Christmas and Diving on Ko Tao - Brilliant!

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We were eager to leave Koh Samui so at an ungodly hour of 6am we headed to the ferry port for our boat to Koh Tao. 3 Hours later we had landed with no pick up from our hotel we had booked with, a quick walk around the corner to the diving office and a quick enquiry brought a pickup truck from the resort to take us to our home for 5 nights and the diving resort where I (G) was to learn how to dive - Asia Divers. Asia Divers Resort is a 5 minute from Sairee Beach and was highly recommended to us by Mete and Caz who did diving courses with them the other year. Sairee Beach is a long white sandy beach lined with gorgeous bars and gorgeous bungalows. We loved it, the sea was turquoise and clear and perfect for floating around in with a reef about 50m out for snorkeling.

I wanted to get stuck in right away so while Tony met up with Matt and Serena (the couple we’ve been bumping into all the way from Cambodia) I had to sit through 2 hours of Americanised DVDs and was then given homework to do for the next morning by my instructor Ross.

The homework was reading the first 2 Chapters the PADI Open Waters Diving Manual and going the knowledge reviews at the end of each chapter!!! Each chapter was massive!!! Not wanting to miss out on a night out with Matt and Serena, I decided to get up early to read them and do my homework then. So we all headed out to Sariee Cottage for the most amazing Kebabs ever which cost a mere 120B, for this you got 2 massive kebabs and chips yum yum!!!! A few beers later and we were back having an early night.

6am on Christmas Eve morning and I was up studying away for my academics at 9. Off I went and bounded back after an hour and a half later excited about my next lesson would be my first dive, a confined dive in the pool at the resort. By this time T was off for his refresher course.

My first dive in the pool went really well, I was taught all the skills I was going to have to perform in the sea. Upon completing my first lesson and taking off all my gear (which is really heavy out of water) T came back with a sad look on his face, he couldn’t equalize, a problem he had in Oz when he last tried to dive, so he was unable to dive, luckily we didn’t have to pay the 1,500B for the course.

Seeing it was Christmas Eve I was allowed to have Christmas Day off, so we headed out for a night out on the beach with Matt and Serena starting at the most amazing Italian Place ever, homemade yummy pizzas and Pasta, Serena being half Italian was even impressed!!! We followed our meal by heading down to the beach and starting on our buckets, ours (the girls) was blue and not that nice so it took us a while to finish them. We ended up at the other end of the beach for midnight to see Christmas Day come in, watching loads of fire dancers and fireworks dancing in the sand. Upon noticing Matt looking rather worst for wear Tony’s only option was to get themselves a bucket to liven him up!!! This back fired and after an hour we were heading home, incidentally this was at 3:30am so not bad going at all really!!!!

Christmas Day was spent pretty much in bed dying of the worst hangover, we ventured out for a fry up then back to bed before heading down to the beach for a swim then back home for some studying then out for dinner. Dinner was once again with Matt and Serena in the best Kebab place ever before retiring for an early night in time for my early start the next day.

I rose at 6am on Boxing Day again to do my homework I didn’t do the day before, reading chapters 3 and 4 and doing the knowledge review, T kindly went out to get me some breakfast and helped me on a few questions. By 9 I was ready for my last time in the classroom and my final exam. I got 90% on my exam which pleased me and before I knew it I was out in the sea doing my first open water dive, dive one was a fun dive, followed by an hour break and dive 2. Dive 2 was hard, it took me 15 minutes to get to the bottom having major problems with my right ear and equalizing, finally, I made it and completed my skills to perfection. The dive site I went too wasn’t that great so when I got back Tony was worried why I wasn’t too excited. I didn’t say anything hoping the next day’s dive site would be better.

We spent the evening saying goodbye to Matt and Serena who were off on a long journey across the border to Malaysia, once they had gone we headed back to the Italian for a yummy meal before T got to watch lots of Boxing Day footy on the telly in the English pub at the end of our road.

One final early rise for me, this time no studying just my last two dives, I was very nervous about my ear and was wishing very hard that it wouldn’t cause any problems as today I was going down to 18m.

My last two dive sites were much better than the day before and I learnt lots of hand signals for different types of fish etc. I saw so many amazing fish it was brilliant.

My last dive was my final set of skills which once again I completed to perfection before having a final swim around looking at the gorgeous colorful fish.

I surfaced to massive congratulations from my instructor, back on dry land I had a few forms to complete before I was left to have the rest of the day to myself with T. We did what all self respecting holiday makers do and headed to the beach to sunbathe and take a swim.

We headed out in the evening to celebrate my completion of the PADI Open Water by watching another fabulous sunset (we’ve had one every night here) and having once again those yummy 120B kebabs!!!!

To sum up Koh Tao, it was amazing, the bars are so nice and chilled out, there are loads of gorgeous restaurants, some naturally out of our price range but others well within and the beach is gorgeous. We wish we had time to venture around the island but with me learning to dive and having friends to celebrate Christmas with we just didn’t get round to doing it.

I would highly recommend Asia Divers to anyone who wants to learn or further their diving i.e. become an adventure diver or get your advanced diving certificate. If you want to do your divemaster they even give you unlimited dives once you’ve paid for the course. They were wonderful and helped me stay calm when I was jumping in, which was my scariest bit of diving. I was also very lucky to have one to one with my instructor which I believe helped me immensely. I understand they won’t take any more than 4-6 learners out at a time to one instructor unlike some other dive centre’s who do 10 plus but to be honest you will normally end up with just you or you and another person. My dive course cost 9,800B including 4 nights free accommodation, we have recently found out that this is a bargain compared to Koh Phi Phi, with a PADI Open Water costing 12,900B plus not including accommodation and a refresher costing 3,200B.

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