08th - 15th Jan. Koh Tao

Temperature: 34 degrees
Sea temperature: 27 degrees
Sea visibility: 6 - 12 metres
Certified Open Water divers: 2
Fish attacks: 1

The island is only 1 and half hours away from Koh Pha Ngan by boat. Our journey was shared with a young guy who must have spent the evening before partying really hard, or he suffered from really atrocious travel/sea sickness! Mmm…not what you want to see on a boat, it's one of those contagious things like yawning.

The resort we stayed at was all we could wish for, it had great amenities, right by the beach and had great swimming pools, one which was permanently used for dive training. The only thing was the cheap fan rooms (which you get free for the duration of the course) had really awful mattresses.

We could start our course straight away at 4pm, but we decided to start the next day so we could check out the area and have a swim and snorkel. The sea was really gorgeous, clear, calm and very warm and with the reef really close to the beach, it made excellent snorkeling.

On our first full day, we got up early and did 30 lengths in the pool (practicing for the course). After breakfast we spent the morning/afternoon walking along the beach, chillin' and having lunch on the beach (practically in the sea as the tide was so high). Carl bought a new snorkel mask as he thought his old one (cheapies we bought in Samui) was crap as it let in water. He realised afterwards that it was his beard that was letting in water. Doh!

Day 1: Our course started with the usual "signing our life away" forms and introducing ourselves. There were 8 on the course, 3 people from Holland; Martin, Anita and Lynda. Terri and Maija who were on holiday from their exchange course in Japan, and Sebastian from the UK (who's mate didn't wanna do it), and obviously us.

We spent 3 hours watching a dvd on an introduction to diving which should have been 2 hours but there was a power-cut during the film and we spent ages trying to find where we were. We also had homework to read 3 chapters of our PADI books and answer all the questions which took us until 12pm (after having dinner). And we were supposed to be on holiday!

Day 2, 8:00am: Met Poli (our instructor) at the beach (equipment room) to be handed our gear which Poli had prepared for us, such as fins, wetsuits, BCD's, weights. We then were tested for our swimming ability by doing 8 lengths and tredding water for 10 minutes. It was too early in the morning for that!

We spent around an hour learning how to prepare our equipment and take it apart again. The rest of the time was learning safety and buoyancy skills at the bottom of the pool. These were; taking our regulators (air) out of our mouths and trying to find them again without looking. Taking off our masks, and then replacing and clearing the mask by blowing air through the nose. This took ages for everyone because it didn't come naturally. Also everyone needed a pee by this stage.

Other tasks included sharing air with your "buddy" and learning the emergency surfacing procedure, and finding your neutral buoyancy underwater.
After about 4 hours of being basically weightless, it was a bit of a shock when we finally climbed out of the pool and walked back to the equipment room -god those tanks are heavy!

3pm: After lunch, we had theory in the classroom. We spent until 6pm going through the previous night's homework and watched another dvd. We were also given more homework to do that night, chapters 4, 5 and the Recreational Dive Planner (planning the amount of time you can stay under the water before getting sick!). It's surprising how many things can go wrong and how complicated the whole air and pressure issue is. We were beginning to wonder whether diving is a good thing!

Day 3, 7:30am: We went on our first official dive to "Twins" (half an hour away) where we did more of the safety skills at the bottom of the sea, around 12m - quite scary! These were; taking off our masks, sharing air with your "buddy", buoyancy control (which is really hard at first). Then we did the fun bit of swimming around the coral. We saw a Clown Fish (Nimo) in its Anemone, the only one left in the area.

Our second dive was at White Rock (10m) where we did more swimming/sight seeing/ bashing into other divers. We became better at our buoyancy at this stage and were able to stop ourselves floating to the surface (which is really easy if you don't have the right weights). We also had to perform one more task of sharing air with your "buddy" while ascending to the surface - lots of sign language involved.

After lunch we went through the homework from the night before and learned how to use the dive planner before taking our final exam! Felt like we were back at school, but it was actually quite relaxed.

Yipee, we didn't have any homework to do that evening, which felt good, so we watched a film with our meal - still weren't allowed alcohol though.

Day 4, 7:30am: We went back to "Twins" again but dived at 18 metres this time. This dive was more enjoyable as we spent more time looking at the coral and even went through a coral archway (which was cool). This time we were followed by a camerawoman who kept popping up from around the coral and pointing the cameral in our faces (which ended up being our "souvenir dvd" that we bought). One last task to learn was the safety stop at 5m for 3 mins. This is to make sure you don't have too much Nitrogen in your body by ascending slowly.

Back on the boat we had tea and biscuits and learnt some basic compass skills. We were all now really enjoying diving (as it's a little unnatural at first so a bit unnerving), so we all thought it would be a good idea to jump off the top of the dive boat (see pictures).

The second dive took place at Sairee Beach, 12m. We pulled some silly stunts, which were fun, like replacing our masks with sunglasses (for the camera), surfing on our fins, and doing somersaults. We also saw some great things, like barrel coral (which look like big chimneys), Blue Spotted Stingray, and a nasty looking Moray Eel.

Our course was finished by the afternoon by receiving our temporary certificates. We arranged to meet in the evening to eat, and drink lots of beer to celebrate!
We felt like deserved a rest so we headed for the beach to chill and do some swimming. This is where Vik found some friends (see pictures). It seemed that a school of small fish was using Vik to protect her from the Pipe Fish which were attacking them.

We met the dive gang and watched the dive dvd of us, which was a giggle. Then we had a meal in the resort's restaurant and later went on to Lotus Bar, which was on the beach. Adi (our instructor's assistant), left early after the meal because he was performing fire throwing at the Lotus Bar where we were to meet up later.

We felt we deserved a sleep in so we had a late breakfast and went sea kayaking to Koh Nang Yuang (only an hour's kayak away from our beach). This was a stunning couple of islands joined together by a sand bank and reef.

Unfortunately we found out that this was a private resort so had to pay 100 baht, but it was well worth it for the brilliant snorkelling. The coral was fantastic, the fish were really friendly - especially to Carl who got bitten by a Parrot Fish (very sharp beak-like-mouth). We saw 3 Blue Spotted Stingray in ankle deep water! Luckily we were watching where we were going.

It was my birthday on the next day and I promised myself to spend some time in a spa, so we ventured across to a quiet cove called Jansom Beach and spent a couple of hours at Charm Churee. This was lovely, Vik had a steam bath, foot soak and full body massage - heaven! Carl in the meantime went snorkelling and resting (he was feeling sick).

That evening we watched "Bourne Ultimatum" while having dinner. We were meant to meet up with the gang at Lotus Bar again but instead we went back to our room as Carl was feeling really sick. We ended up watching "Children of Men" on HBO - love satellite TV.

Our last day was spent on the beach chatting to the gang before getting the night boat to the mainland. We were going to go on Koh Phi Phi, but were advised that it would be very expensive especially if we hadn't already booked some accommodation, therefore we spent a couple of hours looking into Koh Lanta which was recommended.

Koh Tao and the dive course was fantastic (would really recommend Ban's for Open Water Course), our gang were fab, and our instructor, Poli, was superb, couldn't ask for more! Koh Tao is our favourite place so far.