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PADI Open Water Dive Course on Koh Tao
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Spent 5 days and 4 nights in Koh Tao, Turtle Island, so far - we arrived over slightly choppy seas at about 9 am on the early boat from Chumphon - although these waters were nothing compared to the inpromtu storm I got caught in up the beach when I went for a wander at midday. Luckily the bar I took cover in was following Tim Henman's progress at Wimbledon so I was suitably entertained. I waited for it to pass, but it actually continued all day, so I made a run for it back to our accomodation and dive school - Big Blue and we sat with our instructor Darren and had an orientation to the course and watched a few films.
 
The weather was a lot brighter the next day and we watched videos and did knowledge reviews from our textbooks in the morning and in the afternoon headed over to Japanese Gardens for our first confined water dive. We got all our gear on - sooooo heavy and practised snorkelling first, and then surface skills, and then went down to about 1m and did underwater skills. Some of them were quite offputting at first, such as removing your mask and swimming without it, but now I'm completely comfortable with them, and did it at 18m today. Anyway, Japanese Gardens was lovely - awesome visibility and great coral, and we only went about 3-4m down. The second day we did mostly the same but our second confined water dive in the afternoon at the same place. It completely stormed like crazy again that night... I've got some awesome pictures of the clouds just before it broke.
 
On Sat, the third day we aced our exam in the morning, me and Luce got full marks! And then headed over to White Rock and Twin Pinnacles dive sites for open water dives 1 and 2. I sat out the first one cause I was feeling majorly sea-sick but did the second one find - we went down to about 12m and saw all sorts of fish and corals and practised some skills... it was amazing - it was really easy being down at 12m aswell - I didn't think it would be so I was surprised.
 
That evening boasted an awesome sunset, complimented by a fantastic meal, and a complete dearth of people thanks to the Full Moon party on neighbouring Koh Phangan.
  
And then today we got up to leave for Chumphon pinnacle - 40 mins away - at 7 am. The water was really rough and I took a sea sickness tab, but still threw it up! But did the dives anyway - it was funny, once you're underwater, you don't feel the waves so you're fine, but as soon as we surfaced I felt really sick again! Anyway, on the first dive we saw 4 sharks circling around us which apparently is really rare, so we were extremely lucky. Apparently they're completely docile - as much as a shark can be, I guess! So we weren't scared, we just stayed back and watched.. only a couple of metres away. We also saw barracudas and trigger fish and all sorts of other aquatic life that Darren pointed out to us. The second dive was back towards Koh Tao - Green something, can't remember, we haven't logged these dives yet. We went down to 18m and did navigation exercises with a compass which was funny and hard given that visibility was poor down there. Darren had a custom made spiderman wetsuit and because colours disappear deep underwater, we couldn't see the red and it just looked purple and blue - it was funny!
So yeah - we passed with flying colours apparently, and it was soooo amazing - I can't wait to do some more.... Maybe in Malaysia, defo in Oz. Only prob is, my head is still spinning from the boat ride!
In the evening we all gathered at the bar, which happened to double as the dive centre base, to watch footage of today's dives. The video ran through right from when we walked with our compasses on the beach, getting used to them on land, to making it out to the dive boat, kitting up, entering the water, and then everything we saw underneath. There was awesome footage of the sharks, which made the video viewing quite an event as it was particularly rare. Afterwards Darren presented us all with our temporary open water certification cards and we went off to a bar to watch the F1 grand prix and indulge in a meal and some celebratory drinks. Later on, Lucy and I returned to the Big Blue bar with Coffy, our divemaster, and spent the rest of the night doing all manner of random things such as going for a spin on his motorbike.
 
We were up pretty early the next morning to check out and make our way to the ferry terminal for the crossing back to the mainland, and the joyous experience of more Thai public transport. I was sad to leave Koh Tao also, as there seemed like quite a strong community there, where it would be easy to stay for months on end, especially considering the weather (most of the time), the awesome food, the proximity to the beach, and of course the lure of more diving, but time constraints demanded, and on we moved, heading for Krabi. This was on the pretext that it too boasted a nice beach setting, somewhat removed from the tourist hype of places like Koh Samui and Phuket, with the possibility of travelling over to Koh Phi Phi to relive island life.
Island Paradise! xxxxxx
Where I stayed:
Big Blue Dive Centre
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