Sunset turns out to be good though:

Back to Bangkok tomorrow…

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Then, continuing my stroll around the Lonely Beach ‘town’ there are lots of places to rent scooters for 150 baht per day, this wasn’t up for rent but am sure there’s a story behind it…

Then onto one of the local bars for a Chang beer and some food:

A very nice, quiet place and not a bad view:

A one hour flight from Suvarnabhumi to Trat:

Into the overly priced taxi, a ride to the ferry and across to Koh Chang:

We then drove to Chalong and Chris got me the study materials for the courses…

Quite a bit to take on-board with studying, knowledge reviews, practical demonstrations, writtene exams…you know, the normal score for these kind of courses.

Four days of ‘hard’ work and exams and I passed the Emergency First Response (and Secondary), Care for Children, EFR Instructors, EANx and EANX instructors.

Big thanks to Chris Owen for all his help during the week and also to Mat for the EFR course and Tim who was the victim during my EFR instructors.

I need to redo my Emergency First Response (EFR) Course as it’s kinda expired but also want to do my EFR Instructors course.

Additionally, I’ve always been meaning to take my Enriched Air Nitrox (EANx) course AND I want to do the instructors course for that.

I decided to contact a few dive centres in the UK (one in London, one in Portsmouth) and a couple of Health & Safety teaching companies (for the EFR).

Well, to cut a long story short….

The price for doing the first aid courses was quoted as being around £400 plus of course accommodation needed, travel, etc. Ok!

I emailed a dive center in Phuket and enquired about the cost of courses with them…

Chris Owen, Course Director with Indepth Diving has quoted me 23,500 THB for the lot: that’s £430 (approximately) and includes manuals, PIC[s], etc.

Guess I’m off to Thailand then…

Apparently there are two Ghost Pipefish on West of Eden but we only saw the one today:
(Lots of blurry lines on my shots as mentioned in the previous post)

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..and the turtle off the Stonehenge dive:

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They’re coming to the end of their 6 month round-the-world trip which has seen them visit the States, Fiji, NZ, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Don’t think either of them are looking forward to returning to the UK (other than to see f&f). I hear there’s snow in the UK as well…?

I carry on to Patong and get ready for the final day of the Six Nations.

France can win the Championship if they beat Wales by 19 points, any less and Wales take it.

Wales win and it’s the Grand Slam!!

3 dives today:

1) ‘Elephant Head Rock’
2) ‘West of Eden’
3) ‘Stonehenge’

A lot of current running today making Elephant Head Rock on of the hardest (and shortest) dives I’ve ever done.

Not much to see apart from a few Morays, normal reef-type fish and a Red Octopus at 34 metres depth (maybe the same one from last weeks dive?)

After I’d uploaded my photo’s at the end of the liveaboard with Santana Divers last week, I noticed lots of blurred lines appearing on the pictures. I cleaned the camera but the lines still appear, maybe a new one is in order?