SCUBA Wu

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So after a week of hard work, it was time to play again. This time, we headed out to a nearby island, Koh Tao, renowned for its diving. While the weather wasn't ideal, we were short on time as we only wanted to take the weekend off and braved the bad weather.

Thanks to our PADI instructor in Toronto, we checked out a resort run by his friends. This was actually a VERY good thing because of course I forgot my certification number and dive log when packing for the weekend. I like to blame it on packing at 2:30 AM after being locked out of our hotel for two hours and Mike and I attempting to unlock the door by sticking wire and metal (that we conveniently picked up from the street) around the frame and catching the latch on the other side of the door (thanks go out to a certain vet student in the year ahead of us who 'perhaps' has used this trick in OVC). Luckily for us, we managed to get in after some fellow residents arrived back from the bar. This was actually super lucky, since our ride to the pier was coming at 7 AM.

This was the first time Laetitia and I went diving in the ocean, and let's just say it was a little different from our certification dives in Ontario. While visibility wasn't spectacular, we managed to see plenty of coral, fish, sponges, a couple blue spotted sting rays and a plethora of other marine inverts. Mike even spotted a sea snake on our last dive, not a common site. Although Koh Tao actually means Turtle Island in Thai, sea turtles have become more rare over the past decade and so unfortunately we didn't see any. The water was especially rough the second day which made for some fun time on the surface. My advice: keep your mask on until you're fully out of the water so a big wave doesn't hit you on the ladder leaving you partially blind, sucking in water and clinging to the ladder for dear life. Trust me.

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