Scuba Diving Day, Sunset Pictures and a Big Ol' Rainstorm

  Nov 29, 2022 - Tuesday

We set off right after a light breakfast, the boat left Koh Adang at 8:30 and we had a taxi waiting for us at Zodiac beach to take us to our dive guides. We went through the drill of answering a few basic dive questions to make sure we knew what we were doing, got fitted for BCDs and we heading out in no time. We had a French guide who was back on the island after working elsewhere for two years and his Italian friend who was just getting started with the dive company. We were in good hands! Since we were a last minute booking and couldn't get to the dive shop any earlier we set off in a long tail to meet up with the larger dive boat. Our first dive was where we snorkelled the day before, but this time we dropped in and headed north first. The big boat was anchored there and there were a few divers in the water already but some were still just getting their gear on. We sank down, ran through a few drills of mask on/off, losing the regulators and getting neutral buoyancy and were off! It was fun to do the same reef again, this time from a lower angle and looking up and over to the reef. Such fun to be diving again, its sure another world out there being down swimming with the fishes. We saw the big barracuda again, just off in the distance. We slowly worked our way along the shelf, checking out the cracks for life and loving the anemones with the fish living inside them. I used 3 weights, I believe they were 1 kg each and Graham used 6 but it wasn't enough and the instructor gave him 2 more. 

After the dive we went back onto the big boat for a gear reset and a little snack. They had curry, rice and a hard boiled egg for us as well as the usual watermelon and pineapple slices. We cruised over to the next spot, a reef wall on the northeast side of a little island off the east side of Koh Lipe. The visibility here was a little poor, but we saw a couple of eel including a recently dead one. A big fan coral very majestic by its self and a sting ray swimming off in the distance. We worked our way along the wall, zigzagging our way along, then back a little higher, and repeat until it was time to come up to the surface. We were content at this point, two nice dives and a sunny day! We were offered one more dive which we readily agreed to, we dropped most of the crew and divers off on Koh Lipe and headed back to the island, this time to Stonehenge. It's a famous dive spot full of soft corals. It has a couple pinnacles all covered with corals and fish. This time we dove with an instructor from Calgary, the first Canadian we'd met so far. We were amazed with the coral here. Amazing bright purple soft corals, green and yellow and red ones too. It was definitely worth going to this site, the sea life was non-stop beauty. There was a bit of a current in this spot, we started off by going with it, trying to be gentle with kicks to not waste air while fighting the current. There were plenty of calm pockets behind the pinnacles to duck into to where the water was still and you could take a little break. We went around the front of the dive spot and rode the current back around, into the middle and up and over some more rocks. It was all covered in such bright and diverse colours, it just has to be seen and enjoyed. We happily ended our dive, slowly returning to the boat and back to Koh Lipe. Such a great dive day. We hopped into a taxi again to cross the little island and enjoyed a cool drink while waiting for our boat back to Koh Adang, it was already 4:30 in the afternoon.

Back at the resort we vegged out for a bit but headed to the beach to try to get an epic sunset. It was setting up to be a gorgeous display, we got a few shots in with the GoPro and the drone while sipping G&Ts when suddenly the sky opened up. Just as the sun was setting it started pouring rain. Graham ran inside with his drone to keep it dry and I followed with our cooler and towels. By the time I was back at our room I was soaked! Not a bad thing, it was still warm out and I was just in a bathing suit. So I decided to go for an ocean swim to watch the sun go down while the rain poured. It was very peaceful, a few squalls going past and the rain letting up briefly before coming back with a vengeance. A quick shower to warm up a bit later, we were very hungry since we only had a little meal for lunch. We set in and had a huge Thai dinner, some more delicious and refreshing drinks while the rain poured down around us. We were treated to lightening and thunder, some of which was only 2 miles away lighting up the sky accompanied with a huge raucous round of thunder. We had a couple of roti for dessert, one chocolate and one with bananas and sugar. They were both delicious, but the banana one definitely the superior. With happy bellies and content divers we ended the day happy.