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Published: February 18th 2010
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Cate's new fashion statementWe arrived off the ferry from Koh Samui to a chaotic scene awaiting us at the end of the pier, as we ran a gauntlet of taxi drivers, dive school touts and hotel touts all jostled for position, each trying to catch your attention and shout the loudest. We’d make ourselves a reservation with a dive school though so my name was waiting on a white-board with a much calmer character at the back of the crowd, and within five minutes we were on the back of a pickup truck headed for Buddha View dive school on the southern tip of the island. We got a room sorted at Tropicana Resort and then headed back to the dive school for our orientation session, (filling in medical forms and watching a video about diving).
There were four of us in the
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Scuba gear - BCDs group in total, a guy called Jimmy from Australia and John from Manchester joining us, and the orientation session as run by a Dutch guy called Baz. Baz seemed like a really nice, friendly kind of bloke but he suffered from an affliction that made him seem (at least to me) like a bit of a menacing character ... he was the spitting image of Ray Liotta (from Goodfellas and many other films where he’s the villain). So despite Baz seeming lovely I couldn’t help but feel that he might suddenly break out into uncontrolled fits of violence at any given time. So I was secretly hoping that it wouldn’t be Baz who’d be teaching us the next day.
My prayers were answered, and instead we got a strapping (the polite way of saying overweight) Australian chap called James instead, whose constant story telling about daft things his students had done in the past (particularly a group of seven Irish lads) made the morning teaching session fly by relatively quickly. After a pit-stop for lunch (green curry, not the best pre-diving food) we all met by the swimming pool at 1:30pm for a whole afternoon of diving in the
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More scuba gear, wetsuits pool. Without going into all the boring details of the names of pieces of equipment, we got all the gear together, assembled it, did our buddy-checks and were ready to take a big flipper-footed step into the deep end of the pool - and Cate was picked by James to go first, lucky lady. Taking the first breaths underwater is a really strange experience, as you’re so used to your body telling you that you aren’t able to breathe underwater, but after a few panicked breaths I managed to control it enough to breathe underwater. In fact, I became so used to being underwater and breathing in that when I was playing underwater in the pool on the 3rd morning I accidentally took a big breath underwater despite not having a respirator or snorkel on.
Yeah and he did this despite the fact that I had just been underwater and went to take a breath when I realised that I had no air supply so surfaced quickly instead, and then told him about what I did. And five minutes later Matt came up spluttering having gone through with what I had told him I had managed to just avoid. Silly boy Yup, I just gulped down a whole load of pool water and re-emerged from the water spluttering and breathless, doofus).
We spent the majority of the afternoon kneeling on the bottom of the pool with all the equipment on learning some of the skills you need to be able to do to pass the course and scuba dive safety; so we were taking our mouthpieces out and using the secondary air sources, using our buddy’s alternative air supply, deflating our floating devices, taking off weight belts, learning a bit about buoyancy and (crucially) learning how to clear your mask when it partially or completely fills with water. This last skill was one that Cate had a few short minor problems with, and I had some pretty major problems with ... so James left us in the shallow end practising while Jimmy and John were fast-tracked onto the 3 day course and we stayed on the 4 day course - bottom of the class, boo.
Cate quickly got the hang of the mask clearing skill and went for a little swim down to the deep end to see what the boys were doing. I, on the other
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Hunks in trunks. Something like that anyway hand, finished the pool session still unable to clear my mask so James arranged for an extra hour in the pool with an instructor the following morning before our next classroom session.
Basically, to clear your mask of water you need to take a big breath in through your regulator (mouthpiece) and then exhale sharply through your nose whilst tilting your head upwards and pulling the bottom of your mask slightly away from your face; the air your blow out of your nose pushes the water out and you’re left with a nice dry mask. At least that’s the theory, but for some reason I was completely unable to breathe out through my nose when there was any water in the mask. The few times that I was able to clear a partially filled mask was seemingly through snorting all of the water UP my nose and effectively drinking it, nice.
