“I feel kind of blech-y,” I said to Tony Tuesday morning. “I can’t really put my finger on it, but I just don’t feel right.”
I didn’t have a stuffy head or that ubiquitous Delhi cough. I didn’t feel nauseous or suffer any other symptoms of food poisoning. I just felt blech-y. Oh well. It was our scuba day, so suck it up, buttercup.
Dive Adventure sent a pick-up truck taxi to collect us at our hotel. After picking out shorty wetsuits and fins, we walked down the pier to the boat and settled in for our cruise to the dive site. Our divemaster, Özay, was Turkish, so we chatted about living in Istanbul, diving in the Mediterranean and the chaos of Turkish politics. We were very impressed with Özay and the rest of the Dive Adventure crew. They seemed to care about safety and ocean conservation, values that are sometimes missing with other dive shops.
The first stop was a wreck, but only divers with their Advanced Open Water certification were qualified to explore the deep. A risk taker on land, I play it safe in the ocean, so we chose to snorkel around the wreck site while more experienced divers explored the sunken boat. Tony swam down to touch the mast, but that was the highlight of our snorkeling experience.
Climbing back aboard the dive boat, I felt extremely queasy. I stumbled to the bow, poured myself a cup of cold water and sat down to get my bearings. Prone to motion sickness, I know the drill. Stare out at the horizon, stay hydrated, don’t let the rolling boat mess with your head. But the weird thing was the boat wasn’t rolling. The clear turquoise sea was still and smooth as glass. I leaned over the railing and projectile puked up all my breakfast. Nice.
Soon, the boat was back on the move. We reached our destination in just a few minutes, but I was barely able to stand. Tony hooked up my gear, and I just had to trust that he knew what he was doing. “Please don’t let me die down there,” I said weakly.
At the last minute, we spotted a tube of toothpaste and recalled advice from our last dive experience when I had struggled to keep my mask from fogging up. Tony handed me the toothpaste, and I squeezed a blob into my mask, smushed it around and rinsed it in the seawater. A terrible dive buddy, I only half-heartedly toothpasted Tony’s mask, and then checked his weights, BCD and air before letting him jump in. I quickly goose-stepped in after him. Once in the water, I felt a bit better.
Özay, Tony and I, and three other divers let the air out of our BCDs and slowly sank down to explore the Hin Rap Koh Chang reef. A fairly shallow dive, the visibility was fantastic (and my mask stayed perfectly clear the whole time!). We didn’t see any big or unusual sea life, but I often found myself completely surrounded, morphing into the cloud of tiny rainbow fish. Swimming around the coral reef felt magical, but I couldn’t shake my blechy-ness.
Unfortunately, we had to get back on the boat. I wriggled out of my gear and crumpled on a bench. Tony dismantled everything, rinsed our masks and re-connected our BCDs to new tanks in preparation for the next dive. The boat crew set up a Thai buffet, but I could barely choke down a few bites of plain rice. Fortunately, we soon reached our next dive site: Hin Riha Thek, which translates to “broken boat reef”. The rock barely jutted out from the water. We could see how easily a boat might crash into it.
Özay led the pack with Tony and me right behind him. The water was so murky we could barely see him. I thought my mask was fogging up, but when I pulled it off to clean it, I realized the toothpaste was still working. So it wasn’t the most scenic dive ever. My favorite sight was a shallow barrel coral, pale purple with a scalloped top. Inside several bright orange fish darted about. White coral snaked from the sand into the barrel like tubing. For a moment, it tricked my woozy mind into thinking it was a typical fishpond like people keep in their backyards. I had a little underwater laugh when I snapped out of it.
Back on the boat, I barfed up the rice.
I slumped at the back of the boat, too humiliated to socialize, for the trip back to shore. After disembarking, getting Özay to stamp my dive log, and bidding farewell to our fellow divers, we popped into 7-11 to get Gatorade and some M&Ms and then walked the short distance back to our hotel. Although I felt sure the motion sickness would abate quickly, I assured Tony I was done for the day. I showered and rolled into bed; he took the scooter and zipped off to get some dinner. While he was gone, the Gatorade and M&Ms made an encore appearance. Let’s just say the motion sickness did NOT abate quickly. I slept – fitfully – for almost 20 hours, completely losing one whole day of my holiday.
I’m still not sure whether I was sick when I got on the boat, or if the boat made me sick. Regardless, I’m not ready to give up scuba diving, but maybe I’ll search for a resort with a house reef – and skip the boat ride – for our next vacation.
