowly packing up… but I’ll also probably put that off till the day before!

Time for another morning of diving!

I had two fun divers today, Dan and Sophie, a very nice couple from England. They both had their open water certification and were using it as they traveled across South East Asia.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect since they were both fairly new to diving. But I was pleasantly surprised when we had two very long dives.

Our first dive was to Shark Island! It had been a bit since I’d been here and my last visit wasn’t the best (it was full of current and not great visibility). But today’s dive was absolutely gorgeous.

Now, since this little island is getting hit by the waves of the open ocean, there’s almost always current. But our boat moored up on the south side of the island for the first time. This meant we would kick into the current and then be able to ride it all the way back to the boat, which sounded like a blast, and it was!

I didn’t see too many out of the ordinary things while diving, except this coral that I thought looked like a bonsai tree. But for Dan and Sophie it was all new and exciting.

I was pointing out fish left and right and they were happily taking GoPro videos of it all. Throughout the dive they would also pass the GoPro back and forth to take videos of each other, it was very cute.

The school of bat fish were there, but in smaller groups. There was also a large school of big eye trevally and one scribbled filefish lurking around. Allegedly there’s a humongous barracuda lurking around the dive site too, but we didn’t get a chance to see it today.

Our second dive was to Aow Mao. This is going to be a very common dive site over the next few days since it’s the only shipwreck on the east side of the island (that students can get to).

But it’s too deep for open water students, so we just went to the wall of coral. This dive was very pretty as well! The sun was reflecting off the tops of the corals which made for some fun contrast as we started below the giant rocks in the shadows and then made our way slowly to the bright and vibrant shallow waters.

We also saw two ginormous unicorn fish, but I was too far away to get a picture.

We ended up having two 50+ minute dives, making it a very successful morning of diving!

After we came back from diving, I helped clean up the gear and went home to shower and get ready for the rest of my day… but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for lunch.

Both Tom and Chris were on the afternoon boat and my friend Immy just left the island. So I was on my own today.

I went on a walk down the road towards Mama Tams… but on the way, I saw a street vendor that I’ve been meaning to try ever since I got to the island. So, today, I finally tried out a new chicken stand.

For 90 baht, I got a very large piece of chicken along with sticky rice. It was good, it looked a lot better than it tasted, but I’m glad I finally got around to trying this stand. I would’ve kicked myself if I had left the island without giving it a go.

I got about halfway through eating when I received a frantic phone call from my friend Immy. She had made it to Chumphon and realized she had left her passport at 7eleven when purchasing a last minute SIM card…

So I immediately hopped on my motorbike and zoomed across the island to see if it was still there. And luckily for her, it was! She wasn’t sure how she was going to get it back in time for her flight to Australia, but that solution came later in the day.

I spent most of the afternoon playing pool against the Taco Shack employees and then scurrying off to my room for a much needed nap.

When I woke up I had a text from Immy saying that one of her friends was leaving the island and heading to Bangkok tonight. So she could bring the passport to her! How lucky?! I went back across the island to drop off the passport to her friend Row.

On my way back home, I treated myself to a 50 baht mango smoothie from a fruit stand Hector showed me. Even though I ordered it to go, they filled up a mug with the extra bit of smoothie that was left in the blender. So I finished that off before heading back to my apartment.

I played some guitar and then went back to Taco Shack to chat with my friend Yi, my plan was to head to volleyball on the beach afterwards. But Yi suggested I head to the pier and purchase my ferry ticket home because it’s a smaller ferry at the time I want it.

So I went back across the island once more to get that.

It ran me 800 Baht, but it’ll get me to Koh Samui. I leave around 7am and arrive around 8:30am which should give me plenty of time to get a taxi to the airport for my 12:30pm flight…

I guess if I miss it I just go back to Koh Tao… (I doubt I will)

I then went to Sairee Beach to play some sand volleyball with the nightly volleyball crew. It was a ton of fun, but part way through a huge storm came. We continued on playing and it passed in under 10 minutes, but we all got drenched!

We played until the sun set and then I went home, showered, and met up with Tom and Chris for dinner.

We went to Buddy restaurant but Bee wasn’t ready to make yellow curry. Instead she told us she’d make us a special dish with yellow noodles. I love her cooking so I trusted whatever she made was going to be fantastic, and it was!

While we were eating, another storm rolled through. So we sat and waited it out for a while. When we finally decided to go, Bee asked when I’d be back… my answer wasn’t good enough for her so she wanted to add me on Facebook to keep in touch. It was very sweet!

I’ll definitely be eating at her restaurant another time or two before I leave the island.

I finished off the night hanging out at Taco Shack hanging out with Tom, Chris, and our new friend Helen.

I had to call it a night though because I had a fun diver to take out in the morning! His name is Constantine and you might remember him from a week or so ago!

There’s also a potential chance I double boat tomorrow, which would mean I’d hit 200+ dives. But it will all depend on if my friend Nick, from our dive office, signs up for his refresher or not…

– Elie