Diving

---

I've spent about a week in Ko Tao. 4 days taking the Open Water dive course, and another 2 days for the Advanced Open Water course. I'm a certified diver now, YAY !!!.

I didn't expect that I was going to be so excited about diving. I'm not much of a "water rat", as we call it in Dutch, but I found diving great, and it is easier than I thought. Diving is not a very exhaustive sport, you actually relax in the water! And you get to see a lot of things along the way and swim with the fish. I did a "night dive" as well, where you take torches in the water. Pretty scary at first, because you really can't see a thing without them, it's pitch black... But a cool experience though.

I learned a lot about the fish and the coral. Starting to learn about the species as well. We saw so many species, like barracudas, all kinds of groupers, wrasse, trevally, hermit crabs, clownfish, blue-spotted stingrays, butterflyfish, bannerfish, etc, etc.... I could go on for a while, and it's all names I wouldn't know in Dutch!

I'm looking forward to dive again, can't wait to go again when I'm in Malaysia and Australia. I still have a lot to learn though. Learning to dive is learning to control your breathing underwater. When you breathe in, you go up, when you exhale, you go down. So to be able to get the most out of a dive, controlling your buoyancy is key. The better you're at it, the more you can focus on looking around and enjoy the scenery!

Anyone who hasn't yet been diving in tropical waters, I can seriously recommend doing it!

It's off to Malaysia now, where I'll start in Penang (Georgetown) and I'll fly to Borneo soon after to spend 4 weeks there!

---

Photos

Christmas Tree Worm
it collapses quickly when it thinks there's something dangerous nearby