On arriving at port we climbed into the back of the pickup that would take us to our diving resort and hotel. The resort was called Asia Divers, with 'Gold Palm Resort' being a standard of efficiency given to decent resorts in the area. With no contact details for Milena, it seemed we wouldn't be seeing each other again. The hotel itself was great, it had its own pool for divers to begin training and a nice bar area. It was only a couple of minutes from the town centre, which is where we headed for lunch. Our main restaurant was called Tong's. You can get a decent meal for between 1 and 2 Pounds! Shake included!!

Before you can start diving, you have to pass a course in the classroom, which involves homework, much to the dismay of me and my fellow divers! It was pretty easy and we ended up splitting the homework load and copying each other's answers anyway!! The final exam wasn't too hard and we all ended up with 100% (without copying!), the first time a whole group (five of us) had done so. Aren't we the clever ones?! So, that meant the next day we could begin diving.

The first session was in the pool to get used to the equipment in a controlled environment. It started off okay but about an hour in, I started to have some trouble. It was when we had to submerge into the water, take our masks off and swim around the pool with our instructor. The chlorine in the water meant I had to keep my eyes shut and began to panic a bit when the pool went to a couple of metres depth. Another thing I had difficulty with was putting my mask back on and getting rid of the water it had. Later, another instructor talked me through it, I tried it the next day in the sea and it worked fine!

When I was first ready to submerge into the open water, I felt a bit nervous again. My pre-dive confidence now lost within the reality of what I was about to do. As I submerged, ready to drop to the huge depths of ten metres or so, I took a last look at the above-world, ready to face my fate. I actually came back up after about a metre, probably to reassure myself it was still there! Back down again, struggling to equalise (swallow and breathe out through my nose, nostrils closed using my fingertips), I finally made it to a depth of ten metres. There was no going back from here! Concentrating on my breathing, and holding onto my mouth piece, just to make sure it didn't come away form my mouth, we took a little bit of a swim. It's strange. As I was swimming, I felt my nerves dissipate and began to trust my instructor and equipment more. As I looked on the underwater world, I became too awestruck to feel anything else but calm. During the course of the first lesson, we demonstrated a couple of breathing techniques, with the mask off-on technique reserved for the next lesson, gladly.

During the rest of the lessons, we covered a series of techniques on breathing, quick ascent, and later some fun and games, including an underwater foot race along the sea bed! That was funny! The mask on-off task became a doddle for me by the end, confirmed each time by my instructor with the underwater "Okay" sign (not a thumbs up as that means "let's surface"!). We saw lots of fish: trigger, butterfly, angel, sting ray, puffer. We saw the shadow of a shark in the murky depths, pointed out by our instructor with the hand sign for shark...no clues for guessing what that is. It was a shame not to see it close up, but perhaps that was for the best!!

At the end of the first day's SCUBA, after checking my email and the news on the internet, I decided to take the ten minute walk through town to the beach. I had been thinking of how silly I was not to exchange contact details with Milena and wondered if she'd actually made it to the island at all. As I approached the beach, I stood for a moment looking out toward the sea as the sun was setting. At that moment, who should be walking along the shore in front of me, but Milena! We chatted for a while as we strolled on the beach back to her place, thinking how funny it was that we should meet again so randomly.

We went out for dinner that evening to a restaurant, good food and live Spanish guitar playing in the background. Even though it was a bit posher than I was used to (pad thai from street sellers for 50p), it was still cheap relative to prices back home. So, a bottle of wine and a tasty meal later, we joined some other friends at a bar close to us, where England played a rather dismal game of Rugby against Argentina. After, we headed to Lotus bar, which was situated on the beach front. I think this was the only bar on the island that stayed open until 3am, which some people did, but it is definately not a good idea if you have a full day of diving ahead of you.

Our last couple of dives on the last day were great. We saw lots of fish and had a bit of a fun dive at the end as we were now quite good at conserving our oxygen. We opted to have a camera man record our dive, unfortunately, the camera had problems underwater and contained about a minute of footage. With the camera in mind during the dive however, we all entered the sea in the 'James Bond' style: standing bent over at the edge of the boat, falling forward with a tumble dive into the water so your back lands first. When we were showing off to the camera at the bottom of the sea, we had to take off our goggles, put on some shades and pose for the camera. Surprisingly, I found I could see quite well without my goggles on, things were just a bit hazy. As last of our group were demonstrating to our instructor, I caught Karl's attention and pointed behind him to a fish that was loitering about two metres from him. He turned around and moved a finger toward it, to which it closed in aggressively, so Karl moved his finger away. The fish then retreated, so Karl tried again and it did the same thing! I found this very amusing since the fish wasn't very big at all!!