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Another high speed catamaran takes us from koh phangan to thailands scuba mekka koh tao. Our prayers are answered and the trip is not as bad as the first one, still extremely choppy and made us feel slightly queasy, but not as bad. We are greeted off the boat by a mass of people shouting and trying to convince us to go to their diving school. Luckily (tideous link) the cousin of a work friend of jonnys is a partner in a diving school and Jonny had arranged for us to dive there with a little bit of discount. The dive resort isn't spectacular but we are warmly welcomed and made to feel very special as we meet our open water dive team who we will spend the next few days with. Next day we start the open water dive course in a classroom watching a couple of hours worth of videos. Mainly attempting to sell you various pieces of scuba gear but with lots of factual information too. After the videos we complete a couple of knowledge tests and then head outside to play with the scuba equipment. We practice putting together all of our scuba gear, taking it apart, putting it together, taking it apart (we did this quite a few times!) and then head to a nearby swimming pool, wearing the whole caboodle, to begin our confined water training. The instructor had bets that there would be one person in the class who wouldnt be able to take their mask off underwater without standing up, majority of bets was that i would fail, but no, the already scuba qualified big hurly man stood up, i did swimmingly (pun intended)! After that we have an early night ready for our open water dive the next day.
Open water dive day and we prep our scuba gear then everyone walks to the sea. About 20 people plus scuba gear cram into a longboat at the beach, boarding one at a time from each side so as not to capsize us and then we sail to the main boat. It should be a qualification in itself departing from the long boat onto the big boat; one at a time, from only one side, leaping and grabbing onto the side of the boat and scrambling over scuba air tanks to board (I must admit that I did fall between the boats once, gracefully though!) Once aboard, everyone heads upstairs to be debriefed by their instructors while we head to our diving destination. As this was our first dive it was a case of ensuring everyone was comfortable underwater and then completing things like taking off scuba gear on the surface, putting it back on, taking it off under the water and putting it back on, taking off mask underwater and putting it back on etc. It sounds easy but it's actually pretty difficult- being blinded 12m on the bottom of the sea! After this we had a nice little swim around the bottom looking at the fishes. Then back on board, back to shore, back on the long boats, back on dry land!
The next day was more of the same, completing tasks underwater ensuring everyone's weighting was correct and then doing a couple of tricks like backflips and blowing underwater air rings and more fishes! Back to the dive school and we all do an exam (I exceed with 94%- top of the class!) and we receive our open water dive qualifications. Woo hoo! After a bit of selling by the dive school we end up signing up for the open water advanced course for the next day. As part of the advanced course we spend the evening doing a night time dive. We were given torches and strict instructions to stay in our buddy pairs. It was really eery swimming around on the bottom of the sea in the pitch black. There was a lot of phospholuminescent plankton which was visible when we turned our torches off and agitated the water- quite magical looking. A great start to the advanced open water course.
The next day we had 2 more dives. The first was of a WW2 American battleship wreck, the visibility wasn't very good but it added to the experience and made the dive even more creepy. I was a little disappointed to learn that the ship wasn't actually sunk in the war but was actually bought by Thailand in
2001 and sunk to be a ship wreck, but it was still good! The next dive was probably my favourite- it was designed to test our buoyancy underwater and consisted of us getting into all sorts of positions and testing how well we floated under the water, swimming through hoops and doing more back flips and front flips etc.
Next day and another 2 dives. The first a navigation dive where we were given compasses and sent off in various directions and instructed to navigate our way back. This was really fun too- as the only girl in the group it was expected that I was the best, and of course I was!! Second dive was a deep dive where we went to 30m and had a really clear view of the coral reef. Saw lots of fish, eels and a sting ray. Jonny was very keen to see a shark, but we didn't, what a shame!! So after the last dive we had completed our advanced open water course and now qualified. I'm not too sure what additional skills we now have versus plain old open water but the dives were really good. As a goodwill gesture from management, we were given a free fun dive the next day. This dive took us to a new site where the visibility was really amazing. We saw a clown fish who was conserved by the divers in the area by creating a circle of coral around him to make him feel safe and protected- he was called nemo and was very cute! More swimming around and looking at fishes, as we swam over one particular bit of coral I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I look down to find a tiny fish snapping at my injured foot- I swat the fish away who promptly goes towards Jonny. I see this fish sneak up on Jonny and attack his ankles from behind, Jonny must also feel the pain but couldn't find the source until several fish snaps later. It took several minutes and fish bites for Jonny to get the fish away, and all I could do was watch in hysterics as this little fish continued to bite jonnys ankles. I was laughing so much water seeped into my mask and i had to really concentrate on not drowning! On the surface we learn that our fish friend was a cleaner fish who usually lives on bigger fish cleaning all the dead scales away etc. But with people they eat away at cuts and dead flesh! Yummy. A great dive to finish a great few days at scuba school as a newly qualified advanced open water diver.
Next stop koh phi phi...
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Lucy Miller Just goes to prove you should never bet a Millerbeater!