Big fish

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6th of December we had morer theory and dive from the shore. There is a niced reef starting just from the beach. We did a dive there and there was quite a lot of stuff to see. Although nothing to be compared what we were gonna see later. The 6th of Dec is also the Independence Day in Finla nd so we celebrated that with a BBQ at a bar in the northern Sairee beach. Quit a lot of Finns there, some of them working here and some of them tourists. Had a fun night but had to quit quite earlyt because for the next day was scheduled the exam and last two dives.

The exam went well (49/50) and after that we geared up and loaded into KTD's dive boat. We headed to close by Island and dived at the place called Twins. max depth was 18m which is the max depth allowed after the OWD course. There wqas lots of other dive groups as well and the underwayer traffic was quite heavy. But the visibility was very good and oncew again lot's of interesting stuff to see. The buyoancy control is getting better little by little. At first it felt quite difficult to control the depth but now it's not that hard anymore. Biggest problem is still the quite heavy use of air... All of us in the course used our air supply quit fast and the dive time was only about 30 minutes. Next dive was at the White rock and there max depth was 15m and dive lasted about 40 minutes. After that we headed back to the Tao and were given the SSI member cards and dive logs and by finishing the course were given the OWD (Open water diver) title.

I was planning to have a day off frim diving the next day and go to a snorkeling trip but good i changed my plans. we gathered the next day at noon to KTD and started to pland the days dives. Originally we planned to go to Chumpon Pinnacles where the whale shark was spotted but heard from Anniina, the videographer who joined us that there was one whale shark spotted at the Southwest Pinnacles in the morning. So there we headed and after an hour boat trip were on the spot. And after we got underwater it took about a minute when we saw our dive master to start pointing in one direction. There was a whale shark coming just into our direction!! It glided just right past me and the distance to it must not have been a lot more than one meter! Mission accomplished! The whale sharks were the main reason why I started to dive and now saw one on my first dive after the course! Our dm had dived about 350 times before spotting one! and the videographer saw her first one now. It was only a small baby and only about 4,5m long but while gliding past me it looked quite big anyway 😊. The rest of the dive went well and even there's unbeliavably lot to see it was shadowed by the whale shark! quite a lot of happy faces when we got back onboard!! Second dive was at Shark Island which was nice too. Visibility was quite low but once again lots of stuff. Except sharks.

At the evening we all gathered at the OK view restaurant where they held a quiz show. didn't go well but had fun night there! It's kind of HQ for the expat Finns at Tao and there quite nice selection of Finnish foods on the menu but havent been that long away from finland yet and the meatballs were not the choice of the day. Nice curiosity is that they have 55 different flavored vodka shots there, the Fisu included and some more excotic like watermelon. Should be no surprise that the evening went quite late 😊

Today Anniina showed us the film she had edited from yesterdays material and it looked so nice! She really can do her job! Funny scene was the whale shark gliding past us and me cheering there like a madman! Have to get the dvd even it's quite expensive, 2500 bahts (~50€)... Also went snorkeling and tested the camera case but didn't get any proper shots yet, it's very cumbersome thing underwater and takes time to get used to it.

Tonight's plan is go to see some Muayi Thai (thai boxing) at the local arena and propably tomorrow i will start my first specialty diving course, which is surprisingly underwater photography 😊 This pace i will destroy my travel budget in no time...

Cheers!

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