Thursday 27th was mostly filled with diving. First a fun dive, then a course dive where I did some navigation with a compass. Under water everything is different and its really easy to get lost. So you have to use different techniques to find your way: The shades of the sun, the knowledge of the geography, a compas, a depth meter, a boye rope etc... Did some calibration test, how long do I need for 30m with normal speed and how many fin cycles I have to use. Then did some compass navigation and luckly ended more or less at my starting point.
The hightlight of this day was my first night dive. Jumping into a dark water is a little scary, I also wore my head mask which silences any noise. This strengthened the impression of a silent and sleeping night reef. The reef looks totally different at night, only a few fish there, most of them hidden and sleeping. If you shut down the light.... which is a little scary too you see some glowing plankton but the funniest thing is swimming without light short above the reef. Then the movement of your fins is reflected by glowing particles at the reef.... this was coooool. We were also really lucky to find a sleeping turtle at the ground, this was also the first one, I saw here. When we swam back we saw here going up to breath. I also saw my first small octopus, my favorite fish. Its really funny to watch them moving around the reef. They are quite intelligent and could be also curious. A friend told me a story, when he was watching a bigger one, this one came close and inspected him, even touched his equipment..
At night went with the wife of the dive shop owner to a real thai restaurant, which was some sort of garage in front of the living room of the owners. The restroom of the restaurant was their private restroom ;-) We had 3 dishes, one little spicy for me, one medium spicy which I could not eat and one I even did not try because too many chili seeds. Even the Thais where breathing heavily, another indication for me not to try it.
