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Published: September 16th 2014
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Chumphon Pinnacle - Crowded dive boat
Spend the extra - go with Dive Wishes! There's no rest for the wicked I'm told and with an 0830 collection for two morning dives, we were rudely awoken by an alarm clock on what was meant to be a holiday. I probably shouldn't complain as if the diving was half as good as it was the day before it would be well worth the effort.
I hit the buffet breakfast with the sort of vigour you'd expect from a 110kg bloke and immediately after complaining that I'd eaten too much, began to put some thought into the fact that it wasn't the smartest thing to do an hour before diving.
Chumphon Pinnacle is off the north-western coast of the island and we had to travel probably twice the distance that we had to get to White Rock a day earlier but we were still ther in less than 15 minutes. We pulled up beside a huge wooden double-deck vessel that had several dozen divers vying for position on it. Whilst Jo and I were joined by one other diver on this occasion, we were still more than pleased we'd chosen Dive-Wishes. Unfortunately whilst we had the boat to ourselves there were plenty of opportunities to bump
into other divers under the surface.
Dive 3 - Chumphon Pinnacle South Max Depth 25 metres
Dive Time 34 minutes
Water Temp 30c
Dive 4 - Chumphon Pinnacle North Max Depth 25 metres
Dive Time 35 minutes
Water Temp 30c
Gropers, barracudas and swim throughs were the highlights of the two dives at Chumphon Pinnacle. Schools of smaller fish filled our fields of vision and, when seen from below, all but blocked out the little light that was struggling to illuminate the depths. One of the swimthroughs was a little tight for a big guy like me but I squeezed through it and was congratulated with the already familiar Marco high-five. I really don't have the words (or species knowledge) to describe everything that we came across but suffice it to say that if you don't watch the video above you're doing yourself a disservice.
I've never been much good with air conservation and as were were a little deeper for longer periods than we had been the day before, I sucked through my tank pretty quickly. We soon devised a system whereby I shared some of Marco's air for the decompression stop and
that allowed us a fair bit of extra time at the bottom than we would usually have had.
Even with the extra distance for the boat to get to Chumphon Pinacle, we still managed three hours door to door from our accommodation and we had plenty of time to get cleaned up and for me to get my All Blacks Jersey on. We arrived at Chopper's Sports Bar in Sairee Village at 1330 - an hour before kickoff and got stuck into a few pre-game warmup beers. The Wallabies didn't stand much of a chance as not many All Blacks sides play poorly after a loss or draw the previous week. The boys had a point to prove and they did so with style. Richie McCaw scored two tries despite spending ten minutes in the bin and the All Blacks won with a convincing 51-20 scoreline.
The rest of the afternoon was spent walking along the shoreline at Chalok Ban Kao Bay on the south side of the island. Many of Koh Tao's dive centres are located there and the necessary infrastructure of backpackers hostels and bars gave the beach a laid back but interesting vibe. We stopped
for an ice tea and water, and it wasn't until we were about to leave that I realised I'd left my wallet at the resort. It was a 40 minute round trip back there, made all the more difficult by a rising tide. It was nearly dark by the time I returned. Jo had been left behind as a deposit but didn't seem too distressed about being left on a picturesque beach at sunset.
An early night was on order. We unfortunately only had one full day left in Thailand during which we were booked for two more dives and had plenty more to do besides. Within 18 hours we would not even be on the island.
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