You should have seen the expressions he was pulling as he tried to breathe out through his nose. They were incredibly funny but also concerned me a little as I thought forward about how we would be doing this 18metres under the sea surface. Anyway, scuba
work over for the day, we spent the evening doing what we did most evenings on Koh Tao, eating bbq food and drinking Chang with Jimmy and John -the downside being the fact that we couldn’t stay out drinking long as we all had lots of chapters of the PADI handbook to read every night.
So on the start of the second day I rose an hour earlier than Cate and made my way down to the pool for an hour session with a South African instructor called Carrie. After 45 minutes with her in the pool I STILL couldn’t do a complete mask clearance and my partial mask clearances were still only happening because I was snorting and swallowing all the water ... leading to much burping and belching once I emerged on the surface.
Again, a concerning sight. Apart from the obvious embarrassment of not being able to perform a skill that to the people who were teaching me was as routine as walking or breathing, I was also having to make embarrassing revelations to the stream of people tasked with trying to get the silly ginger boy to clear his mask; as they all said
“it’s easy, if you can blow your nose then you can do it”, at which point, being the open and honest kind of guy that I am I had to tell them that I didn’t actually learn to blow my nose until my early twenties. This admission was usually followed by a look of bewilderment on the instructors face and an awkward silence.
I’m not really entirely sure why Matt seemed to feel the need to tell everyone that - I remember him when he was learning to blow his nose...I couldn’t believe that I had met a grown man who couldn’t do such a task, often learnt by the age of five. Bless him. I guess we all have challenges in life! Cheeky.
Cate came down the pool to take me off Carrie’s (frustrated) hands, and we headed off for our second and final teaching session with Chris (another nice guy, but not as many funny stories about silly divers ... I wonder whether my ineptitude will become someone’s story?) After that session the teaching was finished for the course (hurrah) and we had a quick lunch break before meeting back at 12:30pm to head out on to
the open water for our first dive-boat experience with another different instructor called Dave).
When we got on the boat it was like the first day at school feeling, where everyone else knew where to go and what to do, and all we seemed to do was get in everyone’s way. But we managed to get to the first destination without causing any calamities. The boat was out at sea for two dives, but we were only going to be out diving for the second one as during the first dive we had to do a swim-test and a floating-test ... two laps of the boat and 10 minutes floating, which was much more tiring than it sounds, especially swimming against the current and big waves!
After everyone got back on the boat we moved to the second dive site (Mango Bay) and got all of our gear together ready to get in the water. Eek. Whilst jumping off the edge of the boat for the first time, we were struck by how surprisingly high above the water we had to jump from ... take a big breath and step off. Once we were in the water we
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Old man hands after 4 hours in the water. had to inflate our BCDs so that we could float, get our masks sorted, and then we swam off to the shallow waters to practise the skills from the previous day (regulator removal, buoyancy skills ... and the dreaded mask clearance).
While taking my mask off in the bay, I knocked an earring out which was a bit annoying as I knew I would never see it again but after Matt lost his ring to the ocean in Koh Lanta, it wasn’t a huge surprise. I tried to look underwater for a while whilst Matt was attempting to breathe in through his regulator and out through his nose with his head dipped into the sea but I wasn’t successful and neither really was Matt. We eventually deflated our BCDs and went to about 5metres below sea level to the bottom of the ocean. We had to demonstrate some of the skills we had learnt on the previous afternoon and after I had completed them, I was left kneeling on the ocean bottom waiting while Matt attempted over and over to clear his mask. By this point I was getting really worried about him as he looked very uncomfortable and P1060164
What Cate's hands will look like in 40 years time. I was scared he might choke underwater from swallowing too much. I waited as patiently as I could while Dave tried to help Matt with his mask clearance skills but probably about 15 minutes later, I was shaking a little with the cold, despite wearing a wet suit. I signalled to Dave that there was something wrong - that I was getting really cold by using the new diving signals that we had learnt. He let us go on a fun dive but Matt needed to surface as he thought he was going to get sick from all the salt water he had swallowed. Once he had taken a few breaths of fresh air, he seemed a bit better so we went for a swim underwater to look at the fish. We had to show Dave that we could control where we were in the water using our breathing and after this we ascended to the surface. By this time I was bursting for the loo - it’s strange but the weight belts weighing down on our bladders and the water being all around us caused us to need to toilet loads in the first couple of days - quite
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Crazy pancake man an inconvenience when you are underwater, in a wet suit with loads of gear on. Never mind. Cate should’ve just wee-ed in the wetsuit, it’s warming. Apparently.
