AlexBlog

Koh Tao

Category : Thailand

This is why I have not updated regulary been doing exams as you will see.

Well, we arrived. Probably the nicest buss I have been on so far. Double decker, TV playing Lost in space, air conn, comfy chairs, blanket... didn't get one wink of sleep. Boy does Gavin fidget!

We get to the ferry port about 5am, get this big catamaran to the island. Wow! Sandy beaches, beach huts, boats, blue skies WOW! Guess what more water pistols when the taxi picks us up to go to our resort, we are drenched again.

Staying in a nice bungalow, we get there about 11. We get brieffed in for our first dive, which is a refresher course, which we will be startign at 1. Talk about thrown in the deep end.

We have enough time to put the bags in our room and cossies on before we are back to our first briefing, then in the water after a 45 min boat trip. $ of us (two canadians as well) do our refreher, and boy what a refresher takes masks off swap breathing aparatus everything i haven't done since I was 14. Then we go diving... great reef, too many other divers though!

Then we go back, and basically sleep, shower, and get ready for thai new year celebrations. We are suppossed to have a briefing with another girl for our advanced course with a swedish guy called fred. While on the boat fred says on the radio "the is no @@#$% way I am doing a breifing when you get back, as everybody is drunk!", We will do tomorrow.

Well the party was ace... music everywhere, fire dancers on the beach. Bottles with petrol set alight to mark a dance area. It died about 12, leaving just 4 white piss heads in the bar. Gavin and I died about 10, from the bus journey beer and dive.

Next day is day 1 of our advanced course and we meet fred. He is the jeff daniels character from dumber and dumber. I mean he really is...! We get briefed, find out it is only the dutch girl patricia (who is sikingly skinny and brown and do I mean brown) who was drunk, and is suffering from the worst hang over ever which we are laughing about. She had been drinking since 12 and was passed out by 8.

Anyway day one of our course we have a briefing and are doing the navigational dive. Cool we get to wear compass and computer and get to feel like james bond.

Each one of us had to do a reciprocal bearing (go north for 10 kick cycles then back). Next one of us counts a kick cycle of 10 the other watches the compass and after 10 kick cycles your turn 90 degrees until you have done a square. I lost it a bit on that, as my boyancy kept making me go up, so I lost count but aksed to do again (well told fred) and did it ok the second time.

The I was in charge of air, patricia time safety stop and gavin in navigation, left on our own to go round a site called twin peaks. We did ok except getting a little lost, only because we didnt reaslise the site was so small.

Next dive was the 3 of us on our own, me in charge of time and safety stop, patricia compass, gavin air. The site was a long reef so we only had to go north and south and back again, till we ran out of air.

That night we had dinner with patricia and a girl from canada that she met. Found a great restaurant that you pick the catch of the day and they grill it. Much to the amusement of the cat that sits and growls at you while you eat it. Its the nastiest looking cat I have seen.

Day 2 starting at 7am. No hang overs this tyime. Its our deep dive. We did 30.2 metres. No sharks or turtles, as promised.

Next dive was multilevel. That was great we saw loads more trigger fish, that attacks a divers fins, rays, all sorts.

After that we have a 3 hr break and homework, to meet back for our night dive.

The night dive was at twin peaks again, we saw clown fish, hermit crabs, rays porcupine, puffer fish and a sleeping trigger fish, which must have been a metre in size, no kidding. That was great at night, as spooky as hell and you see nothing when you look away from the torches... miles of blackness.

On all dives the only dissapointing thing i too many other boats and divers, so you never alone its like rush hour under water, but then koa tao is the best training ground.

WELL ALL 3 PASSED OUR EXAMS ETC, AND ARE NOW ADVANCED PADI DIVERS!!! wheyy!!

Fred our seriousy mad instructor brought beers on the boat to celebrate with... then we go back to do our log books, and he gets us a bucket... basically I think its vodka redbull and coke. We have 2 of those some food and are suppossed to get back for the wet t shirt contest, in which patricia is hoping to win so fred will give her free dives.

We get back and gavin and I start drinking our beers, but the buckets have their revenge, as we dicover we are really pissed, and if we don't get back to safety of hut we wll be ill!

Day off of diving tomorrow, but then we are going to do the rescue diver course for 3 days, then kao sok national park, and bangkok to say goodbye to gavin for the next 5 months.

However I do have a dilema so any advice welcome especially from thos I know that dive... em, asgier, dom....

I have the chance after I see gavin of doing my dive master here which is cheap! Do I go for it which would mean I miss out on seeing or diving malaysia, or anything else in SE asia, as I would just be here doing the courses, diving and working on the boats helping out in order to get the cost down on the dives plus experience. I would build confidence up diving though and may not get the chance to do it all in one month ever again?

I supposse I can always come back but not sure if I should go for it or just do dives in the different locations... any advice welcome.

Having trouble with picking up email so if I haven't replied its only because I can't log on!

Posted by alexd at April 16, 2004 06:49 AM