First day of Scuba Class. In the morning we had to watch an instructional video which taught us some of the basics about diving, pressure, equipment, safety and other useful info. This was complemented by the bad comedic acting that could only be found on an American based instructional video!

In the afternoon we finally got to taste some of the real stuff. Our instructor Chris (there was just us 2 in the group) took us to the pool and dished out his first piece of worldly advice. - This pool is an Asian pool cleaned to Asian standards, as soon as you get home have a good shower and buy some ear drops. Unfortunately for us he wasn't joking. We had to do a quick swim test first, 200m freestyle and then 10 minutes treading water - we were surprised to learn that about 50% of people fail this first time and had no idea that you needed to be ok at swimming to goo diving, apparently some one even turned up with a fear of water!

We selected our kit, including 2 wet suits as it was quite cold. We had assemble, then disassemble, then reassemble all our kit until we were familiar with it all. once setup we put on our wetsuits - (there isn't, but there should be a course for this as well - it was not an attractive site seeing us wobble and stretch whilst clumsily hopping around on one leg trying not to fall over whilst fitting into something that feels like it was the right size for a hobbit). Once we had our snazzy suits on(Dave in black and yellow, Claire sporting the black and yellow) we dumped all the kit in the pool, put our fins (not flippers as we were reminded) and mask on and jumped in.

Once in the pool we put on the equipment by lying on our backs and struggling into the arm straps, once eventually strapped we got our first experience of breathing underwater. It's a strange and unreal feeling as your brain tries to tell you that you shouldn't be there! Claire's brain definitely got the message to her feet as her fins kept on going straight to the surface leaving her constantly on her back - imagine a bug struggling to get back on to it's feet this was later to confirmed by Chris to be known officially as "floaty ankle" syndrome which tends to only affect women and is very funny for men to watch!

We got the hang of this after a while and were then taken through a few of the basic skills that you need to dive such as finding and losing your mouthpiece, using your buddy's air supply and clearing your mask.

Tomorrow we do more theory in the morning followed by more time in the pool in the afternoon, then the last 2 days are spent in the ocean. Gulp.

Had a nice meal out but the ice cream for desert was absolutley foul - was supposed to be strawberry but tasted like 'gone off milk' mixed with soapy water. Had an early night for scuba tomorrow!