Despite the problems with not being able to clear my mask, the little fun dive we went on was good fun (my mask wasn’t leaking so I didn’t need to worry about needing to clear it) and it’s really cool to be swimming under water with loads of fishes (even if where we were wasn’t particularly clear visibility). After our little swim around we went up to the surface and practised a few more skills (cramp removal, tired diver tow, and more) before swimming back to the boat. When you climb up onto the boat you really feel how heavy the equipment you’ve been swimming around with is, it’s a struggle to get up the ladder and onto the boat!
With the confined water dive over all that was left was 4 dives over the next two days; the afternoon of the third day and morning of the fourth, which meant that we had a morning off on the third day, which Dave suggested I spent in the pool to
get the hang of the mask clearance technique. So the next morning I spent an hour and a half of the morning in the pool (with Cate doing her best to help me get the hang of it). I was mildly successful, by the end of the 90 minutes I was able to clear a partially flooded mask on about half of my attempts, but was still snorting a lot of water up my nose! I don’t know whether it’s a mental or physical block, but for some reason I’ve real issues breathing out of my nose when there’s water there - I spent a good 30 minutes with a snorkel on gradually lowering my head so that I was breathing on the surface of the water, but then as soon as I dipped my nose under nothing happens. VERY frustrating.
Five minutes before we were due to be heading out for the first two open water dives (during which we’d have to do a partial mask clearance and a full mask removal and clearance 12 metres under the water) we went and had a chat with Dave ... the mask skills are unfortunately a mandatory part of the
Open Water qualification, and still not being able to do it I didn’t want to get myself into some sort of sticky situation 12 metres underwater. So unfortunately I had to bow out and miss the dives, and quit the Open Water (for now). Thankfully Cate still wanted to go ahead with the diving that afternoon, so we both went off on the boat; one diver and one snorkeler.
Matt tried so hard to get blow through his nose underwater - he practiced in the pool three times, in the sea once and in the shower/over the sink too. He really wanted to achieve this and hopefully will at some point in the future so that he can complete his open water course, but he just didn’t have enough time to master it on Koh Tao before leaving for Bangkok. I hadn’t really enjoyed the diving on the previous day and I was quite stressed out worrying about how he would cope underwater. I think it was the right decision for him to make to defer at that point, but I felt terrible because it was his dream to go scuba diving and I felt that I was taking over from him. I didn’t have anything physical stopping me from diving so I wanted to go ahead and complete the qualification and Matt supported me in it, thank goodness. He’s a good’un.
Without Matt in the group, I had Dave’s sole attention. When we got on the boat, I set up my gear (checked the O valve on my gas cylinder; attached the BCD to the cylinder; attached the first stage to the cylinder; attached the low pressure inflator hose to the BCD; put the alternate air supply into it’s pocket on the BCD; put my foot on the pressure gauge and turned the air on whilst pushing the purge valve on my secondary stage regulator...make any sense to you? I collected my weight belt, attached my mask to my BCD and put my fins and wetsuit out ready to get into.) I then went upstairs to join Matt and waited to be briefed by Dave about what I was going to be doing. He told me we were going to descend to 12 metres that day, (you always descend to your deepest depth at the start of your dive and slowly ascend over time.)
