Early start this morning, we were to be at the dive shop for 6am to do the deep sea and wreck dive. The only problem was I was not well at all with a case of ‘Delhi belly’. We were on the second taxi out and I had to go back to the room, I almost had to back out of the diving when I couldn’t move, David wondered where I had disappeared to. I manned up, took some tablets and just got on with it hoping for the best. The flecks of meat I Found when I was half way through what I thought was egg fried rice yesterday at have had something to do with it.
On the diving we went down to 28m, we had to keep a watch of our own nitrogen levels on our watches and the safety stops became essential to prevent decompression sickness. He deeper waters were quite murky, we had to play Rock Paper Scissors at the deepest point to assess if even was experiencing narcosis which caused delirium. I wiped the floor with everyone, no one was showing signs of it. Matt also took a bottle down to demonstrate a few concepts, the pressure compressing the bottle, he blew it up underwater and it was ready to burst when we surfaced with the air expansion. The colour change at that depth is also incredible, the bottle label was orang and red but deep down the red turns to back as the water absorbs the colours. This means the fish and coral are much more colourful than we can appreciate, many black objects may actually be bright. The sounds under the water that deep are quite eerie, deep and droning, a bit like you hear in the films. All of a sudden I was much more relaxed, my air tank lasting longer than any of my other dives, it’s actually therapeutic being that deep, there is literally no room for panicking as this could prove fatal, just deal with things as they happen! Again the guy diving with us was a liability, he had no clue and couldn’t descend like everyone else, on the ascent he was a good 3-5m above everyone else and wasn’t listening to matts very firm instructions to descend, particularly on the safety stop. Once we surfaced Matt the instructor gave him some stern words because he is likely to cause himself an injury! My tummy survived 😊.
The second dive was ship wreck dive again at 28m, the visibility on this dive was pretty poor, we didn’t go to the bottom but stayed around the ships deck at about 23m. We had to swim through a few windows by once again the guy with us stopped at the exit blocking me and David in and David caught his foot slightly on the metal attempting to hover with his buoyancy in a small window space! The visibility was that poor that we went onto an adjacent reef, a bit more to see here, trigger fish, giant grouper, which were huge prehistoric looking fish, around 2 m in length.
Once we got back to the hotel at about 11am we got showered and went out for some lunch at the big blue beach bar, I stuck with a safe vegetable sandwich and David had pasta. We then attempted to lay out in the sun in the bar on our resort. I was feeling totally rubbish, I just couldn’t bear the heat on me which was pretty unusual, and I felt exhausted. Reluctantly I took myself off to bed for a few hours, after all we had the night dive tonight that I had to get through if we were to get our advanced diving certificates.
The night dive was a pretty stressful thought. We went out at 530 at sunset and got briefed about using torch’s underwater, it changed things a little it like descending, ascending, underwater communication, reporting air remaining, and spotting fish.
Also you had to be more aware of navigation and scanning for coral to avoid injury. On this night dive the deepest we went is 18m. That was enough. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, we just took it slowly, concentrating on breathing slowly to conserve air. We saw tonnes of feather starfish which feed at night, coral feeding and really camouflage scorpion fish.The bonus of the nightdive was the colours are much more true as you have a light source close by so all the coral were much brighter in colour than in the day. Matt the instructor was happy with how we were all doing and was happy to do a swim through with us which means a short tunnel of enclosed rock. This changed he dive for me and David wasn’t too chuffed either. The guy diving with us went first and again stopped right as he exited. This stopped both of us proceeding through and we were trapped in the tunnel which was literally covered in huge long spikes sea urchins, I grabbed his fin and pushed him away and by him; conscious that David was also behind me, I had passed caring and getting hit with hose urchins would ruin the rest of our trip. From that point in the dive I was keen for it to end, it was just that extra stress I could do without. The final activity of he night dive was to settle on the bottom and block the light from our torches to see the photosensitive plankton. As you shook your hand with no light all of the plankton lit up around you- pretty cool.
Ascending from the dive in the dark is the same as in the day, safety stop, shine your torch upwards to look for danger on surface, to let boats know your surfacing, and so you don’t dazzle the rest of the team ascending behind you. Again mr. liability messed up every aspect, dazzled Matt by shining the torch down the way and kicked him in the head. On surfacing Matt was less than impressed with him and I had to swim back to the boat as their heated conversation was getting embarrassing. I don’t know how it was left but Rakul was not to be seen much on the boat journey back. We chatted with Matt about his life out here, his qualifications and experiences.
Once back at the dive shop we had to log the dives and wait for Matt to certify us, part of this was we were to do an exam online before the final dive. Although mr liability claimed he had done it it wasn’t showing up as complete and he had to do it again. Matt basically did it for him which was a bit of a joke but otherwise we would have been there all night. We were both actually gobsmacked that he was an,e to certify. If I ended up with a buddy like that I would just end the dive immediately!
That evening we grabbed something to eat at a street food stall, the usual veg pad Thai for me and veg and rice for David. I was a bit nervous about eating but I took a gamble. It was fine. We then headed to the Muay Thai boxing stadium where there were fights on tonight. It was a bit of a contrast to Bangkok, very basic, outdoor ring with a shelter and basic seating stands and plastic chairs. We had missed he first couple of fights but still was t hard to get a seat. The fights were much more hard core than in Bangkok, their sole aim to knock each other out, with a point to prove especially when it came to a westerner fighting a local, apparently it is a disgrace to lose against a westerner!
Tomorrow we go snorkelling around the island for the day.
South East Asia 2019 