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Diving in Koh Phangan
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After 6 long, hard, stressful weeks(!) on Haad Yuan, we embarked on our PADI Open Water dive certificates on another part of the island. This meant 5 dives each to a depth of 18m (60ft) and, to be honest, we were hooked after 1! The waters were incredibly clear, warm and bountiful: we saw fish, stingrays, eels and corals beyond anything we thought we'd see and so decided at the end of the course that we would take the Advanced certificate as well. This allowed us to dive to 30m (100ft) deep and also taught us things such as advanced buoyancy skills and underwater navigation with compasses.
On the 2nd day of our Advanced course we were due to make 3 dives at sites 15km off the Koh Phangan coast. We were told we May see sharks on one of the dives but not to get our hopes up as it only happens once in a while. We were not to disappointed!!
The first dive was at a place called SailRock, which is recognised as the best dive site in the Gulf of Thailand. We saw the most amazing beautiful corals and fish but, alas, no sharks. Yet. 2nd dive site was called Chumphon Pinnacle and here we saw 2 grey reef sharks about 5m from us. They were about 2m long and had a proper "Jaws" silhouette. Now breathing from a regulator underwater is not the most natural thing to do at the best of times - you can easily forget to breathe if you're concentrating on something else too hard. But when these sharks came into view we all found ourselves breathing so hard that we were using our air much quicker than usual. Just as we were due to ascend to the surface our instructor saw his colleague motioning us over and what we saw next was THE single most amazing thing we've ever seen. A Whaleshark 5m long was swimming in open water with about 10 other divers. It was so graceful in the water and seemed so comfortable, friendly even, with the divers near it that we swam across and got within a few feet of it! The pictures attached show the whaleshark but don't really do justice to the size of it. Trust us, this thing was huge. Unfortunately we had only enough air left to get to the surface so we had to leave it there and ascend.
When we got to the top we asked if we could do our 3rd dive here too but just then 3 or 4 other boats arrived and it was decided we'd move to the 3rd dive site - South West Pinnacle, as planned. The 3rd dive surpassed the 2nd insofar as we saw an even bigger Whaleshark this time, 7m long. The thill we got from this dive was something we'll never, ever forget(I'm getting goose bumps sitting here writing this!!!!). The Shark would swim up to divers head-on, then at the last minute he'd swim straight over your head and come back! Our dive intstructor had been instructing for over 10 years and done 15,000 dives all over the world and he said this was the best day's diving he'd ever done! It was such a buzz that we've agreed to dive again in Vietnam, Aus & NZ.
Cambodia next, can't wait! We'll tell you more from there. Love John & Lou xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More thumbnails ...
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