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Published: February 26th 2007
So after another flight, and an unscheduled stop overnight on Kho Phangan due to rough seas i finally arrived at little Kho Tao. This is a beautiful island with white sandy beaches and clear warm blue waters. There is a nice little lively village on it too for the evening but the main reason i was here was to do my diving course. Kho Tao is the best place in Thailand and probably asia to do a diving course because it is by far the cheapest place, the water is clear and the coral and fish absolutley stunning. So i decided to do my Open water course with Easy divers (it was just a case of flipping a coin between about 20 different diving schools all offering the very same package and prices). I was also very lucky because the day i decided to begin i was to only person on the day beginning so i had 1 to 1 tuition. I thought this was a disadvantage coz i would not meet other people but it turned out to be much better because we got through the course much quicker(2 days instead of 2.5days) and there was no waiting around in
the water for long periods for your turn while others went through their training drill and i met lots of people on the boat everyday doing other courses anyway. My trainer was Joe from scotland/germany and he was dead sound. He had lots of patience with me and everything he told me to do was clear and easy to understand.
Taking that first breath under water is a very strange experience indeed. At first you hold your breath for a second then as you breath you get this gush of air and you cant help but smile to yourself and think "aww f**kin class!!!!"
Then joe put me through alot of underwater drills like taking you mask off and putting it on again and taking your tank off. Since i was the only one in the class we raced through these and soon we swam out from the shallow beach where we did the drills and out to the coral and to about 8 to 10 meters under water. It was just exhilerating to swim so close to such amazing coloured fish. They truely were every colour you could image. We saw large trigger fish, nemo fish, baracuda, angel fish,
morey eels and dozens of other species. My second dive that day i had trouble equalising(clearing the pressure from my ears) but joe was dead cool and waited for me for ages until i finally got them cleared. This was my biggest worry before i dived and i thought it would ruin my dives but after that each dive got easier to equalise which i was delighted about.
The next day was spent doing more drills and dives. It was so great that i shelled out more dosh to do the advanced diving course where we did a navigation course and night dive along with the other coral dives. The highlight was definatley the morning dive on the last day where we dived to 30 meters below the surface along a pinnacle which had 1000s of fish swiming of its cliff face. Half way through the dive we finally saw what we went down to see.....a very large reef shark. It was over 2.5 meters long i reckon and very fat indeed. It swam towards me and away 3 times before it disappeared into the distance.......it was such a buzz to be so close to a wild(and large at that)
shark you have to do it yourself to know how it feels.
I met lots of cool people over the next few days and did plenty more dives...11 in total. If you ever want to relax and recharge with beautiful quiet beaches where you can do amazing diving and also good night life Kho Tao is the place to be.
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anne_whelan@eircom.ie
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Wonderful place chris. The schitzu's are the image of Giz.