Koh Toa Diving Trip

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Well it was finally time to get out and do some diving before I actually have to be responsible and get a job! So I decided to head to Koh Toa, an island in the Gulf of Thailand to get my advanced diving certification. For those of you who are not familiar with Scuba Diving, you need your open water certification to dive and the advanced allows you to do more difficult and sometimes deeper dives. Some companies will not allow you to do certain dives if you do not have the higher certification. So this was my chance to get certified and get prepared for whichever dives I want to in the future.

Getting there
Getting to the island was a really long trek. I had to take a bus from Bangkok for 8 Hrs to a place called Chumphon where I would take a High Speed Catamaran to the island. All in all travel time would be 10-12 Hrs - Yikes!!
Luckily I was traveling by myself so there was a couple of empty seats on the bus so I could stretch out a little bit. Forgot to mention the bus departed Bangkok at 9pm and would be traveling through the night. I managed to get a few winks of sleep but not much as the bus driver had a lead foot and was driving extremely fast on the windy road. I didn't get a good look at the highway but the way the bus was swaying I figured it wasn't directly straight. I did meet a couple of Korean girls on the bus that spoke a little bit of English so it was nice to talk to somebody for a few minutes. The bus made a temporary rest stop so the driver could have a coffee and a bite to eat. They said we would be stopping for 20 minutes. Well I guess 20 minutes Thai time means 1:40! So at 2:30am after the driver was nice and full on food and coffee we were on our way again. We arrived at the dock at 5am and had to wait 2 hrs for the catamaran. Ahh finally I get to see the beach and the water - This is the Thailand I'd seen pictures of!. We boarded the boat and headed over to the island. There was a TAXI to pick me up at the port and take me to the resort. So I walked over to the "TAXI" and it was basically a pick-up truck with a rack on the roof and bench seats in the box of the truck. I guess this is island living. So Holding on tight to what ever railing there was available, I made it safe and sound to the resort.

I was extremely fatigued and was hoping to get a bit of a nap but when I checked in, the lady mentioned my course started in 15 minutes! Oh boy it was going to be a long day! I managed to grab something to eat qucikly, drop off my stuff get changed and made it in time for the beginning of my lesson. I was lucky in that there was only 1 other fellow in my group - he was from UK, him and his girlfriend are on a year long trip around the world and Thailand is there first stop. So it was the 2 of us and the instructor, so basically 1 on 1 lessons which was going to be great. After a few theory lessons, it was time to head on the boat and do some dives!!! How exciting!! Our first dive was a multi level dive which means we dive at a couple of different depths. It was great to get back into the water and enjoy the marine life that is so beautiful!
Our next dive was a navigational dive where we were to get used to using a compass underwater. Now this really isn't my strong point but I think I managed to get it figured out. We started out with the instructor doing a couple of exercises under the water, navigating. Once we were comfortable with that she left us on our own to explore and make it back to the boat - uh oh was she for real!? Yes she was, she went back to the boat and Matthew (UK guy) and I headed on our way. We made note of where the boat was, went exploring, saw many cool and exciting things that we weren't really sure of what they were but were amazing to see. It was time to head back to the boat - Using the compass and the direction we left the boat we sarted swimming, and swimming, and swimming.... Where was the boat? We could have swarn we had the right direction. We didn't find it so we made our way up to the surface to see how far off we were, we saw the boat and we were a little ways off but how could that be???? Anyway we ended up swimming on the top of the water to reach the boat and we asked our instructor if the boat had moved and surely enough it had!! So we weren't far off after all. Turned out most divers came up where we did and had to swim to the boat as well so it was the boat that moved - how were we supposed to know! Oh well we passed the test!

The boat headed back to shore to drop off those divers that were done for the day. We had 30min to grab a bite to eat and get back on the boat. Now remember this is after an entire evening of travelling on a bus, taking a catamaran and now having completed 2 dives - I'm tired! But the 3rd dive was a night dive. Something I've always wanted to do but was a little nervous about. The time was about 7pm, and it is really dark outside and I look in the water and its REALLY dark down there! Am I really up for this??? Our dive instructor gives us a briefing on the dive and what we are going to concentrate on and basically it is communicating under water with a strobe (large flashlight). We each got a light and it was time to head into the water. The lights were surprisingly bright underwater and it was a very different experience. When the lights were infront of me everything was fine, I could see so well. The marine life looks so different in the dark, you see different fish, colors of coral, its a whole new experience. When I looked behind me it was an eery feeling as it was pitch black and I couldn't see a thing! Couldn't help but wonder if anything was following me.... Don't worry nothing was and I was fine!!! All and all a good experience but may take a few more times to really get comfortable.

So that was a very long day 1 of diving!!
I managed to have some dinner, get back to my room, talk to Spence for a while and I was tuckered!!! Finally time to sleep!

When I awoke in the morning - I had messages on my phone that the coup had occured!!! Now you all got that last email so I'm not going to go through that again. There was nothing I could do at that point and I still had 2 more dives to do so luckily that took my mind off things. Today we were going to do a Deep dive and a photography dive. Finally a chance to use my underwater housing for my camera and take some pictures for all of you who have never seen what is "under the sea"!!! Our first dive, the deep dive we would go down to 30 Meters and do some skill tests then we would go and find the sharks! Yup that's right we were going to find sharks! Don't worry they are just reef sharks and are harmless, I've seen them in Hawaii before but they are always exciting and yes a bit scary to see! So we completed our skills and were on our way to see the sharks. The visibility was a bit low but I looked out into the water and low and behold a shark! He was massive, I would say 6-8 feet long! And there was another one and another one - we were swimming with the sharks. As I mentioned before, they are harmless but one started swimming directly for me.... I was a bit frightened and thought what is he doing...??? But all was well and he swam away. My heart was pounding a bit but I was fine. I did manage to get a couple of pictures of the sharks but they were pretty far away and its difficult to take pictures under water while your concentrating on your buoyancy, breathing and trying to take pictures of moving objects! This was definitely more difficult than I expected. Our deep dive was successful.

We headed to the boat, changed our tanks and now it was time to focus on taking some underwater photos. We had a plan to share the camera b/w us, I would take it for 10min, take a bunch of pics then Matthew would take the camera and take some pics. I got some really great pictures and felt more comfortable with the camera. When it was time to change over, Matthew got the camera for a couple of minutes then had some problems with his regulator (the device that supplies your air) and we had to end the dive! We were really disappointed but not much we could do. I got some really excellent pictures and that's all I can really ask for. So our diving was now complete. 5 dives in 2 days was a bit tiering but so much fun! Now back to reality and the coup!

But as you all know I managed to fly back to Bangkok, arrive safe and sound.

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Photos

The Shark!!
Here is a picture of one of the sharks, unfortunately he was swimming too fast to get all of him

Underwater Photos 2
We call him Stripe

Underwater Photo
What a beautiful view!!