Day 63: Koh Tao

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Koh Tao is visited mostly for its exceeding reputation for scuba diving. We spent 3 days at Big Blue Diving school, completing our open water dive course. We didn’t actually see much of Koh Tao itself as we spent the duration of our time there learning to dive. However we stayed on a perfect beach with clear water and golden sand, with fire throwing and entertainment every night at the beach bars. Big Blue had been recommended to us as the best place to learn to dive, and it really was. Our instructor was a young Israeli lad called Yam who taught us in the most fun way possible, making us feel completely comfortable and confident. Once we’d got the basics, he had us doing backflips and tricks under water. We loved it.
We did 4 dives in total at White Rock, Mango Bay, Japanese Gardens and Himpeewee. Admittedly, I was terrified before my first dive. So of course, Yam made sure I lead the way down our first 12 metres. As soon as my head went under the water I felt incredibly relaxed. It was surreal, I felt like an astronaut surrounded by alien looking sea creatures. We reached a maximum of 18 metres on our final dive. My favourite part was seeing the HTMS Sattakut ship reck. It was awesome. Although we missed the whale sharks, we saw a vast range of sealife and beautifully colourful coral reefs.
We all celebrated becoming certified scuba divers by going to an afternoon pool party at AC BAR down the beach.
We were so sad to leave Koh Tao and finish our diving course. I enjoyed every minute. But hey, it’s only the beginning of my under water adventures.

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