Ah, the wonders of the deep!

Great diving and great news--let me set the stage for you though. Since my last post, we have been taking a very laid back approach to life here on Koh Phangan. Beach, relaxation, and diving. Our first two dives were on Monday, at the famous Sail Rock dive site. While we had heard great things about this site both online and from other divers on the west coast, we were not expecting the phenomenal visibility and teeming wildlife that we experienced the second we got in the water. Enormous spotted groupers, 5-ft wingspan stingrays, and hoards of barracuda and trevaly surrounded us throughout our dives, though one famous resident was still missing. I am of course referring to the largest fish in the world, and ironically enough, just before our dives I asked Gabriel, our very charismatic Italian dive master, about the likelihood of spotting one, to which he replied, "We try not to talk about the whale sharks so much...it's superstition." He was right. No whale shark siting but phenomenal diving nonetheless.


While this first experience at Sail Rock did win us over, we decided to wait two more days before our next pair of dives. The first day was a beach day; we basically just relaxed at the beach and on the porch of our beachfront bungalow (pictured above). For the second day, in light of our realization that we were still all miraculously under budget, we decided to take it up a notch and move back into the slightly more expensive but much more luxurious hotel that I mentioned in my last post. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision for me, because out of no where I seemed to lose hearing in my right ear for the entire day. I was a little bit concerned that this may have been due to a middle ear infection, since I had suffered from an outer ear infection in my right ear earlier in the trip (thank goodness antibiotics do not require a prescription in Thailand!). Either way, Jess and I indulged in a movie day (thanks to our hotel's cable TV), and I rested the day away, hoping that my participation in our planned dives the next day would not be compromised.

Dawn came abruptly and despite the fact that my ear did not feel 100% yet, I decided to give the dives a shot (for those of you who are not scuba divers, the concern with any ear/nose/throat affliction while diving is that it may inhibit your ability to equalize the increasing pressure experienced during a descent, possibly resulting in a busted ear drum). However, I had a strong feeling that if I did not go on this dive I would regret it.

Once we got to Sail Rock, we saddled up with high hopes for a great dive--hopes were especially high because the Half Moon Party on the south end of the island took place the night before. This translated to the number of divers at the site being decreased 5-fold, likely due to hangovers or worse conditions suffered by 90% of the island's tourist population. We welcomed this much more intimate setting, as can be told by the pre-dive photo below, with our divermaster Gabriel on the far left.

We got into the water and descended. The moment of truth comes and goes, and thankfully my right ear cleared the pressure with no effort! But just then, I heard the steel clanking noise of Brian frantically banging his tank with the brass knuckles that he and I bought for occasions such as this--when you really need the attention of your fellow divers. I turn to my right to see what all of the fuss is about and suddenly I am staring directly at a whale shark not 15 feet from me. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, but after a few seconds I realized that luck was on our side today, the day that we refrained from speaking about whale sharks altogether. Though this was a juevenile (even a baby by some standards) measuring just 12 feet, a mere 20% of the animal's known size capacity, we were mesmerized by its presence. We all followed the magnificent animal and its posse of trevalies and ramoras (schooling reef fish and sucker fish, respectively) for about 5 minutes before it again disappeared into the water ahead of us. We were all extatic, though exclaiming our excitment underwater was difficult, and we had to settle for dancing and fist pumping. The rest of the dive was also amazing, including some up-close encounters with very large, schooling barracuda and two more appearances by the whale shark, including an unforgettable flyover.

After the dive, we realized how lucky we really were, when Gabriel explained to us that this was the first whale shark he'd seen all year, a man with an average of 10 dives a week at Sail Rock. We definitely left the dive site with a sense of accomplishment. What a great way to end our time in Thailand!

But time is not up just yet. Tomorrow we finally leave for Bangkok, which means we have to say goodbye to Haad Yao beach and the island of Koh Phangan. We will definitely miss it, but I have high hopes for our four days in the city.

I will keep you posted, and thanks to those of you who kept your fingers crossed--it paid off!

Mike