On 29th May I was picked up by a mini bus from Fantasea Divers, and on board I found Chris Timberlake, the instructor. We reached the other side of the island where a “long-tail” took us out to the dive boat. A long-tail is a typical SE Asian boat with a small engine mounted inboard just above the gunwale level, with a long propeller shaft that protrudes over the top of the transom into the water. Because of the angle, the propeller is actually some way behind the boat.

On the dive boat, during the journey out to the dive site at Rach Noi island, Chris gave me a lesson about deep diving. This was the first of the 4 “specializations” that I was to cover during my advanced scuba course. Chris was giving me personalized tuition, which made learning a lot faster. The dive site had a depth of 40 m (130 feet) – this being the maximum allowed for PADI recreational scuba diving – and the danger at this depth is nitrogen narcosis or “the narcs”.

The narcs can cause a feeling a bit like being drunk, and can severely affect many people’s judgement. To demonstrate this, Chris timed me doing a long multiplication on the surface and then (using the special diving pencil and pad) another on the bottom at 40m. I actually did both sums in the same amount of time but unfortunately got them wrong on both occasions! We took 3 minutes to get to the sea bed at 40m, and due to decompression limits we only stayed at maximum depth for 7 minutes before starting a long slow ascent.

The second dive was all about navigation in a current. The exercise was to swim in a square, counting kicks and using a compass, and end up in the same place I started. I was supposed to not cheat by looking around me too much, and I didn’t, but at the end of the exercise I wasn’t too far away from the starting place.

During the trip back to Phuket I had an interesting talk with a guy called Mark who was with his Peruvian wife. Mark summited Mt Everest recently – he is the first person I’ve spoken to who has done that. Back in Ao Patong, after a bite to eat (Pad Thai) I returned to the dive shop for the next part of my advanced course – Night Diving.

Night diving is notable for the fact that – yes – it’s dark. You take a head lamp and this has the effect of eliminating the blue-green colour that you inevitably see diving in the daytime due to the seawater filtering out all the red light as you get deeper. So at night, everything looks wonderfully red, all the way down. Also you see different creatures. After another compass exercise, Chris took me through a cave, which got my heart rate up a little.

Back on shore, I went to a travel agent and postponed my flight from Bangkok to India. The prospect of overlanding through Burma is too interesting and there is no way I will want to fly from Thailand in just a couple of days.

I then found that the Ao Patong night life was back in full swing after the previous day’s holiday. I relaxed at a bar with a few other backpackers and locals. A girl called “Di” challenged me to the favorite local bar game of “4 in a row” and mostly beat me, no matter what strategy I tried. She then proceeded to beat at backgammon.

Next morning, 30th May, I headed down to Fantasea Divers for my next lesson, which this time was just off the beach at Ao Patong. After an initial dive, following through the same route (and cave) as the night dive, Chris gave me a long talk all about Search and Rescue. This was a lot of fun, and involved different search patterns to locate the missing “treasure”. The treasure in this case was an old engine which Fantasea kept on the seabed for training purposes.

I eventually found the engine by methodical searching and then I used a device which is what I like to think of as an underwater hot air balloon to raise it. After tying the chords of the balloon to the engine, I used air from my spare regulator to inflate it. Before long, a 30 kg (70 lb) engine was stirring in the sand, and then headed up to the surface!

Finally, on the third dive, Chris wanted me to do some mapping combined with grid navigation. By this time, I almost felt like I was training to be a diving pro! I am certainly feeling very confident underwater – I’ve come a long way from the rather nervous non-swimmer who, with some trepidation, signed up just 2 months ago for his fist ever diving course.

Back at the diving shop, Chris Timberlake took my photo in order to issue me with a new PADI Advanced card. Today I found out that Chris used to work for Seismograph Service Ltd. (the employer that I quit from in Nigeria) and knows a lot of the people I worked with. It is a small world.

I booked a diving trip to the ominously named “Shark Point” for the next day, arranged to rent a proper underwater camera, and then headed again to a recommended bar on the beachfront road for a beer or two. My brain was tired from all the navigating, and my “4 in a row” opponent was even more successful than the previous evening…

On 31st May, the Fantasea vehicle picked me up and I was soon on on the other side of the island, boarding the dive boat headed for Koh Doc Mai. The dive boat was older and more quiet than the one 2 days previously. The Fantasea dive master showed me how to load the rented camera, and I tried a shot or two.

On board I got talking to the 3 other Fantasea divers, all Irish – there were honeymooners Liz and Eammon, and also Brian Collins, with whom I was buddied for the day. Koh Doc Mai, it turned out, was a tiny islet in the middle between Phuket and Koh Phi Phi.

We all got ready to go in….

It was a little complicated for me trying to figure out how to carry the camera in such a way that I could access it, but compared with search and rescue the previous day, it was no big deal, and I started clicking away at the underwater coral and sea life.

The first dive involved us drifting along the wall of the islet in a gentle current. Brian turned out to not only be a good dive buddy, but was also good at posing for the camera.

On the second dive the boat moved out to Shark Point. The visibility was not quite so good, but there were several lion fish, a moray eel, and large fan coral.

Towards the end of the dive, Brian obligingly pointed the camera at me….

He had just handed the camera back to me when he suddenly waved, pointed behind me and made the dreaded hand gesture – thumb on forehead, flat hand pointing up to represent the dorsal fin of…. yes, it was a shark!! A leopard shark, watching us carefully from a couple of metres away.

I took it’s portrait and we slowly backed away…

After a few more minutes our air was getting low, and we headed back towards the boat.

Back at Phuket I safely extracted my slide film from the rented camera and managed to get it processed straight away. After some food I headed to the Irish Bar where I met Brian, who had a local girlfriend in tow called Kim (Brian had earlier complained bitterly about how he was powerless to prevent his heart being repeatedly melted by the Thai ladies). We ended up at a disco until 2 am (along with Kim’s cousin Lek) which was a lot of fun, especially as I didn’t have any scuba diving to get up early for the next day…

The 1st of June started late for me and towards the end of the morning I headed out and found Brian, Liz and Eammon in the Fawlty Towers bar, along with some American Navy people. The day wore on, then I remembered that Chris had told me that on Saturdays there is a Hash. Like in Brunei, a group of mostly expats running in the forest and then downing beers with much hilarity. I went to the Fantasea office, and Chris took me out to the start location in his pickup. But not before he had handed me my new PADI Advanced card.

The Hash was a lot more fun and raucous even than in Brunei. They also ran more slowly – so slowly that in fact I was in second place at one point, helping to check for the false trails. I was very tired at the end, and back in the Hash “circle” I had to do 2 “down-downs” – drinking a beer in one gulp. One “punishment” was for being a visitor, and the other was for having “new shoes”. My boots are the ones I bought in Singapore so are not particularly new. But they got someone’s attention, and beer got poured into them for good measure, as everyone sang a special “new shoes” song with great enthusiasm!

Some serious clothes washing took place back in Ao Patong, in preparation for me possibly heading out tomorrow. While everything was drying I got my diary up to date. Then I headed once more the the Irish bar, met my Irish friends again, but didn’t stay long this time.