We woke up early for a prompt 7:10am pick up by Charlie, a gloriously sarcastic Brit with zero regard for your feelings. Fucking brilliant. Sail Rock Diving totally has their shit together, if I’m ever out here again I’ll definitely look them up.
Regardless of their prowess, they’re still at the mercy of the moon and tides. When we finally reached Sail Rock, conditions were rough and visibility was shit–under a half meter. It was like swimming through soup. We spent the entire dive losing and looking for each other. Twice during the dive, I was reminded that I was there to look at stuff, not just to dive. Both times it was the unexpected appearance of the urchin strewn reef that reminded me. Luckily there were no accidents, but we ended up relocating for our second dive. Visibility was still low at Thong Salad ( pronounced tong salahd) but still much improved. It all underscored how lucky we were diving on Koh Tao.
That night, we went to a party out on a floating platform in the bay. Neat gimmick but we had a good time nonetheless. Our taxi back to the hostel damn near killed someone though. A drunk idiot raced past us on a scooter, then immediately stopped and flipped a u turn. We missed him by inches. Driving in Thailand is always a bit intense, but even our taxi driver was shaken by it.