Swimming with the fishies

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Another destination, another spider story! We were waiting at the ferry terminal when this guy shouted 'Look man, you've got a massive spider under your arm.' Sure enough this guy lifted up his arm and there was the biggest friggin spider I have ever seen. Flips sake, I could hardly bring myself to look at it, goodness knows what I'll be like in Oz!

However, we made it to Ko Tao and straight away booked our Open Water Padi course with Easy Divers, as recommended by Martin. Turned out to be a good choice (thanks Martin!) as we had great teachers Signe & LukeMee, and a great bunch of people in our group. I must say that getting in the water with all the gear on was a bit of a strange sensation at first and felt completely un-natural, but as the days and dives progressed I felt more and more confident in myself and my gear, and ended up loving it!! So much so that we decided to stay a couple of extra days to complete our Advanced Divers certificate! We stayed in a bungalow where some odd things happened. On the 1st day we noticed the little bar of free soap went missing. Thinking nothing of it we got out our own soap. Strangely this went missing too. That night we were pondering over this mystery in our room when we heard a rustle coming from the bathroom. Michael opened the door and caught the soap stealer... a flippin rat!! We told this to the guys in our diving group and some of them had noticed their soap missing or with teeth marks in them also. I tell you, the rats in Ko Tao must be pretty clean! One girl said she a couple of foot long lizards in her room. Hopefully I'll not be getting any bad dreams about foot long lizards noo. Anyhoo, had an absolutely magic time learning to dive here. Saw some pretty cool things like baracudas, puffer fish, box fish, stingrays and so many more amazing, colourful species. No sharks or turtles though, maybe next time hopefully!

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