26. 7. Koh Tao Diving

Early rise today at 0630 , ready to be at the boat for 0730 . The weather was vile today , heavy rain and quite windy , the sea looked very choppy !
The dive went ahead and our first dive stop was Chumphon Pinnacle. We jumped in one by one and swam to the buoy ahead . The descend this time went very smoothly and we were all safely at the right depth - no more than 18 metres .
The marine life was just mesmerising this far down , much bigger fish down here! Our instructor managed to find an eel hiding beneath some coral too , which was really cool. James found his old friend the trigger fish , but they seemed on good terms this time !
After about half and hour in the water , we surfaced for our surface interval , the next dive was a while away , so we had to get on the boat again. We noticed that the waves were really quite big now at the surface, the boat next to us was really rocking . We all managed to get to the boat safely eventually , but I got taken out by a wave as I was getting on the boat the first time , ending up ages away from the ladder again! Not going to lie it was quite scary , but all was well in the end .
We headed to the next dive site called Hin Pee Wee . The amazing thing about this site is that there is an American ww2 ship there, that was deliberately sunk 15 years ago.
Again an uneventful descent down , the shipwreck was just amazing. We were allowed to swim over the the top of the ship but not allowed to explore any further. On the way there , our instructor found a grouper fish by a rock - they're horrible looking things , with little spikes in places and weird teeth. They are harmless though apparently.
We reached about 18 m depth again (James reached 20 ! ) and the dive lasted for about 30 mins before we ascended. When we ascended we were given a challenge to kiss about 10 mtrs deep! We managed it despite a Google clash haha! Getting into the boat this time was much easier too, thankfully!
Once we arrived back at the scuba school , we had some photos of our group together, followed by lunch and beers to celebrate our certification !
After a lift back to the hotel , we headed out again to have have a bit of an explore . Shark Bay was first on our list, it was a lovely little beach and James even saw some leatherback turtles whilst snorkeling, he was enormous, most probably 5-6ft long. There was a nice little cafe which did good coffee too which is a rarity on the beach in Thailand!
Afterwards we headed to Sairee beach , we had a nice stroll and found a lovely restaurant to eat at , the food was amazing- especially the tiger King prawn!
There was a long street of little shops behind the beach which lead to the centre which we enjoyed afterwards before heading back to our room.
Last full day at Koh Tao tomorrow so want to have a day of last minute exploring , maybe taking a boat to Nang Yuan Island.Read more