He was going to pick me up at the ferry port, drop me off at the hotel he recommended (very solid recommendation both from what I could tell online and in-person), and the next day we'd go diving: a nice shallow bay where we could do a slow descent down an anchor/buoy line and review some basics in the shallow.
The pickup went okay, if Thai-style: "I loaned my car to someone and I'm having troubles getting it back so I'll be a little late while I track down another vehicle." Which turned out to be a friend's pickup that, when returned, came with a long story about putting his old and sick dog to sleep. And then we went cruising on Paul's bike--a Honda of the same model I totaled, which has become one of my favorites for riding because the rear seat is especially large and cushioned. But that's with a Thai driver. With a big--BIG--Brit on the front, there's just enough room to torque your coccyx between the seat and rear handlebar and squeeze out either diamonds or hope for a smooth ride.
He showed me where the boat would depart and confirmed me as a size small wetsuit with size 43 booties. "See you at half-past seven!"
At 8 that night, I got a phone call. "The boat didn't have enough business to launch, so we'll be going with the boat leaving Grand Coral Divers instead. It's just a bit closer to your hotel, right across from the 7-11."
Great.
It's about a 45 minute boat ride, and on the way over I concentrated on deep, slow, relaxed breathing.
"You're a pretty advanced diver, right?"
Sure. (If I can be an old hand at driving a Honda motorbike, one week of diving in Hawaii most years between 1996 and 2000 damn near qualifies me as a competition dive expert.)
"I usually find that people get it back no problem. Just remember to breathe and kick. Kick and breathe. Stop either one and I get worried."
"Kick and breathe together at the same time? You sure? It might be too much."
I'd explained the bike wrecks and precipitous drop in weight, and that was my real concern. When I was last diving and worried about sucking up too much air as a tuba player, I was continuously surprised to be the last diver in the water. No worries about breathing. It's just the whole swimming, weight belt, tank/BCD setup that concerned me.
The speedboat trip went from exciting to torrential as we neared the dive site.
The refresher dive turned from the nice bay to a nice buoy line to a free dive. "Nice and slow and easy, no rush, just to make sure you're okay."
I couldn't actually make the step up to the edge of the boat--one of the boat hands hauled me up by the tank. And once I was in the water, I got the vest confused and inflated it until I couldn't breathe even though I was trying to suck dry air, not from the tank.
Brilliant.
Paul gave the "OKAY" sign and held up his release valve.
Evidently, "slow descent" means not upending and kicking down.
I got my regulator working, drained the vest, and looked down. Paul was looking up asking if I was okay. "Okay!" I signed back.
But I couldn't sink.
Weight belt was still on.
BC was drained.
And I had gulped as much air as I possibly could. As I exhaled, I plummeted toward Paul, who let out more air and continued his descent.
We went straight down to 35 meters.
I've never been that deep before.
On the one hand, the world at that depth is a bizarre curtain of green and blue-gray, especially for one whose green-detection is not all that great. On the other, the sky had really opened up and was nearly black even on the surface. On a third hand, the water was full of floating muck--what gives most Thailand beachshores that distinctively polluted looking brown-tan water, and provides for such a diversity of large fish--so there wasn't much to see anyway. And finally--this is a Buddhist/Hindu country, so multiple hands are routine--it was downright cold. Granted, the wetsuit was too big and my insulation consists of a thin layer of skin on bone-hugging layers of depleted muscle cells, so I'd be cold at the thought of frost. But to be in 68 or 70 degree water without solar radiation is another level entirely.
It was a cool dive: big schools of barracuda and trevaly. But where I remembered many dozens of coral species and a cacophony of brightly colored reef life, everything was muted green, there were maybe a dozen varieties of coral, and the fish looked much more culinary than ornamental--cod and cuda and other open-water fish.
Still, floating upside down underneath the ball of barracuda and blowing bubbles that went spinning through the whirlpool was pretty damn cool.
The next site was supposed to be nice and shallow and easy. It was in a bay not too churned up by the storm. Visibility was just over a meter. My fingers and toes were numb at the start. I remember a yellow boxfish and a shrimp goby.
The latter is neat: a shrimp digs a hole that the goby protects. If you drop a pebble in the hole, the shrimp pushes it out. If a predator is coming, the goby clogs the mouth with his fantastically-well camouflaged head.
Back at the boat, I was utterly spent and curled up under my wet towel, putting on a brave smile for the "Same time tomorrow!"
After an hour-plus boat ride spent listening to Paul and one of his buddies reconstruct the previous evening, when Paul had blown nearly ten thousand baht, much of which came from me, the first dive, where I was supposed to go for the refresher, was another 35 metre free-fall in current we had to buck around a couple of submarine spires. As Paul was pointing out some huge groupers--"put your head in their fuckin' mouths!"--I was stuck trying to buck the current over a reef. It was covered with antler coral that I didn't want to grab to haul myself over, but my legs didn't have the oomph. Getting pissed and growling at the whole situation got me over, but took out a lot of the little reserves I still had.
Before the second dive, I requested a more sedentary approach: find something cool and look at it for a while.
"Yeah, this is a great site for that. There are some primo pinnacles just a couple hundred meters over there, and we'll never be more than 10 or 15 minutes from the boat."
No.
My fingers and toes are numb, my legs are wobbling with just the weight belt on, and I do not want to buck a current and shitty visibility for a hundred meters going or coming. "I'm just worried because I'm already cold and tired--I really don't want to create a problem down below."
"No problem, just let me know when it's time to cut the dive short."
Maybe that was the dive with the yellow boxfish. I know there were gobys and most of the open-water swimming was in a school of trevally. Very, very cool.
Literally, though.
We hit 20+ meters and were kicking out into the murk and my legs gave out. It was a nice, slow, easy crawl back, looking at coral and little fishies and anemones--feather coral or anemones that you tickle and the entire organism, which looks something like a zebra striped bonsai tree, sucks back in on itself.
The poor guy was just too excited about all that we'd be seeing. And he's too big and strong to understand "I'm frigid and tapped out." He helped me peel off my wetsuit, and he was shocked at the pasty white/gray of bloodless toes, feet, ankles, and knees. He'd never seen anything like it before, at least not in tropical diving.
"Paul, I'm a skinny little shit, right? See the bones? There's no extra insulation, no extra muscle. I wasn't joking when I told you about my first months here."
The good news is that, in retrospect, it was a good time. It got me diving again, and now that I'm current I won't have to pay for an extra dive day/hotel night for a refresher if I choose to go diving again. But I think snorkeling would be a much, much smarter option for a while.
And thank goodness for the 100TB massage parlor.
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| Koh Samui |
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