Archive for December, 2009

The Main Man Mr Simon Vale

By neilisnaked, 2 December, 2009, No Comment

Now then, Simon Vale our esteemed bar manager recently took time out of his hectic schedule, which basically consists of ambling up and down in front of the DJL shop, to do his Rescue Diver course. I took leave of my official post, harrassing Simon by singing “Big Spender” to him while he ambles, to teach him. Gotta say that Simon was an excellent student. I guess after years of beating people up as a bouncer in Manchester he decided that rescuing people was his chance to even the score a little. There were a few hiccups along the way though. Si bamboozled everyone involved on the course during the confined session by instructing a tired diver at the surface to “inflate your regulator!!!”. Things went from confusing to just sheer mind boggling during the open water part of the course. Upon encountering a panicked diver at the surface Si thought it’d be a good idea to tell the diver to inflate their DVD. Now call me cynical but I’m pretty sure that inflating an electrical appliance has never accomplished anything. “Not so!” Says Si. Anyways after a bit of umming a bit of ahhing and a lot of laughing he managed to nail all the skills. So I guess it’s hats off to the main man Mr Simon Vale for becoming DJL’s latest Rescue Diver. Incidently he’s now embarking on his his Divemaster interniship. God help us all!!!

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

New Look For DJL bar

By tim, 1 December, 2009, No Comment

The Monsoon has been very light this year so theres been a lot of great diving being done which has left less time for getting the bar ready for another high season, but with time moving on we have been thinking of themes for the bar and have decided to go with the old theme of shipwrecks. Using the pieces collected over 20 years of looking for wrecks that we had originally displayed in the museum on Koh Tao that we closed when the shop moved to Sairee beach, as our philosophy has always been to display to the public the compasses and portholes ect with the history and picture of the shipwreck so that its memory can be preserved and the lessons learnt from it loss better understood by future seafairers, instead of leaving the artifacts locked away in a cupboard to deteriorate over the years. We feel this will be a visually stimulating and educational asset to the DJL group and give a fantastic backdrop to the parties we have all enjoyed here over the past years.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Building a brighter future

By djl team, 1 December, 2009, No Comment

As part of DJL’s continued commitment to eco diving, I was one of a large number of volunteers to help in Koh Tao’s latest project, ‘Buoyancy World’. This project has seen a number of Koh Tao’s dive schools unite for one purpose, to help preserve paradise.

Buoyancy World is a new artificial dive site that has been designed to take the strain off of some of the most commonly dived dive sites on the island. The new site will contain a large number of man made structures, including a giant lizard, a concrete butterfly and a bamboo forest. In addition to the weird and wonderful structures that will make the new site so interesting, a number of fixed objects will also be added, with the aim of these assisting in the teaching of buoyancy control.

However, before the structures for the new site can be deployed they must first be built. The building phase of the project has been going on over the last few days, and today saw several of the larger structures nearly reach completion thanks to the hard work of all the volunteers.

The volunteers were divided into small teams, each responsible for different aspects of the building project. These roles included welding, steel cutting, rendering, meshing and my personal job of the day, smashing coconuts into tiny pieces to use as stuffing for the structures.

As the day went on, and the blisters came, a real sense of camaraderie was built up between all of the volunteers. I felt privileged to work on a project with a group of people so passionate about preserving the underwater world of our beautiful island. I have no doubt that the new dive site will be absolutely amazing. I look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months and can’t wait to see which aquatic life will end up calling it home.
James, Instructor at DJL

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Pirates in the Gulf of Thailand!

By Ollie the Spaniard, 1 December, 2009, No Comment

pirates This morning saw the DJL dive boat taken hostage by a gang of Dive Master trainees dressed as pirates. Our terrified captain and two real life customers narrowly escaped walking the plank by agreeing to take them diving in Japanese Garden and White Rock so they could search for the long lost treasure of gold and silver pieces buried some 300years ago by an old fisherman, somewhere near the second rock on the left [south- southwest]. Due to the fantastic disguises we were unable to identify them so there’ll be no dancing the hempen jig just yet, though we did catch them on camera celebrating so if anyone recognizes them please get in touch!

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Page 4 of 4«1234