Three dive speedboat trip, and they are back guys.....

We at Blue Planet now have a regular three dive trip to Hin Daeng, Hin Muang and Koh haa 1 which is proving extremely popular. Especially as after a long break, the Manta's are finally back and seen almost everytrip.

So popular is this trip, we will soon try the same, but with King Cruiser, shark point and a great Bida dive to finish. But if you want to join, you better book in advance, as the boat fills up fast.

New dive trip this season!!!!

We have been keeping you informed about the progress to our shop and of our dive boats, but that is not all that is new to Blue Planet. The team have been having a lot of fun discussing what else we can do to make Blue planet the best dive shop on Koh Lanta, and how we can improve our already high standard of service to our customers. Well, the ideas have been literally flying around!

Blue Planet is proud to announce for the first time in its history, new to this season the inclusion of night dives into our diving schedule.
We will be using our speedboat to offer a two dive trip, leaving in the afternoon. You will be whisked away on the fastest diving speedboat on Koh Lanta, to your first dive site. Due to the time there will be little to no other divers there. Once this dive is completed you will then be taken to our second dive site, where as the sun descends below the horizon you too will be descending below the surface. Upon completion of this dive you will whisked back to Saladan, still with plenty of time to enjoy a meal either at your resort or at one of the many wonderful restaurants that can be found close to the Blue Planet Shop.

Those of you that have dived with us on Hin Bida will know the magic of seeing leopard sharks gracefully swimming by. Unlike Black Tip sharks which spook easily, leopard sharks when treated with respect, will allow divers to come very close to them. So now imagine if you will:-
Your diving in the darkened water of the Koh Bida's,
all is quiet except for the sound of yours and your buddies bubbles,
you hold up your touch light,
and there, ahead of you, is one of these majestic creatures swimming slowly along with you.

We hope and are looking forward to having many such encounters in the upcoming months.

But, maybe you prefer the piece and tranquility of Koh Haa?

 Those of you who have dived with us before most likely have seen the beauty of the five islands, and especially the lagoon, now imagine what it is like as the light slowly fades towards the end of your first dive and then when all is dark and the reefs comes alive, you slowly descend and view the wonder of the night in the light of one of our high powered torches supplied to you for your dive.

Interested? Then come join us at Blue Planet where the staff are eager for you to join them for probably the most amazing evening you'll have in your time in Thailand.

!!! New T shirts !!!

We are very excited that the new blue Planet T shirts have finally arrived, with two new designs and brand new staff polo tops for those of us working in the office. Here they are modeled by DMTs Timothee and Stephanie and senior instructor Kevin.

     When your on your next visit to Koh Lanta and Blue Planet Divers, don't forget to purchase one before you leave!

 

How many times do you use your slate?

While planning all our improvements to Blue Planet, the team debated how they could improve teaching courses to students. An obvious option was to simply update all our learning materials, to the most currently up to date and available.

"But if we are updating the materials, why do we not update the overall teaching of the course?"
"How do we do that?"
"We go, slate free!"

Thats right. Blue Planet Divers are saying goodbye to the Recreational Dive Planner (RDP) and saying hello to learning Open Water with dive computers.

One of the things that you notice is that most people use the RDP in their open water course and probably never use it again. It is quite obvious to us that fun divers are more likely to bring a dive computer on to the boat than bring their slate. So why not teach it instead?

With several computers ready for use and the new course materials in stock we look forward to offering and teaching this exciting course to all our upcoming students.

So much news, we dont know where to begin!

With our boat only recently back, we have been overwehlmed by the sheer volume of guests joining us at Blue Planet. Not only has our big boat been full for five days in a row, but on the 3rd October we took our speedboat on our first trip to Hin Daeng/Hin Muang. A great day was had by all the guests that joined Blue Planet. Great visability, abundant marine life, and even dolphins seen during the journey.

A great day and hard to top ............. until the following day!

We took our big boat to Koh Bida where our gruests enjoyed seeing a wide range of marine life including Leaopard Sharks, Turtles, Octopus, snake eels, and sea snakes.

