Up early and on the boat to ‘South West Pinnacle’ and ‘Shark Island’

First dive, we buddied up with Kati and had a lovely relaxed dive and we stumbled across a small net which was caugh up on some coral, so spent 10 mins or so at 22m deep, untangling it from the coral and amongst it was a baby moray eel.   The image below shows what kind of devastion this kind of idiocy can do, and why we are so keen to scrap our fun dive and spend the time to clear up other people’s mess.

 Anyway, the rant over, we continued the dive.. No bull shark or whale shark unfortunately.  Did see a few divers who were all over the place, knocking into coral which makes me so mad! WHAT IS IT WITH PEOPLE! I know that everyone starts somewhere, but to be able to dive this dive site you need good buoyancy as it is very deep in parts. So if you are at this dive site.. you should know what you are doing. Other dive schools are to blame, I saw no Crystal divers demonstrating such awful skill.

Second dive was much better, probably spotted 4 blue spotted rays, moray eel, couple of puffer fish, some juvenille butterfly fish and saw a trigger fish a couple of times which was hanging around a little too long for my liking.  Kati did spot a scorpion fish sat next to a grouper but didnt tell us  …I’ve not seen one here before so was pretty gutted.

Back on land we washed our kit and tomorrow afternoon, depending on the amount students, we’ll be starting our Team Teaching  ..feel a little nervous but cant wait to get stuck in.

We’re now back home ..Si’s, yes you’ve guessed it  ..WORKING for hours and hours ..and I’ve done some washing 😉

Jen
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The Vibe BBQ was pretty good.  We must have got down there around 8.30pm.  There was a massive queue for the food so we just parked ourselves at the bar and I waited for it to subside before grabbing a sausage in a bun, Si didnt fancy a bread roll so didnt eat.

Our first nights sleep was great.  Apart from getting up a couple of  times to check what was happening outside as there was an almighty thunder/lightning storm going on  …I slept really well but Si had a very restless night.

After Simon did a couple of hours work and I watched Eastenders we biked down to Crystal with my Ikelite camera housing to test it in the pool for any leakage ..thankfully everything was ok.  We then dried it and headed to Deep Down Productions (2 min walk) as they kindly said I could store it there.   So now, all I’ve got to do is take my camera down and start taking some photo’s on our dives  …can’t wait!!

With that job out of the way we then headed for the phone shop as the phone I’d bought in Bangkok died on me. After looking at a few, I decided on a Samsung.  Cheap, easy to use, what more could one want? 😉

As we walked out of the phone shop the heavens opened so we ran into a jewellery shop for shelter.  I had a quick look around, spotted and bought a leather necklace.   This wasn’t for me but for Simon. He had been given a lovely pendant but the lace it came with was really thin and scrawny so needed replacing. 

Ten or so minutes passed and the rain came.  We hopped on the bike and zoomed home to charged the phone, re-laced the pendant and so that Si could do MORE work.

In the evening we went to Crystal to meet Katti (Finish girl) who’d just arrived back on the island. She was doing her Dive Master training the same time as us  last year and also helped out on a lot of the ECO projects. 

Jen
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No diving today   ..instead we’re packing our gear and moving down the hill to ‘Suksamran’ 
I’m going to miss living at Star Villa, having drinks on the balcony looking out over the sea.  It’s such a beautiful location but I shall not miss the journey on the bike up the hill.  Our new home is a lot smaller than the appartment but just a short walk into Sairee which will be very handy.

Alan kindly dropped us and all our luggage at our new place and I unpacked whilst Si logged on and did some work.  There’s not so much drawer space here but I managed to find a home for everything  🙂

It feels a bit weird but I’m sure in a day or two it’ll feel like home.

So that was the bags & electronics unpacked, we then decided to go shopping and get some essentials, like bread, milk, eggs,beans, wash stuff, beer & vodka   😀   As we couldnt possibly carry everything, we’re having it delivered, so goodness knows when it’ll turn up.

Tonight we are going to ‘Vibe’ bar to join in on their 3 year celebrations  ..they’ll probably be a free BBQ and most of the Crystal crew will be there  ..so looking forward to that.

Jen
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