Well... I've been VERY busy again and now finally have a day off. Besides doing my visa/border run down to Malaysia, spending 10 minutes there, and coming back --- waste of time and money, but necessary....
During the past week I did my first dive where I was leading divers with no one else! I had 3 Dutch people and we did Bida Nai & Bida Nok. No whale shark this time, but everything went well! The following day I again did a solo lead, but this time only with one man. We went out to the wreck. I have only been to the wreck twice before, as a fun diver. Neil briefed me the night before to make sure I was comfortable leading on the dive and told me "it's ok, you can follow Nathan" -- we were sharing a boat with Viking. So we get out the wreck, Nathan and I do our dive briefings and then he and I went downstairs. He turns to me and asked "so how many times have you been out here?" I told him twice and he smiles and said "I've only been here once!" Luckily enough, the wreck is... well, pretty much a box, so you can't really get LOST. At the end it did take me a little while to find the line, which I then located because divers were coming down it. It's somewhat hard to find in bad visibility because you can't really see it until you're right on it, and it changes locations sometimes daily. Everything went fine though!
After the wreck we went to shark point -- only doing one side of it because the current was so strong. There was an area about 6m deep that has a leopard shark that just swims around and will come RIGHT up to you--within a foot! It's really great :)
The past 2 days I assisted Neil on an advanced course. 4 of the divers were American and the other Irish. All went well. We went to the wreck again yesterday and to shark point as well. On the wreck there are Lionfish everywhere... which are toxic to touch. One of the divers was down close looking at some (about 3-4 lionfish) I just happened to be looking at him and noticed that another lionfish had swam over to him and was now about a foot from his leg--- while he was looking in the other direction. I was pretty close to him so I grabbed him and pulled him back! No stings luckily! He didn't even realize the other one was there and was happy I had seen it :) There was a school of creepy barracuda down there as well that at one point were all around us about 7 feet away. It was pretty murky/bad visibility at the time so it made it really eerie that they were right there. At shark point, we found the same leopard shark that kept coming right up to us all, which is always fascinating, but everyone loves, and makes for a great dive! Current was again really strong there, and at the Bidas, so we had to do the deep side of Bida Nok again. No whale shark this time but I knew we wouldn't --- Neil is cursed. EVERYONE but him has seen it, and he's been within 15m or so (low vis) and hasn't seen it....
Otherwise, very busy and a lot of people need time off for visa runs in the next week. Luckily now there are 4 of us (DMTs) and not just Ash & I to do all the work. :)
