SCUBA divers have more fun!

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I arrived at Ko Tao in the afternoon, got off the ferry then caught a shared taxi to Buddha View Dive Resort in Ao Cahlok Ban Kao. A friend of mine, Jo, who I had met in New Zealand was there and had been doing her Advanced Open Water course.

I arrived at reception and spoke to a guy named Tom. He said I could start my Open Water Course tomorrow so I would have an induction talk at 4-30pm that day. They didn't have anywhere for me to stay at Buddha View but there were some rooms just round the corner at Tropicana. I checked into my room. It was really nice, it had a double bed and a single bed, it's own bathroom and a balcony. I opened the balcony door to let some air in as it was super hot inside the room. A girl popped out of the room next to me onto her balcony and we said hello, me from inside my room and her on the balcony. Moments later we realised who each other was. It was Jo! I was in the room directly next to hers. I'd wondered how easy it would be to meet up with her, I never imagined it would be that easy! I had about an hour before my induction, so we went down to the beach and had a cool off in the sea, Jo cut her foot on some dead coral. I went to my induction and met the rest of the people on my course. There was a Spanish couple (who later we found out were brother and sister), two girls from England, a Canadian guy, Ian, a Irish guy, Fionn, an American, Matt and a couple from France and England, Pierre and Lucinda. We got our PADI book and were told to meet at 9am for lessons! Afterwards I went to the bar to find Jo. She had been out for a dive the day before and they had seen a Whale Shark, the biggest shark of all, but completely harmless. The Japanese on the dive had filmed the dive so lots of people were in the bar waiting for the film to start. I had a few beers and sampled the Buddha View BBQ then went for a shower before heading back to the bar with Jo and got chatting to a few people.

The next day I dragged myself out of bed and into the classroom for 9am, guzzling down as much water as I could. You're not supposed to drink before diving! Our teacher was Camilo from Chile. We went through the first few chapters in the book (that we were supposed to have read last night and answer questions on). I struggled to stay awake. A new girl from Canada, Julie turned up and joined the course, she knew Ian from home. That made 11 in total so we split up into 2 groups for the diving in the afternoon. In my group was Matt, Fionn, Ian and Julie. Our instructor was a Danish guy Jesper. We arrived at the pool in the afternoon to start our first scuba skills. I was buddied up with Matt. First we had to learn how to set up the kit then we got into the pool and we had to breath underwater for 1 minute with the regulator in our mouths but no mask on, to practice just breathing through our mouths! After, we did skills such as sharing your buddies regulator and taking your mask off and swimming around then putting it back on before practising some buoyancy skills.

Day 2 of the open water course and again in the morning was more theory followed by a confined dive in the ocean in the afternoon. After lunch we jumped in the back of a pick up truck and drove to the pier at Ban Mae Hat. Here we got onto the big Buddha View dive boat. The boat had broken down earlier in the day and still seemed to be having a few problems. We got a tow from the other dive boat to a bay just round the corner to the dive site Tuk-Tuk. It's called Tuk-Tuk as a Tuk-Tuk has been sunk there to dive around! We did our skills before going for a little fun dive around the Tuk-Tuk. Jo left at around 7-30pm that night. After, we all a meal together.

The next 2 days I did 4 dives where we saw a Titan Tiggerfish as well as Nemo (a clownfish) the first day. That afternoon I went to Shark bay to go snorkelling and look for sharks, it was a bit cloudy but I saw 2 black tip reef sharks from a distance! When going out on the boat at 8am on the second day we heard on the radio that the Whale Shark had been seen at Chumpon Pinnacle the dive site we were heading to. We were really excited about this and quickly got our gear on and jumped in as soon as we got there. However a few other divers must have heard it was around and the dive site was packed. We didn't see any sign of the Whale Shark unfortunately. We did see a big Malaber Grouper but it wasn't the same. For our final dive of the course we did a James Bond style entry, which involved doing a sumasault while jumping in. We also had a bubble blowing contest underwater and they made us have an underwater kiss (apparently it is part of the course!) There was only one girl in our group so we just kissed Julie on the cheek. We came up and we had passed! Well we did actually have to complete the test in the afternoon but it was just a formality, we all passed it easily. That evening we met with Jesper and Camillo and we got our PADI cards and had a beer. Everybody met up for beers that night in celebration. We ended up in the Reggee bar.

I had a day off diving and went to shark bay to look for sharks again. It was even worst visibility today and we didn't see any. We did find a really nice restaurant over looking the bay where we had milkshakes with Julie, Ian and James aka Team Canada! That night I went for dinner on the walkway resturant before meeting up with rest of the gang in Buddha View.

I started my Advanced Open Water with Fionn. We buddied up together for this. In the advanced we got to dive to 30m deep, as an open water diver I would have only have been allowed to dive to 18m. The advanced consisted of 5 dives, a deep dive, a navigation dive, a multilevel dive, a peak buoyancy dive and a night dive. Our instructor was Paul from Australia. We did two dives on one day and two the next with the night dive the day after that. The deep dive was first, below 27m you could experience narcosis (which is like feeling drunk) but none of us experienced it 😞 The deep dive wasn't very good as we didn't see much, apart from the cool Batfish. Afterwards we did our navigation dive where we got to swim off on our own, in our buddy pairs, and we had to find our own way around the dive site and come up on the right line. That afternoon me and Fionn went to Sae Ri beach for lunch. We then went to explore around the island but didn't get too far as all the roads were unsuitable for mopeds! We found a restaurant with a huge whale skeleton before I rode the bike back to Buddha View. Later that night we went to Ban Mae Hat to the Italian retsurant for Pizza.

I did my Multilevel dive and peak performance buoyancy dives the next morning. My mask just kept flooding so I changed it for a spare. went back to Shark Bay. Our next dive was at Aow Luek and it was a really good dive, great visibility and was probably my most fun dive of all. That afternoon I decided to try and go shark hunting again, so made our way over to Shark Bay. This time the visability was great and we saw loads of sharks! About 5 at one time and over ten in total easily. One was quite big and it circled below us for a bit, eek! Afterwards we went to the nice restaurant overlooking the bay and had tea. That night we got drunk as I didn't have to dive the next day and ended up in the box bar.

The next day me and Fionn and Julie did our night dive. It was really cool going down in the dark. We each had a torch and saw Giant Barracuda, a Blue Spotted Stingray and a huge Hermit Crab. That night me and Fionn celebrated becoming advanced divers with Elle, Dave and Tash. I got dragged into the pool later on but unfortunately had my camera in my pocket! I got up the next day just in time to throw everything in my bag and get the ferry to the mainland and the bus to Bangkok with Fionn for Songkran.

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Photos

The dive boat
Coming home after a hard days diving

On the dive boat
My fellow dive students, from left to right: Matt, Julie, Fionn and Ian

Jumping off the top deck
The instructor, Jesper wouldn't jump so he took the photo!

Ao Ban Chalok bay
This is where I was staying

Night dive!
Just after finishing our night dive with Fionn and Julie

Last night in Ko Tao
Dave, Fionn, Tash, Elle and me

Comments

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Thailand is beautiful
Koh Tao looks as beautiful as Phi Phi, oh well that's another place on my ' to visit ' list!! Maybe to snorkel though, I'm not brave enough to Scub dive!