We are staying in one of the best places in the world for scuba diving, so today we went scuba diving!! When we went to book it yesterday we expected to be told that we would learn in a pool or shallow bay first, then have a proper dive after that. We were actually told that we would be learning at our proper dive sight, in water more than 12 metres deep!! Literally throwing us in at the deep end! I have a bit of a phobia of deep water as well. Not a good start. Our sleep was slightly uneasy last night.This morning we went to meet our instructor, Andreas, bright and early. The sun was shining and the sea was calm. Perfect weather for it. We got on the boat to take us to a tiny island, right next to Phi Phi Leh (where the Beach was filmed). When we got to our dive sight the sea had gotten a little choppy. Just before we had to get our wetsuits on Becky had to run to the toilet with sea sickness! We eventually got our equipment on but found it hard to get in to a position to actually jump off the back of the boat due to the rocking. Eventually, we were both standing at the platform, side by side, ready to jump in, when a wave crashed over the boat and knocked us both over sideways onto Andreas. Again, not a good start.Finally we made it into the water. Andreas went through the basic skills with us, whilst we held onto a buoy, which he said we did well in, so we were ready to descend. We went down slowly. We had to equalise pressure in our ears every half metre we went down. I descended a bit too fast at first and didn't equalise properly, which did hurt!Once we got the hang of it we both started to really enjoy it. The fish around coral were beautiful. We saw a congor eel and a leopard shark. It was all worth the effort. We came up from our first dive, had lunch then went to another dive site for our second dive. I couldn't eat my lunch due to sea sickness! The second dive went a lot more smooth. We descended to 12.5 metres where we saw another leopard shark (3 metres in length). We got really close to it. I thought Andreas signalled to me to stroke it, so I did. Once we got back to the surface Andreas assured me that he hadn't signalled for me to stroke it, and that I not tell anyone because I would get in to trouble! The whole experience was tough to start off with but it was really worth it in the end. I would highly recommend anyone to try it. My advice is this though- Learn in a swimming pool first!