Thailand

As the sun set over the Surin islands our boat captain and the dive leader decided to move the boat to somewhere where it was dead calm instead of doing the night dive in a current.

Without letting us know that they have actually never dived at this site, and in fact its not even a registered dive site and has no name. Nigel the dive leader just called it coconut beach (because there was one lonely coconut tree on the beach).

So we jump into the dark ocean thinking our guides know where we are going. We dropped down on a sandy area and within seconds we saw a squid in the sand, as far as I am concerned its already and awesome dive. Then we start swimming in a direction and for the next 5 minutes all you see is sand. As I look up I can see the dive guides at the front indicating to each other and then it downed on me they don't have a clue where we are going and if we will find a reef at all.

Luckily we did find a reef shortly after, and we saw loads of lobsters, lion fish, stingrays and hundreds of small shrimps doing their thing.

We were supposed to do a 40 minute but our guide (Ping, Thai guys who really really loves diving) had so much fun and could not be asked to stand in a queue at the showers, so we pressed on to almost 50 minutes and we were the last to be out of the water.

I really like night diving because it really almost feels like you are in space, as its so dark around you and you float in this weird world with only one light beam to guide you. Also somehow its even more quiet at night under the water.

{Roedolf}Read more