Diving course on Ko Tao at Ban's Diving Resort

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Wednesday 23rd was the first proper day of our diving course, we got up at 7.30am. We met the class at 8 and tried on wet suits and fins for sizes then got all our scuba equipment and headed to the swimming pool. We got split into 2 groups and our intructor for the next 3 days would be Ronen from Israle, who had been instructing at Ban's for 10 years! We practiced putting all the equipment together and taking it apart a few times, then were told on land what we would be doing in the water for the next hour. The next 1 hour was spent completly under water in the pool, we learnt how to breathe from the regulator and how to clear the regulator of water, we also learnt how to inflate and deflate the BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) to get ourselves nutrally buoyant (not floating or sinking!). Nick had a few issues breathing under water at first but then started to get the hang of it. The whole hour lesson underwater was conducted wth hand signals and went really smoothly. We then spent some more time getting used to the equipment before getting into the deeper end of the pool. In the deep end we practiced taking off our weights (you need them because most people float!) and practiced clearing our masks of water without coming to the surface, it was suprisingly easy! We wouldn't need a lot of the emergency skills we were learning but it was all about gaining confidence with the equipment. We then got a lunch break and dropped off some laundry to get done. Quickly ate our noodles and rice then headed to the classroom. We spent some time gonig over last nights homework then did 3 exams (both got 29/30!). We watched another training video and took more notes - and got even more homework! After 'school' we used the internet and equired about travel to Phi Phi. We then spent 2 hours on our balcony doing our homework which was about nitrogen levels and dive depth/time charts. After that we headed out for some food and picked up some more imodium for Nick who is starting to get better. We then got some sleep, we had our first sea dives tomorrow to look forward to - we set our alarm for 2am for the Man Utd game but as usual we didn't bother waking up to watch it - these night games are much harder than 3pm kick offs!

Next day was an early start, we were up at 6.30 and met the class an hour later. It was raining really really bad and we weren't sure if we would be able to go out, after 30 mins of sitting around our instructors gave us the ok to head out. We picked up our fins, wet suits, BDC's, snorkles and masks and waded to the speedboat, this took us to the dive boat, and the dive boat headed out to 'Twins Dive' - our first dive location. We had a briefing on the boat then kitted up and went through all our 'buddy checks' (basically checking our buddies equipment). We then got in and did our first ever dive, its was great. Visability was about 15 meters, which is really good for anywhere in the world, and we went to 12 meters deep for about 40 minutes. Under the water we followed our instructor and practiced more skills, including taking off our masks and replacing them and practiced communication. Then we boarded the boat and headed towards 'White Rock' - our second dive site. Visability was the same and we stayed 12 meters deep for 40 minutes again. We did more drills and practiced equalizing (sorting out your ears under the presure). The site was as good as the first and we saw lots of fish including angel fish, butterfly fish, blue spotted rays, clown fish, trigger fish and an Indian Lion Fish (very poisonous!) We have to be very careful of trigger fish here, around Ko Tao they can be a bit aggressive, especially around mating season, which happens the be April/may! They are around 70cm long and have been known to bite and chase divers! We then went back to shore via the boat and speedboat then had to clean off all our equipment in fresh water. We got a lunch break then met back in the classroom for the afternoon session. We then learnt about nitrogen narcosis (getting a bit 'drunk' in deep depths) and decompression sickness (caused by comung up too fast). We also learnt about how to safely plan dives including depths and times. After this we had our final exam and we both scored 98% and were top of the class. We filled out our log books with details of the dives we had done this morning. With school finished for the day we checked the weather online and enjoyed not having any homework tonight. We couldn't drink because we had another 2 dives tomorrow so we watched a film before getting some good sleep - hard work this diving!

