We then needed to find a room for the next few nights so we took the 15 minute walk with our big bags to Soirée beach where we met Tasharna a few days earlier. This Is a lot more lively than where we were and obviously after a few nights off the beers we wanted to celebrate our qualification with a big night out. After finding a room, nowhere near as luxury as our room at 'Crystal' we got sorted out and headed out. We started out watching the fire show again, th...

So this is it the last day of the course where we get to go 18 metres below sea level. It was an early start today, 6.45 we had to be at the centre. We had to quickly learn how to use a compass on the beach as we would be doing a bit of self-navigation under the water today. We then all got back on the boat and went to a different dive site called 'Japanese Gardens' it's not far from the site the day before but has different types of coral. On our first dive Sh...

In the morning of the third day we all had to do our final exam, this is a 50 question test where you need 75% or more to pass. We were allowed to confer with the group if there was any questions we were a bit unsure on. The whole group passed with over 90% which is good apparently. When we finished the test, Shannon had to give Assad some bad news and tell him that he won't be able to let him dive in the sea. It was because of his asthma and the fact that he'd...

The next day was the start of our course, we were all a bit hungover but luckily it didn't start until one so we had pretty much recovered. We met our in instructor, Shannon, an American guy who is what they call a 'Master Diver' which is another type of PADI qualification. It's the third best qualification of about 15, so basically he is bloody good at what he does! He turned out to be a top bloke and a really good teacher, could have done with a few more teac...

The trip to Koh Tao was the first one that actually took shorter than the time advertised. We were on a bus for about 6 hours then a boat for about an hour and a half. When we got off the jetty we found a bloke holding a 'Crystal' sign which is the company we booked up with, so followed him to the diving school and bungalows. Once we got there we had to fill out loads of forms and things for our PADI scuba diving qualification, and then check into our rooms,...