Diving Students at the Similan islands, Thailand

The Scuba Monkey’s Khao Lak Explorer Update – 1 November 2013

Great week here at Khao Lak Explorer; great weather, good diving, happy customers!

This week the crew kicked up with some liveaboard trips, day trips and we have some new PADI Open Water and PADI Advanced Open Water divers – including world championship sportsman!

The week began with Maria from Austria doing her PADI Open Water course. Maria did a superb job in the classroom and pool – she was a natural and took to the skills immediately. Maria didn’t stop smiling (except when I was explaining how we would be ‘sipping’ the air bubbles doing the free-flow regulator skills – no one believes that will work before they try it!) making teaching her 1-2-1 a real pleasure.

Next day we met with Elena, Angela (who for some reason we started calling ‘Jessica’ (?!)) and Michal and we were off on a traditional long-tail boat to Khao Na Yak to dive the Premchai wreck. What and amazing place to complete your Open Water training!!

Marcus (“Usher”) took the AOW group, while I started in the sandy bay area with Maria doing her 1st ‘Open Water’ dive. She was relaxed and smooth in the water and it wasn’t long before we were able to progress to circling the top of the wreck at 11-12m and do some skills.

Meanwhile, Usher was wreck diving with his Advanced Open Water group and we found out that Michal was a celebrity – a championship contender in the Cliff Diving in the Red Bull World Championship!!

Red Bull Sponsored Michal Navratil

Michal was with us to relax and unwind in between events and took to his Advanced Course like a duck to water! In fact, the biggest problem we had with him is that he was so powerful in the water that we needed to keep slowing him down!!

And the Premchai wreck? Wow!! It’s ideal for training with the deck at 11-12m and the bottom at 18m and it’s covered in life. It’s difficult sometimes as an instructor to keep the students’ attention when they are surrounded my lots of beautiful fish and marine life. Why would you want to demonstrate a mask flood and clear when it means you can’t see the trevally hunting on the deck because your eyes are closed?! Luckily, after the skills we plenty of time to explore the wreck where we found scorpion fish, honeycomb morays and shoals of snapper glistening in the sunlight. Beautiful. And Maria didn’t stop smiling for about 30 minutes after we surfaced! A great day at the office!

Such a nice group of people, great fun, we are very happy to see smiling customers who enjoyed our quality of services.

Thanks again for Diving with Khao Lak Explorer PADI 5* Dive Center!!