More big fish sightings

---

Thai boxing night was cool! The event was held at the outdoor thai boxing arena and there were quite a lot of people there. about half farangs (foreigners) and half local. The event had 9 fights and on fighter was a Swedish guy David who had his first thsai boxing fight in Thailand. The event started with the national anthem of Thailand and after that the first boxers entered the arena. Before every fight the boxers have some pretty nice rituals and there's traditional music in the background, very nice atmosphere. In the 5th match the boxers were little kids, maybe about 7-10 years old and they were really energetic and the crowds were cheering a lot more than in the other fights. The winner of the fight was titled to some kind of champion and was awarded a nice trophy. 8th fight was David's and he did really nice job and won his fight. After the event we headed back to Ok View resort where the after party was held even just few other than Finnish divers attended that party. David lives there also and was a nice bloke and was interesting to talk with him about the thai boxing. Even he won his fight he felt quite beaten and battered and had a bit hard time walking 😊 Tough stuff... The evening went quite late once again.

The next day I started two specialty diving courses, buoancy and underwater photography. Perttu, who held the OWD course was the instructor in this one as well. There's probably not much in diving that he doesn't know. And if doesn't know something it's probably not worth knowing. After a quick briefing and testing the camera case went headed to the water and the familiar site where the owd lessons where held. Practised some buoyancy control with and without the camera case. It's a lot more harder than it sounds 😊 And as Perttu said, it's all about breathing. And since the camera case is actually not a case but an overprised minigrip bag you're not able to do many changes to camera settings after you have put the camera into the bag. I took about 200 pics in the first dive just to see that the autofocus button was switched off at some point and only 3 pics had correct focus... Second dive went a bit better and got feew more shots but the sun was going down and the light levels dropped quickly making shooting impossible without a flash.

Two final dives for the courses were taken next day. At about noon we boarded the Drag Queen (KTD's dive mother ship, or whatever it's called...) and took the course to Chumphon Pinnacle about 10km's from the Ko Tao. That was the site where they had seen the whale shark during our owd course and we were hoping to see one again, but changes to see one is always very slim. Under the water we went and I started to take photos of anemones and corals and some fish and after a while I saw Perttu making the hand sign of a shark and pointign to it's direction. The visibility was not very good but through the "haze" i saw a big shape coming almost straight to my direction. Instantly knew it was whale shark again and couldn't believe my luck! (If someone from the trip to Africa reads this one, (s)he might remember the name Lucky Group 😊
I tried to get some pictures of the whole fish but since the aiming with that thing is not very easy didn't get any proper ones, but even if I had they prolly would have not beenb good. But when it got closer it once again passed just next to me and was able to get some close-ups of it's side. Was so happy afterwards, because getting to see whale shark was the main goal of this trip and now I've seen it twice and even got few pics too! To Borneo I went to see Orang Utans and to Africa to see Mountain Gorillas but they were basically 100% guaranteed to see one. Whale shark was definitely not a sure thing to see. After Chumphon we went a nice site called Green Rock drop off which is a huge wall full of corals. I took my flash with me this time and for some reason it refused to work in the deep water (~18m) and wasn't able to take many pics down there. Only when we got closer to surface and the pressure loosened the case I took few pics, but none good ones. After the dives I heard that Kalle, one of the "apprentice divers" at KTD had finished his dive master classification and was going to have his snorkel test held at Ok view. Interesting ritual, he had to drink about 4dl of gin with little bit of lime and red bull through his snorkel while having mask on. Kind of beer bong but with booze. Down it went, fast and just a little bit of gagging 😊 He took it pretty well and didn't even seem to get too drunk of that. I thought that it must be a ritual held only by Finnish divers, but was wrong and it will be held to every dive master. And sometimes they have to drink even more. Even the unfortunate Japanese dm who had never drunk alcohol and died after the test... (Today I heard that they had invented another competition at Ok view. Ice glass and 10 shots, if the glass breaks you're disqualified. The current record is about 2 minutes 30 secs. Another attempt ended after 7 shots and 1min 30 secs because the glass broke. If you break the record you will get a nice hoodie. The eventual condition is not hard to quess 😊)

Next morning was an early wake up call and I went to a snorkeling trip around the island. When we were picked up from the AC resort we thought that it will be a nice trip with just about 10 people. But when we got to the harbour we saw that the ship was already jam packed... Even the trip was too crowded it was nice to see the island a bit more and do some snorkeling in the bays. Though after diving, snorkeling is not that much fun anymore 😊 Nice place was also the Koh Nangyuan, three small island just next to Koh Tao. It has really cool beach between the islands and I think the beach is underwater during the high time.

Yesterday I had two fundives to get my total dives to 12 and I'll get my Specialty Diver card tomorrow! First site was at Mango Bay where the snorkeling trip stopped also! There I said that it would be a nice site to dive too and was a pleasant surprise to see that todays dive trip was going there too. Quite shallow location so the dive lasted full hour. Very nice place even there was some junk in the bottom as well... Next site was at Nangyuan Cave just next the the Koh Nangyaun. There's couple of "cave-like" formations with huge fallen rocks creating quite narrow passages. When I was entering the cave something hit my head and got flattened to the bottom and saw one of the divers rushing into the cave... What an idiot... afterwards he said he didn't even see me when he was going to the cave, but i can't understand why he didn't because he was above and behind me so he should have seen me. It would not have mattered in the open water but happening just there in the narrow cave entrance it was not too much fun 😊

That dive was probably my last dive here in Tao for now because the plan is to get moving and at the moment the next destination will be Khao Sok national park close to Surat Thani (www.khaosok.com). Should be a cool place with a really old jungle, even older than the Amazonian rain forest. Might even see some tigers there! Though that possibility is even slimmer than with whale sharks. But as we've seen, anything is possible! And hopefully will be finally able to get some cool bug photos 😊 So today will be spent by getting the ferry tickets to Surat Thani and planning the coming days. And maybe evn to dip into our resorts swimming pool which I haven't had time to do yet... It will probably take few days until I have more things to write so you don't have to read long posts like this daily 😊 Cheers until then!

---

Photos

uw photo course
Perttu showing the way how to take pics underwater

The reef
Anemones at Chumphon Pinnacle

big fish
Whale shark at Chumphon Pinnacle

Kon Nangyuann
Cool triple beach at Koh Nangyuan

Comments

[Mari]

WAU
Kuulostaapas uskomattoman mukavalta. (KadeKadeKade... täällä pakkasen ja tuiskun keskellä...) Kiva, että jaksat kirjotella ja laitella kuvia!