We flew down to Koh Samui and stayed a couple of nights, mostly lying on the beach moaning about it being too hot. Then caught a ferry across to the island of Koh Tao, found a place to stay and signed up for a PADI open water diving course (with the awesome Master Divers). The course involved lots of reading (we were a pair of total nerds, doing our homework every night, calculating hypothetical levels of residual nitrogen in our bloodstream), swimming underwater without a mask, filling up your mask with water and then clearing it again, pretending to be out of air, taking your kit off underwater (that’s diving kit). I've never done anything like it, and had some (admittedly irrational) reservations. These tended to involve scenes from Jaws, and/or Paula getting into a fight
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