The first
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Ready to dive! dive only required me to equalise my ears (wiggle my jaw, swallow/do a yawning type action and pinch my nose and blow through it) to ensure that the air space in my ears was at the same pressure as the water pressure around me. I didn’t have any problems with this and soon I had gone underwater to 12 metres and was looking at the weird and wonderful fish and coral all around at the bottom of the sea.
The first and main rule of scuba diving is that you should never ever hold your breath. It is a good habit to get into as you can get really serious lung over expansion injuries if you hold your breath as you ascend to the surface because the air in your lungs expands rapidly due to decreasing water pressure and your lungs can explode like a balloon popping. It was a strange kind of feeling knowing I was so far away from ‘real fresh air’ and on my first dive on the first day, as I was descending down the rope, I think I held my breath as I went underwater...I find that it’s an odd feeling as my face
dips under the water as I sink down and I sometimes find it difficult to trust my regulator to supply me with air which leads me to doing a giraffe impression and elongating my neck for as long as possible to keep my head out of the water. Well that’s how it feels anyway . Holding my breath initially caused me to swallow some water when I tried to breathe in and I had a short coughing fit. It wasn’t a problem for lung over expansion because I wasn’t ascending and wasn’t very far below the surface, probably only about five metres down the rope. I think it is natural to panic a little, but I eventually cleared it and it made me feel more confident knowing that I could do this without surfacing. I didn’t have any other issues after that and I made myself stay really calm all of the time.
I had been keeping quite close to Dave, which prompted him to write on his slate that I shouldn’t get too close as he was kicking me. It was true but I didn’t have much control at that point of where I was in the water
and didn’t really know if I could veer off path looking around me. So given validation by him, on the second dive of that day, I stayed further away from him and took time to look at things that I thought were interesting rather than following his fins religiously. Unfortunately, I spent a bit too long looking at some fish that had appeared so when I looked around, I couldn’t see him. Eventually, after what was probably only about 10 seconds but seemed much longer, I managed to spot his bright yellow fins so kept up with him a bit more diligently after that!
The second dive wasn’t just for fun - I had to show Dave that I could complete loads of skills like checking my air supply; signing to him in the water; mask removal , filling with water and clearing; hovering; oral inflation of BCD; BCD removal and replacement; weight belt removal and replacement; regulator removal, locating and replacing; indicating to him that I was out of air and that I needed to share with him, using his alternate air source and safely ascend; pivoting; towing another person; pushing another person; how to deal with foot
cramps; buoyancy checks; snorkel regulator exchange; compass skills and many others. I was lucky to be the only person in the group, although I would have loved Matt to experience what I did underwater but because there was only me to do my skills, Dave asked me to show I could do them, I did them, then we had loads of time to just dive around, searching for turtles amongst other things (that we didn’t find despite the fact that Koh Tao is also known as Turtle Island!)
The coral under the sea is like little colourful castles that fish swim around and there are these really cool brightly coloured Christmas tree plant life (that look like mini Christmas trees no bigger than a finger in height) that grow on the coral and I just loved playing with them. Each time I put my hand near them, they retreated really quickly, then about 10 seconds later they would pop out again. It was cool. It is surprising how sharp the coral is and on my second dive I ended up scraping my knee on a piece which cut it immediately. I looked down and saw a black graze which
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Cate, Dave and the ocean. was bloody when I surfaced - it was a great way of testing the theory that a lack of light at the bottom of the ocean causes reds and oranges to change to blacks, browns and grey colouring. It does. There are also really strange looking things growing in the ocean - I think this particular one might have been an ananome of some sort maybe although I’ll probably have to look it up to be sure, but it looked like someone’s brain had been cut out and it had been dumped, enlarged on the ocean bottom. It was a scary resemblance that’s for sure!
