13 May

We're up early, I have to complete the First and Second Aid theoretical tests that I have to submit before we go on the dive. 07h00 we gather at Simple life for the Chumpon dive, the best diving site in Koh Tao and known for seeing Whale sharks around April/May. We collect our kit and head to the beach where we wait for the longtail to pick us up. After an hour the longtail arrives, we pack our kit on the boat with the other 20 people, climb aboard hoping it won't sink under the weight! As Murphy would have it the longtail had engine problems and another 20 minutes goes by as the driver jumps around with his monkey wrench trying to fix it - always some kind of unexpected adventure in Asia J

Off at last we head to the main boat where we offload the gear and head to Chumpon Pinnacle. We were the most experienced diving group on the boat with others doing their open water 1 or advanced. We are 2 Advanced, 2 Rescue and a dive master on the dive team.

Our dive was 29.6m for 50 minutes with good visibility! On the decent Leanne had gotten a mask squeeze almost unable to open her eyes, luckily it passed as soon as she remembered to equalise the mask and not just her ears. Although we used our air a lot faster at 30 meters than at 18 meters, our diving instructor was surprised to see how efficient we were with our air.

Unfortunately our dive was cut short when one of the other rescue divers found that his air was at 30 bar, usually we exit at 50 bar. At our 3 minute safety stop his air ran out and he had to use the alternate of the dive master. According to him his air was at 80 bar 5 minutes earlier before it dropped to 30 bar, his fin had also broken in half during the dive - very bad luck.

Lisa made sure the gear was tested again, but she mentioned that often people lied feeling embarrassed at using their air so fast. We had not seen the elusive whale shark on the dive, but at least we swam with a school of barracuda, saw a huge Grouper, an eel and travalli.

We wait an hour before heading for the second dive at White Rock. Leanne had problems equalizing and she quite regularly had to ascend a few feet to equalize. The dive was a lot shallower, only 17 meters but still incredibly beautiful. We headed back not having seen the elusive shark, but enough other fish.

Back at the dive shop Leanne was having serious ear pain but the dive instructor said we should wait and it would dissipate with time. We headed back to our accommodation and I started going through the theory of the rescue DVD before starting to complete the theory in the book.

Strange thing, both Leanne and myself awoke the evening at the same time, it had been storming outside and a sewerage smell had engulfed our room. Whether it was from all the storm water flooding the pipes I don't know, but we opened all the windows and after about 30 minutes the room was livable again with fresh air - again, never a dull moment in Asia J