BP's very own DMT Janine chose the perfect day to learn Fish Identification and complete her advanced open water course.

But what could top the dolphins seen the day before?

How about a Minke whale while travelling to our second dive site Hin Bida?

This beautiful and majestic creature came to surface several times close to the boat and made everyone extremely happy with shouts of "Over there!" ringing thoughout.

Although it only surfaced for a few seconds each time, Kevin was lucky enough to capture these two photos.

Our Divemaster trainee Janine has completed her advanced open water and EFR courses and has now joined Stephanie in beginning their rescue diver courses.

DMT Timothee arrived on the island a few days ago and is looking forward to starting his divemaster training with Janine and Stephanie.

We are proud to introduce and add Patricia as our fourth divemaster trainee who will be joining us at the end of the month.

Blue Planet is updating the vast majority of its teaching materials to improve its courses for our future students including a special surprise which will be revealed here very shortly.

Our brand new signs have arrived for the front of our shop, and tomorrow will be lifted into place.

The furniture for our guests to relax on (inside and out) is coming in a day or two and with only the classrooms to undergo finally preparations we are proud to announce Blue planets official opening and opening party is to be held on the 15th October!

That is not all, but it is enough for this blog post. More to follow shortly.

The new entrance to Blue Planet Divers

You will have seen the pictures of the progress to our very own cave entrance to Blue Planet Divers, well now we are proud to show you the first photos of the finished article. With just a few tweeks to the waterfall and our newly acquired manikins to dress, the highlight to the all new BP shop is complete. We here in Blue Planet our overjoyed at what has been created but have discovered that if it looks great in the day time, it looks absolutely FANTASTIC come sundown.

So now the finally push. the builders have finished. The painters have finished. The electricians have finished. So now we are pushing on, putting up stock displays, awaiting the new banners and furniture, adding last minute finishing touches and preparing vital boat materials ready for the return of our big boat in a few days.
High Season is almost upon us!!!!!!

Introducing our confirmed Divemaster Trainees (DMTs) for the upcoming season.

Well with the shop almost finished and the all new entrance to shop decorated,

our boat is due back shortly, and with the seasons beginning just over a month away, we eagerly await the return of our high season staff back to Blue Planet.
The staff though, are not the only members of the Blue Planet team. Every season with have many guests join us on our Go Pro program to become professional divemasters.

Divemaster trainees spend approximately three months working with us. Even though they are spending their time learning the role of a divemaster, they are treated non the less, as members of the Blue Planet team. While being tutored in the role of a divemaster and learning all aspects of the safe leadership in caring for groups of divers in the water, they are also taught how a dive shop works. For this, there is no better experience than to be hands on, and so for the length of their stay, they become members of the Blue Planet team. They are invaluable, and offer tremendous help in the running of a busy and successful dive business, and are a welcome helping hand in assisting instructors and divemasters conducting courses or guiding dives.

This year so far we have five people confirmed to join us.
For the first part of the season we have three DMT's confirmed. They will be arriving in the near future and we look forward to welcoming,

Timothee Hermand 

Stephanie Sandilands

and Janine Wheatley (photo to follow).

For January we have two confirmations,.

Aurore Kawalka

And Simon Buckell (photo to follow).

We have one more place available for a half internship position beginning in January, so if you would like to join Aurore and Simon, contact us here at blue planet at blueplanetdivers@gmail.com

Progression? The end is in sight, our friends!

Here at Blue Planet, we wish to convey our apologies to all our past, present and future guests, staff and followers for the lack of updates recently.

We have been cracking on, preparing the shop and boats, sorting out clerical matters, meeting with business partners, dealing with suppliers and everything else that goes on behind the scenes in low season.

On the matter of low season, a quick note. Many tourist operators away from Koh lanta like to tell people that our beautiful island is virtually closed in low season.

Well, boats have been going out, the weather has been fantastic, more tourists seem to be coming to the island than in previous years and the island is most DEFINITELY open. Maybe soon we will get the long anticipated label enjoyed by islands such as Koh Phi Phi that we are, open all season!