During our classroom sessions, we had been told to be alert in the water as there were trigger fish that were quite territorial and would attack if they felt you were too close to the eggs that they lay in pits on the ocean bottom. They are quite harmless really but you need to make sure that you turn to swim away on your back with your face in their direction so that if they come after you, you can see them and they only hook onto your fins. You can imagine my delight
when Dave briefed me at about 7:45am on the second dive day telling me that we were going to a place called Green Rock, that he hadn’t been there for about 5 months, that the current was notoriously bad, the visibility wouldn’t be good and that we were doing a free descent onto a load of trigger pits. As if I wasn’t nervous enough! It was actually fine - the current wasn’t too bad and the pits weren’t as scary as they sounded, we managed not to get lost and I was extra careful when swimming behind him to not lose him.
I was told that I would be making a ‘James Bond’ entrance into the sea on my final dive rather than the traditional step in. Basically, a ‘James Bond’ entrance entails standing with all of your equipment on, with your fins just over the edge of the swaying boat, bending your knees and doing a forward somersault into the water, landing on your back. I didn’t want to be a wimp and was totally up for the challenge although I do remember standing on the edge of the boat ledge, wondering how on earth to do it!
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Preparing to sink. After a ‘right, this is it, I’m going to do it’ moment, promptly followed by a ‘Oh God I don’t know how to do it’ moment, I bent my knees, held onto my mask and regulator with my right hand, weight belt and pressure gauge in my left and off I went. It was great! And Matt caught it all on camera. Result!
Dave asked if I’d like to go into the rock through what they call ‘swim throughs’ to explore everything in there. Of course I wanted to, although they were really tight spaces, coral/rock above, below and to both sides of me. It was a time to face fears of confined spaces and I felt absolutely fine doing it. This is where I saw lots of smaller fish living in the coral. I had to exercise buoyancy control over the coral, inhaling deeply to move myself up and exhaling deeply to make myself sink a little. It was good fun but I did have a few close scrapes when I found myself flapping my arms like a bird trying to fly. I bet I looked really silly in the water, a bit like a toddler trying to
take its first steps.
Scuba diving was an amazing experience- I went to four different dive sites over the two days (Japanese Gardens, Mango Bay, Green rock and White rock) and I descended to 12 metres twice and to 18 metres twice, sinking down to about 20metres at points - naughty. The visibility was great some of the time but often the water was quite murky as it was soon after the full moon and apparently the coral reproduce around this time which means the water is filled with particles that obscure visibility.
I was lucky enough to see loads of creatures under the sea, but still strive to see more now - I think I may have the scuba diving bug. I saw groupers, tuna, sea slugs (which are really bright in colour and are poisonous), banner fish (my favourite), and really beautiful angel fish amongst loads of other fish that I don’t know the names of. There was one really small baby angelfish that I got to see and there were loads of bright blue neons at the ocean floor. I saw a spotted blue string ray beneath a rock and swam with a shoal of
yellowtail barracuda sharks. I have one lasting memory of my dives and that is turning spreading my arms and legs out wide, turning onto my back and looking back at what I had just swum through. Sunlight was startlingly shining down through the water, illuminating hundreds of brightly coloured fish swimming around the immensely beautiful varying coral. How lucky was I?
Now for a word on wet suits. They are so so so difficult to get on when they are a bit damp and to get off when you are bursting for the toilet! And I think mine might have been a touch too small for me so I struggled every time I had to put it on or take it off! The shapes I was pulling were probably very amusing to watch, it’s a bit like getting into a pair of jeans a size too small except you also have to get into the top part which isn’t quite long enough for your body! On the plus side, I bet I looked really sexy in it. Maybe to the fish, but certainly to no-one else.
Time flew under water. I was diving for between 43 and 49
minutes each time and it only felt like I was underwater for about 15minutes. I could spend a lifetime looking at the things that most people don’t ever get to see. And I hope that one day Matt can come out diving with me so that we can experience it together. I think that Koh Phi Phi would be a fantastic place to dive as we got to see so much when we were just snorkelling there so I would like to go back there one day and I’d also really love to see some much bigger fish too.