Day 4 of our course and we were up at 6.30 again. We met the class at the beach for 730 and the weather looked much better today - not that it matters too much when you are underwater! We were a buddy team together today and also we had a guy filming our group all day, both on the boat and underwater. We used the same 2 dive stes as yesterday, twins dive and white rock. We headed to 'twins' first and did more drills on the dive and worked on our buoyancy, we noticed much more fish this time and saw lots of really bright colours. We also saw a really big trigger fish which we all cautiously went around. The camera guy filmed us quite a bit and we all gave him the thumbs up as we went past him! When we came to the surface the weather had changed completly, it was a bad storm and the boat was hard to get onto as it blew all over the place. We also came up wth 1 extra diver who had accidently followed our group instead of his - he had a nice long swim back to his boat! We de-briefed on the boat and made the most of the free biscuits. For our last dive of the course we did a few less drills and spent more actually exploring the reef and looking at fish, it was by far the nicest dive of the course and was a really good end to it all. We saw lots of fish including nemo's and lots of angel fish and buutterfly fish. When we got to shore it was still pouring with rain - so they let us off cleaning the kit which was nice! We then headed back to the classroom and did a few forms for our open water licence and they gave us details on the advanced open water course. We got some food, spicy coconut and pinapple curry with rice, then headed back to the room for some decision making. We were planning on heading to Ko Phi Phi the next day, which is a really small island on the other side of thailands main land, this place has really really nice beaches, not something we could enjoy with all the tropical storms right now. Our other option was to stay in Ko Tao and do our advanced diving course, this would involve another 5 scuba dives and after we would be qualified to dive without an instructor or guide and be able to navigate and dive by ourselves. After checking the weather and evaluating costs we decided we would stay here and do the next course. It was only going to cost about £50 more as we would save a lot on travel to Phi Phi, and our accomodation is free here aslong as we are on a course. If anyone dives they will know £50 for 5 dives is a bargain, especially as we were getting an instructor and lessons! We then had a big meal at Ban's restaurant with all of our class who had just completed the open water course, everyone had a good time and those who weren't staying for the advanced course enjoyed a few beers. We told Ronen we would be staying for the advanced then got some sleep.

Saturday 26th we got up at 8.30 and met our class on the beach at 9.30am. We stayed on the beach to learn navgation skills with compasses and using reference points. Ronen used the sand to draw maps on and we walked all over the beach like idiots holding our arms out with our compasses. We then went to the classroom and learnt how to use 'the wheel' (another dive planner) and got given a serious amount of homework for tomorrow. We then got lunch and met back at the beach for our afternoon dives at 12.45pm. First we headed out to Chumphon Pinnical, which was a bit further than our previous dive sites, here we would be doing our first 'deep' dive. We did a 40 minute dive and our max depth was 30 meters, the visability was still about 15/20 meters and the water was a warm 30 degrees! At 30 meters we had to be tested for any nitrogen narcosis by playing some maths games using our hands to add together numbers. No one in our group had any issues, and we spent most of the dive exploring the reef area. The last 2 days whale sharks had been spotted here but we didn't have any luck finding them. We got back on the boat the had our tanks filled back up while we de-briefed. Next we headed back to 'Twin Dives', on the way we did our own dive plans and learnt the map of the coral area. we went down as a group and our instructor made us use compasses to travel 10 meters away from him and back, then the same in a square shape. After this we were off by ourselves for the frst time, it was the next big step and an amazing experience. We had no instructor, just us 2, and we swam around at 16 meters depth and explored the area spotting fish we had learnt and communicating well with hand signals. After a while Nick indicated he only had 60 bars left in his tank so we headed towards where we thought the boat was and did our 3 minutes safety stop at 5 meters to aviod any risk of decompression sickness. We came up right at the boat as planned and were really happy with ourselves. Navigating under water wasn't as hard as we thought it would be - although the swedish couple in our group came up at the wrong boat and had a nice surface swim! We were only down for 30 minutes, and planned for 40, so perhaps we need to go a bit slower - we used our air a bit too fast! We de-breifed and Ronen told us of the plans for our 3 dives tomorrow. We cleaned the equipment then went for food and watched the Man Utd game in an English sports bar, dissapointing result, but keeps the premiership worth watching! Our laptop charger wire had broken so we looked for a replacement in the 1 computer shop on the island, and they had a few second hand ones but none that fitted, so we went home via internet cafe. Then we sat on the balcony for another 2 hours doing our homework, we learnt about deep dives, navigation, fish indentification, multi level diving and night diving. We both fell quickly asleep after a long day of class and diving!

