Tuesday July 31st

Lowell got to dive today.  Woohoo!  Of course, I'm not sure what Devin and David did while I was gone...  Mostly they just played around the house, and Devin caught up on some dishes.  Thank you Devin.  So while I was enjoying my dives, she was working.  That's the true definition of a dive widow, don't you think.  Good thing she loves me.  (Yes, she knows I appreciate everything she does for me and David.)

My dives today were with a local dive shop called Aquanuts.  They provide taxi service (translation, they have a Baht bus pick me up and take me to the shop) so I went outside at 7:45 AM to catch my ride.  Of course, I didn't know that Lenny Kravitz would be my driver!  (Truthfully, I think it was just a Lenny Kravitz look-alike...I didn't ask him for his autograph.)  Down to the shop to meet the other divers, than we all pile our gear and tanks into three trucks for the 45+ minute drive to the dock in Samae San.  Samae San is a fishing village a bit south east of Pattaya.  The harbor is a bustling, chaotic shuffle of people, trucks, motorbikes, carts, wheel barrows full of fish, and many other things.  It's a bit "primitive" by American standards, but it seems to have a rhythm to it.  At a glance, it looked crazy, but all of the guys working on the docks seemed to have a job.  One interesting picture I didn't take was the blacksmith next to the produce stand.  After getting on the boat (an adventure in and of itself...no ramp...climb over onto the pilings, then over the railing onto the boat) we headed out for our day of diving.  There were three groups of divers on board.  Some tech divers were going to do two deep dives, a rescue class was going to go to the beach and practice diver rescues, and a group of us was going to dive the Hardeep. 

We jumped in and descended the line, which puts us right next to the sunken boat.  Short history lesson:  The Hardeep is an Indonesian boat that sunk during WWII in 1942.  It lays on it's side, with a maximum depth of around 30 meters, or about 100 feet.  It is relatively "open" as a wreck, so we actually went into the wreck.  This was my first experience going inside a wreck.  It is open enough that it didn't feel uncomfortable.  And the life covering the wreck was overwhelming.  Corals everywhere, sea urchins all over, fish around and about.  On the bottom, we spotted a ray.  Later, we spotted another one that was nice enough to let me take a picture.  Being as this is my first "warm water" picture-taking with my new camera, not very many pictures turned out...but I've included a few below.  I think the highlight was the blue-spotted ray.  A very beautiful creature.  Once we came out of the boat, we searched around on top for quite some time, looking at fish and corals.  One of the divemasters, Simon, spotted a nudibranch.  I had mentioned to them that I wanted to find some nudies.  (They are sea slugs, and can be quite beautiful.  You'll see...)  This region has some very colorful species of nudibranch.  Then we headed up the line back to the boat...time for our surface interval, and lunch.  Lunch was great, by the way.  Cooked by a Thai woman named An.  (I told her my sister's name was Anne...she thought that was great...we had a good conversation.  She taught me how to say, "This was very good, thanks."  Of course, sitting here I can't remember it for the life of me...but when I look it up in the phrase book, it'll make more sense having talked to her.)

After lunch, it's back to the wreck.  But now the current was ripping through the straight between a few islands where the wreck is located.  So...the plan was to get in the water and swim to the buoy and descend quickly, and meet at 5 meters.  Then we'd continue down the line to the wreck and go inside to avoid the current.  So we jumped in...I swam to the line and grabbed the buoy and line...and darn near had my arm ripped off.  But I caught the line...and descended quickly...holding on for dear life...  Use your imagination...I was fully laid out like superman, only I was holding onto the line, and the current was keeping me parallel.  No matter what I did, I couldn't change my position.  I tried to look around to see if my two dive masters made it to the line, and almost had my mask ripped off and the regulator torn out of my mouth from the current.  So...plan B.  Just look straight ahead...go to 5 meters, and wait for Simon and Sally.  And wait.  And wait.  So I finally tried to turn around again, and darn near lost my grip and my regulator...so I went back up the line to see if I could find them...nope.  So I let go at the surface and started drifting.  Luckily, the dive boat wasn't too far away, and after a few minutes of motoring against the current, they came and scooped me up.  The other two divers on my dive hadn't managed to catch the line...so...Plan C. 

The captain moved the boat far up current from the wreck, and we were going to do a blue-water descent while drifting towards the wreck, hoping to find it.  Once we dropped, the current was moving quickly again...but we managed to stay together.  Once we got to the bottom, the fun began.  Woohoo!  Superman again...except this time without having to hang on to the line.  We were flying over the bottom...no time to stop and take pictures...  But no wreck...  So we just drifted for a while...found a few calm spots to look at corals, etc.  The current was swirling, so we almost ended up where we started.  Very weird.  We ascended together...did our safety stop...and popped to the surface to be picked up by the boat.  Phew.  That was fun!

So...my introduction to Thailand diving was quite exciting, to say the least.  I can't wait to get out in the water again...  My next planned dive will be August 12th with a dive buddy I met online from Germany that lives in Bangkok.  I'll be using a different dive shop this time, in an effort to find a shop that I like. 

And David would be mad at me if I didn't tell you that I saw some elephants on our way to Samae San.  (No...not wild elephants...but a place where you can ride them.)  David would love to ride the elephants for his birthday.

Some pictures are below...remember to click on them to see a larger version.