Diving was pretty tiring but as soon as we returned to Buddha View Resort after I had finished all my dives, I had to sit a test. It was multiple choice and was pretty easy as I’d read most of the chapters in the book we’d had to buy. I passed no problem which was good then I had to fill in my log book for the first time. Log books are for personal use (what you saw, location, time, date of dive etc) and they also record your pressure groups. We had been taught to use a Recreational Dive
Planner (RDP) to work out how much nitrogen would be in our body after diving (as breathing in 79% nitrogen from the cylinder in each breath at depth can lead to excess levels in your body and the risk of getting a very dangerous illness called decompression sickness.) It is worked out by looking at the depth you are diving to and how long you stay down there for, then for multiple dives, to work out what your nitrogen amount (pressure group) is after a break between dives then after resurfacing. It is really important that you don’t get to a certain pressure group as it means you are likely to get decompression sickness, (nitrogen bubbling below your skin causing terrible effects). Part of filling in my log book with Dave, required me to work out the pressure groups that I had been at for the four dives that I had done. I worked out the pressure groups for the first day but when I came to the second day, my calculations showed that I was well off the scale and was at risk from having decompression sickness. I thought I might have worked it out wrong, so I double
checked then asked Dave to check. His face was an absolute picture when he realised the mistake, that we were 13 minutes of nitrogen over the very maximum limit. We weren’t in any danger as Dave had his dive computer watch with him that was working out nitrogen levels as we went, by using the actual depths we were at. It was just funny to see his reaction that’s all.
I spent most of the time while Cate was doing her final dives hanging around on the boat writing the beginning of this blog, slightly hampered by being soaking wet due to Cate insisting in the morning that we could take the ponchos out of the bag (having carried them with us nearly every day in Asia), only to be faced with a lashing rain storm for most of the morning.
The cats that lived on board the boat also tried their damndest to make blogging a difficult task; usually through distracting my attention with their cute antics (there was a mummy cat, a daddy cat, and three little baby cats; all very cute, and all fed on rice rather than cat food) but also through setting
up home squat in the middle of the keyboard (obviously attracted by the heat of the computer the mother cat strolled right on up to me and sat down right on the keyboard, refusing to budge; little beggar.)
Anyway, enough about my feline interactions, back to the fully qualified diver ... after a few celebratory beers that night and more BBQ food we retired for the night ready to bid a sad farewell to Koh Tao the next day and head off to Bangkok again ready for our flight to Oz. Imagine my dismay at being woken by Cate at 2am telling me that she couldn’t sleep because her ear hurt. In a typically useless style I suggested something really helpful like “go back to sleep, it’ll be fine” before rolling over and heeding my own advice, only to be woken again at 3am by a now rather agitated and worried Cate (as ear ache following diving is not a good thing to happen). By the second “waking” I was obviously suitably roused from my slumber to play the dutiful husband role, and for some reason I thought the best way to fulfil that role was to wander around
the empty streets and see if I could find any diving instructors to ask about doctors. Surprisingly there weren’t any; but I did find out that the doctors surgery opened at 8am, which seemed to combine with paracetamol to send Sleeping Beauty back to slumbersville.
Yeah it was quite painful and I was concerned about flying a few days later because I knew that it could be a terrible 9 hour journey to Oz if I had constant ear ache and block from the increased air pressure. So the next morning we went to the doctors for 8am and he told me that he couldn’t see inside my ear because the walls were so swollen. A double dose of anti-inflamatories to prepare me for flying and anti biotics, for over 1000baht is what he gave me. It seemed to work and although I couldn’t hear properly for a while, I didn’t get much pain after that, thank goodness! So there ended our successful/unsuccessful time in Koh Tao, and a RIDICULOUSLY long blog, apologies for that. If you’ve managed to somehow read all of this without getting bored, distracted or aging 20 years then well done (and thank
you). If you didn’t read all the way to the end then you won’t be reading this, so you won’t know that I’m calling you naughty little scamp for not reading about all of our underwater adventures (or lack of them in my case). Shame on you.
Matt and Cate x
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