With dreams of ladyboys in our heads, the REM sleep cycle must have lasted all night.
We're up at 8am with big breakfasts of coconut-banana shakes, fried eggs, toast, and bacon next to the Big Blue mutts before we start our PADI Advanced Adventurer scuba course.
We're lucky enough to have "The Germanator" Yvonne Fries again as our instructor, who always has a sharp, crisp teaching style befitting her last name. We're practically family now after going through the trenches together in the compressed Open Water course for 3 days. Although we already know it first hand, it turns out Yvonne is an incredibly recognized scuba instructor: Last year she won the Scuba School International's award for Best Scuba Instructor in the Asia-Pacific region, the SSI's highest honor. How lucky we are!
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| From Google |
As advanced diving trainees, we're fitted with wrist compasses and dive computers, one on each arm. I feel straight out of Tron.
Wrist gear intact, we're on the boat heading to Chumphon Pinnacle around 2pm despite a torrential monsoon and waters so choppy that everyone on-board feels ill. When we jump in, the current is vigorous, we hold on to the boat for dear life as not to drift out to Fiji.]
Underwater, however, is peaceful. This is our first advanced dive and we quickly descend to 30 meters (100 ft). Although the colors are hard to make out at that depth -- the reds are yellows have all but gone away -- the site floor is teaming with life. Schools of striped barracudas fly by as does a 5-ft long brown grouper, but I'm too busy posing for photos to notice him right behind me. Here is a video of the dive site captured by Big Blue Divers earlier this year (notice the resident grouper and barracuda school). It's almost identical to what we see outside of the whale shark. Notice the big grouper during the first half, we swam with him:
30 meters below the surface, due to the increased pressure, the nitrogen in one's lungs is much greater than normal, leading to a laughing gas-like effect known as being "knocked." It's similar to going to the dentist to have one's teeth pulled, getting gassed up, and feeling lightheaded, happy-go-lucky, and slightly delusional. As this is our first dive at such a depth, we're especially vulnerable. Yvonne exploits our altered state by asking us simple arithmetic underwater (e.g., 13 - 7 = ?). Although we struggle to answer, the fact that she is moving her fingers suddenly appears very amusing.
We circle around our fearless leader on the ocean floor, who cracks a raw egg in front of us. The increased pressure completely transforms the egg, making the white all but disappear and the yolk instantly hardening the into into almost a plasma, with the consistency of Greek yogurt. The plasma yolk floats in the middle of our circle like a newborn alien baby, swaying and contorting as we maw at it like nipped-out cats due to the increased nitrogen.
Two hours later, we're at a new site -- Red Rock Drop Off -- 16 meters down going on a cave dive. Our group packs into narrow passes as we try to smoothly enter the caverns without hitting the rough walls. It's the first practical buoyancy test we've had yet. I'm in the back of the group, taking photos and laughing as my peers pile on top of each other. Outside of the cave are several giant pufferfish, deflated and at ease, big black marble eyes rotating at they search for food.
We circle around our fearless leader on the ocean floor, who cracks a raw egg in front of us. The increased pressure completely transforms the egg, making the white all but disappear and the yolk instantly hardening the into into almost a plasma, with the consistency of Greek yogurt. The plasma yolk floats in the middle of our circle like a newborn alien baby, swaying and contorting as we maw at it like nipped-out cats due to the increased nitrogen.
Two hours later, we're at a new site -- Red Rock Drop Off -- 16 meters down going on a cave dive. Our group packs into narrow passes as we try to smoothly enter the caverns without hitting the rough walls. It's the first practical buoyancy test we've had yet. I'm in the back of the group, taking photos and laughing as my peers pile on top of each other. Outside of the cave are several giant pufferfish, deflated and at ease, big black marble eyes rotating at they search for food.
Another two hours go by and we're back on the boat. It's a good thing we've had our seasickness tablets as we're on Big Blue's smallest, oldest diving boat, which magnifies the impact of even the smallest waves. I feel straight out of The Perfect Storm. The rain and wind don't let up and by the time we reach the dive site, everyone looks green. It's dark outside when we jump in the water for our first night dive. We can barely handle the waves and current on the surface, so we descend 18 meters immediately, flash lights firmly gripped. We see five blue-spotted stingrays investigating the ocean floor including a baby the size of a diner pancake. Continuing on, we pass by an old married couple of soccer ball-sized hermit crabs, each covered in red hairs and skin that looks like red rock candy. I'm looking at the crab couple when a massive 4-ft long barracuda sneaks up behind me, saying salutations. Other than that shock, our first night dive is long and as peaceful as the sleeping pufferfish we pass. Flashlights off and the nighttime water comes alive with bioluminescence, with millions of small plant life and krill glowing all around me like glow-in-the-dark confetti.
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