The Shark Experience

7:00, Sunday morning. We are driving out to Chumpon Pinnacles. The waves are massive this morning. My stomach feels upside down, I hardly had any sleep due to shark attack nightmares spawned by the typical white shark attack scene of The Beach, which we have seen at one of the beachbars last night. The islands are almost vanishing beyond the horizon.

8:40, Deep Dive. We are down on 31m outside the pinnacles. There are no fish, the water surrounding us is filled with sand particles. Trying to keep me calm. Suddenly my instructor Nicki is taking my hand, pointing with the other hand into the water on our level. First there is only a shadow, getting bigger and clearer: the first greytip reef shark. My heart stops beating for a moment. Another shark is passing just a few meters below our fins. This shark is massive, 3m long. Nicki is grabbing here camera and following the shark on its way. She is my buddy, I am forced to follow although I feel like turning around and ascending. The shark is vanishing for a moment in the dark in front of us, however, coming back a couple of times cruising his circles. I am experiencing an emotional rollercoaster and so I feel tears filling my eyes starting crying under water just for a few seconds. They are tears of relieve, tears of joy, tears of fear, tears of enthusiasm.
Back on the boat, I am still overwhelmed for the rest of the day. I am glad my second dive does not involve any sharks, only trigger fish. We are going down with a rectangle for my Advanced Peak Buoyoncy Skills.

12:00, Monday. I recovered from my last day and am back on the boats. Three more dives, three beautiful dive sites.

13:33, Mango Bay. This time it is my turn to swim rectangles, triangles following a compass and navigate our way back to the boat. During the fun dive part there is the fish school, hundreds and hundreds of Fusilier forming one big stream.

14:40, Red Rock. We are out for a bit of cave diving including my fish identification check.

16:03, close to Japanese Gardens. This is my last optional dive, I choosed wreck diving so we are going down to some fisher boat that sank about five months ago. We swim through the captains cabin, take pics of me sitting on the deck of the boat.