The last day of our course happened to be Adam's birthday (24!), and we had a slight lay in until 8am today, then walked to the computer shop only to find it was closed, so we treated ourselves to full english breakfasts. We met in the classroom at 10.30 an went through all our homework, practiced with the wheel chart and filled out forms for our advanced licence. We got an early lunch and managed to get a cable that worked for the laptop. We then met at 12.45 for our 2 afternoon dives. We headed to a new site called South West Pinnical. We planned a multi level dive (starting deep and slowing moving up levels) and learnt the map and planned a route around the site. It was the first dive where our instructor didn't even get in the sea, we did the whole dive as a buddy team from start to finish. Our max depth was 24 meters and we were down for 30 minutes, we saw loads of fish including a big school of baracudas (thousands of them), and swam through big groups of colourful fish, almost every colour you could think of! When we came up we were at the boat again and we had known where we were thoughout the whole dive - a million miles away from our session in the pool 4 days back! We de-briefed and then on the way to the next site Ronen talked about many types of fish and told us on the map where we might find them. We arrived at White Rock dive site and again Ronen stayed on the boat and let us do everything ourselves. We saw some good fish but missed the turtle some people in our class saw, we did see black sea urchins, parott fish, banner fish and angel fish though! At one point we got a bit lost, which was an interesting experience. We headed away from the coral north for 20 meters hoping to find the north pinnical, but found nothing but deep blue sea, so we used our compass and turned 180 degrees and made it back to the coral we left from. After 30 mins Nick was low on air again (always him!) so we moved up to 5 meters for our safety stop, at this level we tried to find our bearings and get below the buoy where our boat was. We found a buoy and slowly came to the surface. The boat on the buoy wasn't ours, and we couldn't see our boat anywhere at all, oh dear! About 10 seconds later we noticed we were infact at the correct buoy and another boat had arrived and parked in front of ours! We swam around to our boat and Ronen was there to congratulate us. We all swapped stories of what we saw on the way back to shore then had about 40 minutes to grab some food before the boat was heading out for the night dive. At 5.45pm we waded out to the speedboat and spotted a turtle really close to the beach, he swam right upto us then swam away. We got to the main boat the headed back to White Rock or the 2nd time today. Ronen gave us a breifing and explained how we would use the torches to see and communicate unerwater and we got in the water about 5 minutes before it got dark. We dived around 14 meters for 40 minutes, and we did the compass drills again in the dark with torches. After this we swam around the reef shinning our torches around and got to see so many more colours that you can't see in the day time. We saw bright red/green/purple/blue/yellow coral, some of these colours are absorbed in the day and you can't see them. We also saw lots of stingrays, these sleep and hide in the day, but we saw about 4 or 5 of them throughout the dive swimming along the bottom. We also saw some really mean looking big trigger fish sleeping in cracks in the rocks, and made sure we didn't wake them! After 30 minutes Ronen gave us the sign to all switch off our torches, so we did, and then we swam along the reef with the fish in almost complete darkness for about 5 minutes. The only light we had came from the moon and the glowing coral below us, it was really amazing - and quite scary too! We then went back to the boat and headed home to Ban's resort, we washed off the kit then got changed. We had a few beers and said a big thanks to Ronen for the last 6 days, he had been a great instructor and had a lot of passion for diving and teaching, and a great sense of humour. With a different instructor we aren't sure we would have stayed for the advanced course. The advanced course was so much more than the basic open water. The open water was learning to use the equipment and follow the fins in front, but now we are fully confident in diving alone and navigating an area, and every dive on the advanced was better than all the basic ones put together! We then got some waters and headed off to get some much needed sleep, 9 dives in 4 days is a tiring experience. Doing 3 dives today was amazing and another very memorable birthday!

We are planning to stay in Ko Tao for one more day, to relax and check the place out, as we have been diving or in class every moment we've been here. After this we leave Thailand and head to Malaysia for a week, stopping at Penang and Kuala Lumpa, then to Singapore where our next flight is from.

The last 6 days is probably a new favourite part of the trip for us both, and definetly different to anything else we have done. We fully recommend Ban's for anyone wanting to learn to dive, the teaching and facilities were top class and great value for money (no we aren't on commision!).
We also ended up buying the over priced DVD from when they filmed us - but it was worth it - most of the unerwater and boat photos on here are stolen from it!

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Thanks for reading...

Adam Gibson and Nick Burke

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Photos

Ban's Diving Resort and Spa
Nice sign....

Ko Tao island
Managed to fit the whole island in a photo from the diving boat

The beach at Ban's
This is where we got onto the speedboats each morning!

Confined lesson
Our very first lesson in the swimming pool!

Bad weather!
This is while we were waiting to head out for our first ever dive!

Us on the speedboat!
On our way to the main boat!

Twins Dive area
These 2 big islands were connected by a tiny thin strip of sand!

Briefing on the boat
Ronen (long hair)! explaining something to us!

Feeling sea sick!
Was suprising how many divers couldn\'t handle the rough seas!

Looking like experts!
Us just before getting in!

Thumbs up from Adam
Taken from the dvd filming!

Adam and Nick on the move
Nick equalizing his ears on the left!

Fish!
Couldn't belive how many of them there was!

Blue Spotted Ray
We were lucky to see this on the night dive!

Nice fish!
Can't remember the name right now but it looks pretty! Feel free to name it...

Trigger Fish!
Known to bite and chase divers around this time of year here!

Ronen!
Top class teacher!

Sunset from Ban' resort
This was the view from the bar/beach where we are staying!

Sunset from the Bar!
Pool table...beers...beach...sunset... what a hard life!

Comments

[Diane]

Great Birthday
Hi Adam, the pics are fab and the experience even better. hope you got your birthday card, a bit of orginal thinking from your dad. looking forward to the next chaper. x