So whats been happening at the shop?

Well the speedboat is back, up and running and looking sexier than before.

The big boat is down at Kantang at the shipyard, for servicing and renovations and will be back within the next two weeks. We are hoping to have the shop finished by this time and ready to fully open so the race is on to complete it.


In our Saladan shop, the floor is laid, the cave feature and waterfall completed,

The IDC classroom is painted and ready to be used.

Now comes the big task of clearing three months of dust from the previous construction work. We have two classrooms to paint, and we have a local Thai artist coming in to do some wonderful underwater designs in the entrance area to the shop. Aircon has been fitted in to the main area and soon we will be able to relocate our office area from the IDC classroom to our brand new office counter to welcome you all to Blue Panet Divers. New look signs have been designed and will soon be sent to be printed and we have been having a lot of fun revamping our T Shirt Designs not only for the guests and staff on the boats, but also smart Blue Planet staff polo shirts for those of us when we are working in the shop. Exciting times!

 The gear has been removed from the shop and cleaned once more and shall soon be relocated to our gear room which is also being renovated, as after purchasing more rental gear for our valued customers we did not have enough room for storage. An extension has been carried out, and now we have only to make the racks for it to the gear to be stored tidily and safely away.

So, as you can see the end is in sight. Our DMT spaces are filling. The high season staff are sorting travel plans to return the island, and are all very excited about the upcoming season. Course plans are being discussed, ideas taking shape, and our anticipation for a fantastic high season is overwhelming.

Full internships for Oct - Dec 2012

Just a short note to let people know that our two full internship places for Oct - Dec 2012 in the upcoming season, have now been filled, but we still have two places available for January onwards 2013. So please contact the Blue Planet Team if your are interested. We do still offer half internships for most of the season, so again if interested drop us an email at blueplanetdivers@gmail.com

The shop takes shape

So we have been having a lovely low season here in Lanta so far. Although a storm past through a few weeks ago, once it past we were soon able to get the boat out and have so far enjoyed up to 30m viability and some of the best conditions we have seen in the last few months. Low season is certainly a wonderful time to be here with warm water, quiet dive sites, and fantastic diving.

 So what of the shop?

Well the renovations have been moving on with our new counter almost finished.

What was the original office now been bricked up and we will begin painting very soon and making this our largest classroom..

 

For the little surprise I mentioned in the last post, Ben took great pleasure in demolishing the window frame and wall.

and the new glass frontage entrance to the shop has now been installed.

But what is the surprise?

 I hinted at it with the picture of a "rock" panel. Well, that original idea did not work out as well as we expected so, with modification we carried on.

When you think of Koh Haa, what do you think of first? It will probably be the lagoon, but the second thing may well be the caves on Koh Haa Yai, We thought it would be fun to experience the caves upon entering the newly designed shop, so guys we wish to welcome you to Blue Planets version of the Koh Haa Yai caves. Enjoy!

 

The renovations begin!!!

 Ok Blue Planet followers

After a short lull in work while we eagerly awaited materials, the renovations have begun.
Our ever eager low season team at the moment comprises of Geddis, Ben, Kev, En and our very own iron work horse himself,





Geddis's father in law, affectionately known to everyone as "Papa".
                                                            








Our first job was to bring light to the future sales floor, so we removed the four sets of old blue shutters from the main room (and back room),

 and replaced them with brand new windows, with our ever busy En modifying the security bars so they could now be attached to the outside of the building.






 The back room has been cleaned and organised to become our new maintenance department ..................








 ........ and maybe an "unofficial" staff room!

 and now we are sanding doors, frames, and window frames, while we eagerly await the builders to make our new sales counter, and in the meantime,








 Geddis's chef is cooking up something other than food, to welcome past, present and future guests to the new look Blue Planet Divers but except for the small hint to the right, that's all we are saying about that for now!

So at the end of the day we relax come "beer o'clock" and discuss the plans and jobs to do to make this an exciting new Blue Planet Divers for all our past, present and future guests to enjoy. So stay tuned for future developments from all the BP team, until next time ............