25-29 April
Koh Tao is by far my favourite island I visited in Thailand! It was not as touristy as the others and had its main focus on Diving! We stayed at a new hostel called Taco Shak 2 which I would recommend. It was very clean and the staff were so friendly! The hostel was at the top of a small hill which was connected to the main street. On the way down from the hostel was our favourite duck restaurant called 995 roasted duck, it was so so cheap and I always got duck with tape noodles! Was so so yummy!
Whilst in Koh Tao I decided to complete an Open Water Diving course with Mojo Divers! This consisted of 3 days and one evening. The first day we had an evening in the classroom where we filled or health and safety paperwork and went through some basics about diving! In my dive group we had Mel and Gabrielle who was a very lovely man and very funny. We had to work through workbooks on an app every evening and pass the small tests on there before getting tested the next day.
Day two we had a classroom session in the morning for an hour which went over what we had learnt the evening before, basically checking we hadn’t missed our homework! In the afternoon we settled off with all our gear in bags to the beach front where a small motor boat took us to the main boat! The main boat was full of other experience divers who were just going for a fun dive in the same area. When we got on the boat, we had to do a fitness test by swimming round the boy four times and then treading water for 10 minutes, was pretty straight forward. After we completed that we went to the top deck where we were welcomed to the boat and given a briefing on where we were going today.
We arrived at a shallow dive spot where we were going to learn all the techniques needed to pass. We first learnt about putting all the gear together and then checking each other’s gear with a phrase called ‘Bangkok women are really men’ this translated to ‘BC, weights, air, releases and . We used this phrase to check our buddy’s equipment, my buddy was Mel! Once we were all ready we did the big stride into the water holding our weight belt with one hand and air with the other. We swam over to the shallow area where we learnt about how the BC works. We are shown how to inflate and deflate the BC and it was important that you never fully inflate your BC when your diving as this would shoot you straight up! We learnt other techniques, such as clearing your mask under water, this was definitely the main one I struggled with, you let water in the top then once full you press the top of the mask whilst tilting your head up and blowing out your nose. We also practiced a lot with losing your air source and why you would do and also sharing air sources! We also practiced taking our weight belt on and off under water, was actually quite challenging! It was a long afternoon and so much to take in! Once we arrived back we were showed how to clean our equipment and how to fill and empty the BC with water.
Day three we had the morning session again where we went over our homework and then me and Mel went to our favourite cafe and got a cinnamon bun! That afternoon we went to two dive sites, Japanese Gardens and Twins. They were both lovely sites with amazing coral. At Japanese gardens we did our first fun dive just to 10 metres, once I was down and had equalised my ears comfortably it was so so enjoyable! Then we went to Twins where we did half fun dive and half techniques on saving someone on trouble. It was confusing at first but all made sense once we went over the underwater saving and the above water saving! There was one silly point which me and Mel both did, she had supposedly run out of air and when I was rescuing her I gave her, her emergency air source,.. but she didn’t have any left!! So silly!
Day four, it was the last day of our course and we had a 50 question multiple choice to do in the morning where we had to get 80%, we all felt the pressure! Luckily o passed with 82!! That afternoon we did our final dives at Twins and White Rock dive sites. Twins was a good one as we went and did a fun dive at 15 metres and saw some amazing animals and coral! We then went to White Rock where we got up to 18 meteres. Our instructors Holly and Cat got us to sit at the bottom of the sea and take our masks on and off and clear the water! This was always a challenge for me as I stop breathing when I take my mask off! However, with perseverance I managed to clear my mask, I was so so relieved. We then did a navigation test with a compass, this and as far more straight forward than I thought! After that we had to do the underwater saving techniques before passing the course. Mel and I passed with flying colours we were so so relieved! I am now officially an Open Water Diver to up to 18 metres! My biggest fear and achievement was defiantly clearing my mask at 18 metres! After the course i went to the dive shop and treated myself to a mask and snorkel, as I know I will carry on diving on my travels!
Nightlife in Koh Tao is now pretty chilled as the local army are on the Island, they are normally known for there crazy bar crawls but this is now not done and is under the radar! Along the beach fronts there are bars but far more chilled. For Kerry’s birthday we went to one with beanbags on the floor and fire throwers! I didn’t really go out in Koh Tao as I was focussed on passing diving!