Well, and then we had one dive that (at first) was no good at all: we went to "Lost Reef" and Sunno´s Lair". These places are "far north" - just a 10 minute boat ride, but that's "far away" for a dive spot at Lankayan since most of the spots are just 2 to 5 minutes away... At these spots they had no buoys installed at that time (they should have by now since they were working on it the day we left the island). We had our briefing at the dive center, got on the boat and went north. When we got there it took some time to find the reef, then the guide laid out a temporary buoy and told us: "The reef's directly below us! I can see it from here, visibility is great. Just follow the line downwards." To make it short: every meter we descended the visibility was getting worse, we missed the reef, ascended, got on the boat, were given new directions to the reef by the captain, descended again, missed the reef again, searched for some time before we decided to ascend again. Visibility was getting better every meter we ascended and we were getting ready to do our safety stops around 6 or 7 meters. The rest of our group was facing in our direction when it suddenly appeared behind them: a male whale shark! We gestured to them to look behind them, and they did! Everyone was so exited since the whale shark came very very close to our group. I could have touched it easily but I did not have the courage. If I had touched it and chased it away by doing so the other divers surely would have killed me. So we just followed him, looking him in the eye from less than 1 meter. That was just breathtaking! I did not take any pictures of it because this was the only dive I did not bring my camera (NO kidding! Well, I learned a lesson for life...!). One other diver had his camera with him but he had a macro lens installed - so no pictures from him also. But we were lucky: Gerhard had his video camera with him and he took a nice video of the whale shark in motion which was even better than still-pictures. We played that video over and over again that night in the TV-room back on the island.

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We followed the whale shark for some time until it descended too deep for us (we used a lot of air since we had to kick like crazy to follow although he moved his tail fin very slow. But you have to kick your fins 20 or 30 times when he just moves his tail fin just once... One of the divers later checked his air consumption (air integrated dive computer) - it more than tripled! No one can imagine how happy we were: at first we did not find the reef twice on one dive and then we dived with a whale shark! And one more thing: when we dived into that direction the whale shark left, we found the reef we have been looking for all the time. A very nice reef that is, we went there the next day again... When we came back to the island you probably heard us screaming before you saw the boat...