Scuba Diving...
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
10
19
Trip End
Mar 14, 2008
Ko Tao,
Thailand
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Scuba diving was amazing. I don't really know how I can put it any differently. And if you're looking to dive (without it costing a fortune!) Ko Tao is the place to go. As soon as you get off of the pier all you see are dive shops advertising courses and selling wetsuits... We started our course a few hours after getting off of the ferry so there was time for a bit of a nap. We met our instructor Barry who was a total legend. He's an ex-millitary British guy who's 40 and has been living on the island for four years and isn't planning on leaving any time soon. Really nice guy and completely professional as well. For anyone who's tried Scuba diving it's definitely a bit of a strange feeling at first, but he made it seem as if he was in total control the whole time. Our group was myself, Karl and a Scottish / German honey-mooning couple. They were quite a bit older than us, but we got along with them pretty well.
Our first afternoon and the morning of the second day was all in the classroom, so we learned all about buoyancy and safety and all that boring stuff. Then we went into the ocean just off the shore in about 6 feet of water and learned all of the basic skills. So we did things like taking off our mask underwater and putting it back on and clearing the water out of it and other simple things like that. The next day we went for our first two real dives. We went down to a max depth of about 17m and saw tons of coral, barracudas, morray eels, sea cucumbers and all that good stuff. But the coolest part was probably just the feeling of floating around and being somewhere that humans are privileged to get a chance to be. The next day we went on two more dives and then wrote our exam. We both wound up getting 96% on the exam, but we got some pretty stupid questions wrong... Apparently you're supposed to check for breathing and a pulse BEFORE you give someone oxygen... Oh well. Then from that moment on we were PADI Open Water Certified which means that we can dive anywhere in the world to a depth of 18m. Our plan at the moment though is to get our Advanced Diver Certification so that we can go down to 30m and do some night dives and stuff.
Anyhow, enough about diving. The rest of the time on the island was pretty relaxed. Our second night there we joined the couple in our group on a trek through the jungle to a private beach. They met someone on their boat to the island who was staying in a resort there so we bought some salmon, sausages and some vegetables and had a BBQ over an open fire on an amazing secluded beach. The food took forever to cook, but it wound up being probably one of the best meals we've had in Asia because we worked our ass off to make it. Other than that though, we really didn't do anything. The weather was pretty lousy so there really wasn't all that much to do. From the looks of things though, we'll probably be back.
Now we're on Koh Phangan after a roller coaster of a catamaran ride over from Koh Tao. The sea was so rough that people on the lower deck were puking everywhere and off of the sides of the boat as well. We were up in the open air enjoying the ride though, so it was all good. We're staying right now on the SouthWest coast of the island in a pretty nice place right on the water. Tomorrow we're leaving to the full-moon party beach called Haad Rin and we're going to be staying in an awesome hill-side, oceanview room at the end of the beach at Paradise Bungalows. Tomorrow night we're hitting up the Half-Moon Party in the middle of the jungle and then next week we have the Full-Moon Party on the 24th and then Christmas and then of course New Year's. So far I'm really liking this island. We rented some scooters today and just spent most of the day cruising around the island. More news (and hopefully some good stories) after the half-moon party. Time to watch the Chelsea - Arsenal game...
