Ko Tao - Open Water Diving

Hi,

The bus journey to Surat Thani was really boring and dragged on for ever. However, I did meet a Swiss girl called Arragatta who was lovely and made me laugh most of the way there as she was so dramatic and over-exaggerated everything. She was like a cooler version of Nikki from Big Brother. I couldn't sleep most of the way so when we arrived at a deserted cafe and were told we had a 3 hour wait for the boat to Koh Tao I found myself a nice spot on the floor, lay with my head on my bag and fell asleep. Arragatta woke me up when it was time to leave and we got on a coach to take us to the pier. I again fell asleep on the bus and then again on the boat! When we arrived I was pretty refreshed considering the journey. Arragatta also wanted to do her Open Water dive course and so she decided to come to Buddah View with me. We signed up for the course and then settled into our rooms. After breakfast we had the rest of the day to chill. The views from our resort were lovely and I decided that Koh Tao was probably the nicest place in Thailand that I have been to so far. Buddah View was cool, really relaxed, lots of lovely people and with a really good atmosphere. We met up later with the rest of our dive group, watched the introduction video and filled in the forms ready to start the course the next day. We had a lovely BBQ dinner and a few drinkks and then went ot bed as we had an early start of clasrrom work the next day - haven't been in classroom for about 5 years so this should be fun!

Day 1 consisted mostly of reading the text book and answering the questions at the end to check understanding - like at school! We had a really funny instructor called Camillo who kept us entertained all the time. The afternoon was spent in the pool where we learned how to put the equipment together and get geared up and then some basic skills in the pool. I had done most of them before on my 2 previous dives so I was ok with them, The only one I was worried about was taking the mask completely off underwater as I have a bad habit of breathing up my nose. Before we did that skill we did buddy breathing where you take your regulator out (mouth piece) and use your buddy's. For some unknown reason I got completley confused and instead took my mask off and tried to hand it to my buddy. It was hilarious and then I realised that needn't have worried about that skill as I had just completed it without thinking (by accident). Once we had completed all the skills me and Jaime (my buddy) couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the pool session and so we found most of the surface skills really difficult but finished them all in the end. The funniest thing was that because the pool is s highly chlorinated my hair turned green! Not just a bit of a tint but bight, luminous green. I could have easily freaked out but it was just so funny. The instructors told me to try ketchup to get it out so my first stop was the seven eleven for a bottle of the red stuff. I spent the next half hour with half a bottle of ketchup on my head, my whole room stank of ketchup - nice. It did get most of the green out but there was still a hint of it, it looked like I had had green highlights! The look was starting to grow on me but then I realised that I don't have many outfits to go with green hair so I hoped it would fade! That evening we went for dinner at a lovely restaurant that is on a pier which stretches out into the sea.

Day 2 was more classroom work in the morning ready for our first sea dive in the afternoon. We jumped onto the speedboat and joined the bigger dive boat. Before we could go diving we had to do our swim test. We had to swim twice round the boat and then tread water for 10 minutes. After 7 minutes of treading water I realised how unfit I had become whilst I've been travelling, dreading the gym when I get back. Whilst we were in the sea we all kept feeling little stings all over - sea lice apparently - nice! Once we were diving we had to do all the pool skills on the sea bottom. When we had finished these we went for a swim around and saw allsorts, the best being a giant barracuda. Dinner, was the loveley BBQ that they have on every night at Buddah View. We all went to bed early as we has lots of reading to do for our final exam the next morning.

Dat 3 we did our final exams and then went for our second sea dive.The dive wasn't great for me as I had a dodgy mask that kept filing with water no matter how hard I tried to get it out. For most of the dive I couldn't see and kept falling behind the group. It was only once we got to the surface we saw that both of my fins were snapped! We did some surface skills and then climbed back onto the boat. We then sorted our gear out ready for the second dive. We did more skills including an emergency ascent and a buddy ascent and then went for a swim around the dive site.

Day 4 was our final 2 dives and they would be more like fun dives. We had a 7:30 start and headed to the first dive site, today we had a camera man with us all day to film our 2 dives. We started with some skills and then went for a swim. It was really cool as we were now alot more competent and could have a really good look around. The second dive was purely for fun and whilst we were on the boat preparing we were told that Yort from our group was going to propose underwater to his girlfriend Martina. We had got to know them pretty well over the last 4 days and they are a lovely couple, we were all really excited. Once we were underwater we were all just being silly in front of the camera. I tried some body combat moves but didn't really pull them off, I forgot how heavy your legs are under 10 metres of water. We all settled on the bottom and took off our masks, put on sunglasses and were just generally daft in front of the camera. Then Yort stepped up - it was so lovely. He wrote on the board 'keep breathing" " do you want to spend the rest of you life with me?" To which Martina said Yes and then he wrote "will you marry me?" She said yes and we all cheered and celebarted under the water. All the girls masks were filling with tears and we had to keep clearing them, it was so romantic and really made our last dive together special.

Once we got back to Buddah View we all met up to get our final exam reaults, I got 100% - swat and we all passed and were now certified divers. We watched the dive video from the fun dive and laughed our heads off as it looked really funny to watch it all back. We went into Sai Ree (town) to celebrate and went to a lovely Italian restaurant called Portabello Road. We had lots of lovely Chiliean wine, then off to a beach bar to dance the night away. We had such a good night but all suffered the next day. I moved in with Jaime and Stacey to save money and we just chilled all day and then got realy for the yearly underwater festival. This event is about cleaning up the beaches and the water during the day and then having fun at night. We headed to Shark Bay where it was being held and found lots of stalls selling food and driink and a big stage with music and a Miss Koh Tao competition. As usual, the music consisted of reggae, Thai's just love a bit of regaae! The second night of the festival was the same but this time with a foam party and a Mr Koh Tao competition. The Mr Koh Tao comp was funny as at the ned they auctioned the all off and all the lady boys stepped up and bought them, their faces were a picture. That day I decided to sign up for the advanced dive course as I loved it so much and wanted to learn the more complicated dive techniques. This meant an early night for me and I was a bit gutted as I was just getting into the Thai rendention of the Killers Mr Brightside..........

Lots of love Jules x x x