Our day today started fairly early as we had signed ourselves up for a 2-dive day with Phi Phi Scuba, which was recommended to us by Dive The World. Bright yellow outfit somewhere in the centre of Phi Phi town (Phi Phi Scuba, not Dive The World) – you can’t miss it really.

We had met our dive guide for the day, Chris from Denmark, and we was going to show us the sights of Phi Phi’s underwater world. Because of the great snorkeling on the previous evening’s sun set cruise, we had great expectations.

We set off on the yellow Phi Phi Scuba and headed away from Phi Phi Don in the direction of Phi Phi Leh, the cluster of islands where The Beach was filmed. Our first dive site was to be Bida Nok. “Heavy on air?” Chris asked as he was going through the signals. I am heavy on air, very, in fact, lucky if I last 40 minutes.

So we went in, along with a substantial amount of other divers on our boat, at 8:31. The water temperature was a toasty 29.6*C and we had around 10m of visibility. The fish population weren’t as dense as I had expected, but there was loads of variety on very colourful coral reefs, outcrops and rounding, much unlike what I, Mr. Inexperienced, have seen before.

Next to Julia with her keen eyes and knowledge, we quickly spotted a few scorpion fish and lion fish. We also saw a free-swimming moray eel and that was about the highlight of the dive. Technically though, both Julia and myself had perfect dives. Julia felt very confident and had no buoyancy issues. I lasted a whopping 57min and had no trouble with buoyancy either – I was very excited about that.

We were hoping to see some leopard sharks or at least something big on this dive, so we were a little disappointed that we didn’t, but it was a great dive nevertheless. We aimed our positive thoughts at a turtle for myself and a manta ray for Julia on our next dive, with a bit of a prayer for a whale shark if we had any luck left.

While having lunch, we headed for our next dive site at Malong or Maya Bay, at the mouth of the lagoon that washes The Beach and next entered the water at about 11am. The water temperature was the same and we had slightly more visibility this time. The coral-scape was fantastic, with loads of big boulders, canyons and even a swim-through, my first ever. The coral, considering the amount of divers on this site, was in pretty good condition and the variety of fish amazing.

We again saw some interesting fish and smaller critters, but nothing big. It was about 10 minutes towards the end of our dive when I had lost hope of seeing anything interesting when Chris signaled something. I couldn’t make out what he was trying to tell me, but I swam forward from where I was at the back of our group of 4. And there, as I rose over the coral ridge, was a turtle! I followed him at a distance for the next five minutes, watching him lazily pick at the coral and munching at things, blissfully unaware of the divers ogling him or the noise of the boat engines overhead.

Chris eventually called me away as we had reached the end of the dive, but I was super stoked. Excellent dive because of that turtle – may he live long and prosper.

The rest of our day was fairly laid back. I got a few hours of work in and a nap. We decided to go down to the beach for the sunset (although technically you can’t see the sun set from the beach). It was relatively quiet with few people around.

A member of the royal family had passed away several month earlier and the custom involves embalming the body and keeping it for a set period before the cremation. As it happened, the cremation was taking place over this weekend, and for 3 days bars would be closed and no loud music would be played – hence the quietness on the island – but it was almost blissful.

After a bit of a frolic on the beach it was dinner time and as we had had Thai food non-stop since we got here, we thought it time for a bit of a meaty dinner and there’s no meatier dinner than the eat-as-much-as-you-can buffet at Matt’s Joint. The sign out front says: “Girls: THB 265, Ladyboys: THB 280, Boys: THB 295, Kids & Rabbit: THB150”. Not a bad deal.

Our next hour and a bit consisted of pork chops, pork sausages, prawn skewers, chicken fillet, smoked salmon, 4 different kinds of pasta salads, a green salad, potato salad (and jacket potatoes for all-you-can-eat novices), corn on the cob and fresh bread. What a spread! But try as I might, I only managed a plate and a half and to my detriment was stuffed after. Julia also managed significantly less that what she aimed for – but it was money well spent.

We walked around the island looking for signs of life, but alas, found none. We ended up at a beauty salon where Julia had a manipedi and I had a foot massage, before we headed back with 2 DVDs and beers and ended the evening in our room – relatively early thanks to a fairly active day.