Koh Tao - Advanced Diving Course

Hi

I was up at 7 the next day and just had time to say goodbye to Stacey and Jaime as they were headingoff to Koh Samui for a few days and so I said I would meet them later on. The adanced course is five dives that where you learn different skills, two of the dives are compulsory and then you can chose the remaining 3 dives. The first dive of the day was Multi level diving, this allows you to dive for longer at different depths, starting deep and then moving shallower. The second dive was peak bouyancy diving where you learn to control your bouyancy better using your breathing and body position. We did some skillson the bottom, including doing handstands, 180 degree fin pivots and swimming through small apces without touching anything as you go. Both of the dives were mainly fun dives, after the skills were outof the way, which is the best bit.

The rest of the afternoon was spent reading the text book and doing the tests, learning about each of the different dives I was doing.

We met up at 5:30pm to prepare for the night dive. We got our extra equipment (a torch) ready and then for the most important part - a couple of beers to have on the boat on the way back after diving. We set sail and arrived at the dive site just in time to watch the sun set. We were given the dive brief for night diving, and I was getting a bit nervous. I looked over at the sea below and it was just pitch black, you couldn't see anything. The best/scariest bit was jumping off the boat into the water as normally you can at least see what is below - but not this time. It wasn't actaully bad at all, it was more fun that the day dives in a way because your adrenalin is running alittle higher than usual due to the fact that you can't see properly. Down we went with only torches to see, it was weird at first and took me a minute to get my bearings. We headed down to the bottm and stopped to switch off our torches. It was completely dark until we waved our hands and all the phospherous lit up, it looked really cool, like glitter under the water. After messing about with the phospherous for a while we switched our torches back on and went for a swim. The best things we saw was a trigger fish and a Giant Barracuda eating a Rabbit Fish, which was a bit gruesome but great all the same! We headed back to Buddah View on the boat and had a couple of beers before going to bed aor another early start.

The next day started at 7am again and this time were going for the deep dive. This dive would be to 30 metres, the deepest I had gone before was 18metres so I was looking forward to this. The main thing you have to be aware of with deep dives is that the deeper you go the more at risk you are of Nitrogen Narcosis. It isn't very dangerous or anything it just makes you feel like your drunk and confused. There are some really funny stories about people who stand on their head at the bottom without realising it or get reallt giddy and start doing stupid things. We had to do some really easy tests whilst we were on the boat like counting to ten using our fingers and writing our name backwards. The instructor times us and then we were to do them at 30 metres to see if the depth had any effect on us. Down we went deeper and deeper until we got to 30m and then we sat on the bottom to do the tests. I couldn't count and really struggled with writing my name backwards and even though we were under water - I could hear the laughter from the rest of the group! It was funny though, I was really confused and not sure which way was up sometimes -so definately like a Saturday night out round Bolton, with just as many weird creatures about. The rest of the dive was fun diving and then on to the next and final dive which was the navigation dive. We were given a compass and a few tasks to complete. Using the compass we had to travel in a complete square and end up back where we started, and setting off in one direction and making sure you come back to start point. We also had to us kick cycles for this to judge distance and natural objects (reef, rocks etc) to find our way around. Once we had completed the tasks we were then given about 30 minutes to swim around on our own (with 1 buddy), find our way around the dive site and then find the boat at the end. This is the first time we had ever dived without an instructor so it was a bit nerve racking, especially for me knowing my sense of direction is terrible. I can't sometomes tell my left from my right, never mind 90 degrees north and al that. Remember, this is the girl who got lost on a straight road in Hervey Bay! Whilst we were swimming around I felt something really stange pop in me ears, it wasn't the most pleasant feeling. I happened a couple of times and then stopped. I was slightly worried but there was no pain or anything so I knew it wasn't a problem with my ear. Once we got back to the boat (yes we made it with only a compass for guidance - I was well impressed) I found out that the ear thing was a little fish called the moon wrasse who like to swim into your ears and back out again,so thats what it was! Not sure I like the idea of that, fish behave very stangely!

That was it - I was now an advanced diver - yipee!! I loved the course so much, I would recommend it to anyone. I had a really good time at Buddah View, I really wish I could have stayed longer but there was a night boat leaving for Krabi and I had to be on it. Not looking forward to this journey, 12 hours with only a mat to sleep on with about 50 complete strangers, oh the joys of travelling on a budget......

Lots of love Jules x xx