Day 74- Deep Sea Diving, A Ship Wreck, Night Diving, And A Swede In Search Of A Naked Pool Party.



Sinking to my certain death.

Throwing up peace signs like its 1996.

#Selfie. Yes, I just said that.

 Customary to our time on Koh Tao so far, we were up bright and early as we had a 45 minute boat ride out to Chumphon Pinnacle for our first dive of the morning.  You know what is the best way to ruin a lovely boat ride first thing in the morning?  Answer: seasickness.  Thanks to the choppy conditions on the water that morning I was not overly eager to jump in when we finally arrived at our destination.  As mentioned in my last post, we were partaking in the Advanced Adventurer course where we were practicing different skills.  This morning our first dive was to be a "deep dive", where we would descend to a depth of approximately 30 meters.  To add to the excitement for the day, Colleen had rented an underwater camera so that she could capture photographic evidence of us doing something cool (you know, for the future grandkids).



Shove a regulator in her mouth. That's one way to keep her quiet.



Chillin' on a ship wreck, no big deal.

Once my stomach settled down, our group of five divers hit the water and started our descent to the ocean floor.  Unfortunately, the visibility was piss poor, which naturally had to occur on the day that we decided to rent the camera.  Once we reached the bottom of the ocean (32m/100 ft), our instructor Amber pulled out an egg (guessing she just casually carries them with her everywhere) and proceeded to take the shell off.  Due to the intense pressure at such depths, the raw egg was able to maintain its shape as we ping-ponged the shell-less food item back and forth.  I had to go and ruin the fun for everyone when I swatted the egg a little too hard and thus proved that muscle trumps science every time!  The low visibility made it hard for us to keep track of one another, and as we were swimming near some huge coral walls I suddenly realized that Colleen was nowhere to be seen.  There were other groups of divers in the area, so I assumed she had gotten mixed up with some of them, but nonetheless I instantly started to panic.  Because one panic attack under the water that week apparently wasn't enough for me.  Eventually, everyone else in our small group caught on that Colleen was missing and we all started looking for her.  Thankfully, she reemerged seemingly out of nowhere within a couple of minutes and was wondering what everyone was doing.  I guess she could see us, but none of us could see her.  Oh well, nothing like a near heart attack to start the morning off!  Thanks to my heavy oxygen intake, Colleen and I had to surface early, which sucked because as soon as we left they saw some cobias, which neither of us had seen yet.  Oh well, I guess I should just be happy I found my girlfriend alive. Meh.



Amber looks significantly cooler under water than Colleen and I.



Two tickets to the gun show.



For our second dive of the day, we would be diving a shipwreck site.  Sadly, it was not some cool pirate ship from a billion years ago, but was in fact a ship that was intentionally sunk for divers a few years earlier.  While the underwater visibility still wasn't the greatest, we were able to capture some pretty cool photos.  Colleen and I actually both cut ourselves on various parts of the ship as we were maneuvering in and out of the entrance ways and such.  It was definitely a much more bad ass "cuts and bruises" story then the story I was currently rocking entitled: I'm wearing socks with my fins because the plastic  is cutting up my ankle! As if scraping her arm on a sunken ship and wearing Fruit of the Loom socks in the ocean weren't enough, Colleen managed to bump her head pretty good going through one of the ship's doorways.  That was our cue to surface.  On the way to the surface, Colleen got our instructor-in-training, Martin, to take a picture of us kissing.  The first attempt was straight out of the junior prom yearbook as "Awkward Colleen" knocked my scuba mask off.  On the second try we got the picture she so dearly wanted, but I ran out of air immediately thereafter and had to surface faster than a teenage boner. 



Cowabunga dude!



Walking on sunshine.

Having survived just about everything that can go wrong underwater, Colleen and I rested up that afternoon for our final dive that night.  I believe we also cleared the local 7/11 out of their entire stock of band-aids, as both of us had ankles that were a complete mess.  I guess, we've got sensitive skin!  With our ankles heavily plasticized, we rested up as that night we had our final dive before we were scheduled to leave the island the following day.



Group shot on a cannon. That's a first.



Hot make-out session under the water.



As the sun began to set, Colleen, Amber, Jon, Martin, and myself set sail with some beautiful weather and the entire boat to ourselves.  Out on the boat we were given our briefing on what we would be doing and we were all given torches/flashlights.  There were no other boats out on the bay that night, so we had the water entirely to ourselves.  As we made our way into the water and the sun started to set, Colleen's fear of the dark started to creep in.  The dark, spiders, and cracks between couch pillows.  These three things will be the death of her.  Colleen would not swim near the bottom of the ocean, although in all fairness she was not that far above us.  We got to see some pretty cool stuff, including glowing plankton and a couple of spotted stingrays.  We were told that many of the fish were already asleep, as they were apparently resting up to harass stupid tourists the following morning.  Due to my ongoing problem of consuming oxygen at an extremely rapid rate, I was forced to vacate the dive earlier then I would have liked.  Martin came back to the ship with me, while Colleen, Amber, and Jon continued diving.  As my shitty luck would have it, they ended up seeing a family of puffer fish.  All I got was a beautiful view of the stars as I laid on my back in the bay and admired the beauty before me.  Such a rough life, I know.



I love the air... clearly.



#Selfie...again!

Having completed our five dives in the last two days, we were now Advanced Divers (at least on paper!).  We celebrated by taking out Colleen's dreads/hair monstrosity as we had no swimming engagements in the immediate future.  With my girlfriend now looking more like a woman and less like Madeline Brewer in "Orange Is The New Black", we headed out for the evening to meet our newfound photographer buddy, Prat.  After meeting up at Chopper's yet again, we had a few drinks before moving onto another venue.  Foolishly, Colleen left me there as she wanted to go back to the bungalow to rest her severely mangled foot.  Naturally I fed her my famous line of  "I'm just going to have one drink", which is Brent code for see you in a couple hours.  Prat and I ended up hanging out and drinking far beyond my one beer allowance. 



Socks and flippers. It's a new thing I'm trying.



We survived!

 After saying my goodbyes to Prat, I started to stumble on back to the accommodations where my lovely girlfriend was waiting.  On the way I happened into some Swedish guy who was asking me if I knew where the pool party with all the naked chicks was.  I assured him, that I had only ever seen such things on the internet, but he was hell-bent certain that he was on the right path to this party.  I wonder if he ever did find it?  While I may not be sure what that Swedish guy found after he left me, I can assure that all Colleen found was her boyfriend in a slightly inebriated state.  She assures me of this because I kept asking her to quiz me on my multiplication tables, which I always do in an attempt to prove my soberness.  I mean, shit, if you know the answer to 8x7, there is no possible way you could be drunk. Is there?

~Brentski~