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Right so my sincere apologies for being so poor about updating the blog (especially grandma and grandpa), the diving was just super busy and we were nearly always diving, eating or sleeping!
Anyhow enough with the excuses...we arrived in koh Tao late afternoon on the 1st having said goodbye to Gunnar and Árni for the final time (sob!) and headed straight to big blue resort where we would be staying and diving for the next 4 days. Absolutely ravenous having travelled over lunch (getting onto the ferry in koh Tao was crazy with literally hundreds of people everywhere, it as slightly uncomfortable but we survived, and there were worse journeys to come..) we checked in and filled out all the necessary insurance documents etc. we then ordered the standard and safe option of chicken fried rice for lupper (lunch and supper- see what I did there isla!) before being hurried off to watch a diving video. Now if we're being perfectly honest we didn't pay huge amounts of attention considering we were just trying to stay awake (clearly koh phangan was more exhausting than we realised) and we decided early on that following our study guides was going to be a task too far that evening so after the video had finished we headed out for some pudding before completing a bit of our study guide in the vain hope we would understand it by the morning!
The following day we met our instructor, rick (who was extremely nice and from England- we felt right at home!) and ane, tonje, Flo and I were joined by 2 Canadian boys for the course. We headed straight to the swimming pool to learn all about setting up our kit and what everything did before getting in the pool at about 10am for 3 hours, starting in the shallow end before going down to 2.5m (wow!!). To begin with I was struggling because it felt so strange to be breathing underwater, I'm not a mermaid you know! And then came the task when we had to take off our masks and Flo was not a happy bunny but we all survived another day with tonje having some problems with her ears..that afternoon we had another theory lesson and once again everyone, including rick, struggling to stay awake. This time it was most definitely the sun! But we did learn all about the dangerous side effects of diving and all the geography (woo) and biology of the sea and waves. Interesting for some and not for others! We spent the rest of the day chilling in the idyllic koh Tao and watching the sunset from the beach, pretty nice way to relax really. On a side note, the food on koh Tao is absolutely incredible as our the smoothies and its all within 5 minutes of where we're staying because koh tap is minuscule so armed with our recommendations we tried out all we could.
Back to diving! That evening we stayed up into the early hours of the next morning revising hard, it was pretty similar to when we crammed for a levels really....(I hope you all realise I'm kidding!). Now in case you are the slightest bit concerned that we had to retake the test or something we did not, Flo and I passed with 94%, it'll do! Having passed a test which apparently no one has ever failed we were ready to brave the open sea. Out we headed and soon enough we were all kitted up and ready to go under. Unfortunately tonje just couldn't sort out her ear equalisation so she had to stop diving leaving just 5 of us in the group with Ane's new buddy being rick...finally though we made it down to 12m (the max depth we could go on dive 1) and it was truly amazing!!! We just swum around and saw lots of brightly coloured fish and coral whilst rick constantly asked us how much air we had left and we had to signal back to him. I got mildly confused at one point and ended up flinging the gauge in his face, he truly thought I was a bit of an idiot! Dive 1 completed we headed back up to the surface with a 3 minute decompression stop at 5m (how pro are we!) before sunbathing on the top deck for a bit waiting for our hour between dives to finish. Having been briefed on our tasks for the next dive, including filling our mask with water (Flo wasn't too impressed) and the exercise when your buddy is out of air and you give them your primary regulator, I'm sure this makes tonnes of sense! Anyhow, we completed dive 2 which was as incredible as before and headed back to dry land buzzing. We cleaned our kit in freshwater before heading out for a BBQ on the beach and some crepes in a nearby bakery. Yum! We had a super early night in preparation for our 5;30am wake up and journey from hell the following day!
5:30am. Day 4. Flo, ane and I woke up and headed for a nice early breakfast before heading out at 6;45 for our final 2 dives. The water was slightly choppier today and unfortunately I suffered from a nasty bout of seasickness (always fun!) and jumping into the water was slightly terrifying with waves coming up and onto the boat. I felt a little seasick in the water (!) but once we'd deflated our bc's and were down the buoy line we all felt much better. This time we could go down to 18m and saw even more coral and brightly coloured fish including an angel fish, a white eyed eel, butterfly fish, a barracuda and lots of other fish (so many blue ones ;)). We completed our final exercises, I was in a bit of a pickle taking my mask off and getting my hair caught whilst putting it back on, I need a hair cut! Before we knew it we were qualified divers heading back to shore ready for a good shower and a huge lunch! Flo and I actually loved it so much we're heading back on Friday to do our advanced course but unfortunately didnt for see this and so booked our boat and bus up to kanchanaburi prior to deciding it. Ah well, we've got the time. Newly clean we checked out and waited until 6 for our taxi to the ferry, boarding the Catarman boat at 7:15 before checking in to our 'night bus' which was like any normal bus with Flo and I assigned the back row seats so they didnt even recline. We had an awesome nights sleep and, arriving in Bangkok st 4am really put us in the best possible mood for the day!!! However we survived the experience and are repeating it on our way down again we loved it that much (oh and it's pretty cheap). Having arrived in Bangkok we said a final goodbye to tonje and ane who were awesome traveling companions for 10 days, seriously we love Nordic people, sorry Brits! Flo and I hopped in a taxi and slept on the station for 3 hours waiting for our next train to kanchanaburi, I think I've made this sound worse than it was. We're still standing now and had the most Incredible time in Koh Tao hence our impending return. I also apologise for the slow blog updates, and the poor quality of this blog (I'm sleepy!)...Flo will update shortly so we're back on top of things. In the meantime, us qualified divers are still loving life in Thailand and hope that everything's going well back home :)
Lots of love
Tess and Flo xx
- comments
YKW Qualified divers wohoooo!!!! I expect lessons upon your return he he he!!