Hey, ok back in Phuket for the last night now, and just finished our 4 day diving course! Well worth the 180 quid each that it cost us!! We went to a place called West Coast Divers which is based in Patong (im sure they have other sites as well) to start our 3 or 4 day course, depending on how you get on in the pool. So our first day, mainly theory, pretty basic stuff but still harder than we both thought diving would be! Then we headed into the pool to do some basic's skills which you need to be able to perform in order to become qualified, thats when the fun began! 2metres under water with all your gear on, easy, but then you have to take your mask off and breathe with out that on for 30 seconds, again sounds easy, but is the weirdest thing I have ever had to do - several attempts later, and after Zoe had had similar problems in removing her breather and then replacing it after chucking it behind you, we decided to stick another day to get a little better at it! So second day, all day in the pool, more skills and a few more panics later, we finally both master it (enough anyway) and head home very nervous about our first set of dives the next morning!

So day 3 we get picked up early from our hostel, and head to the boat, and go to i think a place called the Rachya Islands, about 1hr 30mins away from phuket. All goes very well, just see loads of fish and seem alot happier and more comfortable in the water, but we had to do nothing but swim around a bit and do a few practises on the surface. Then second dive, we went down to about 12metres, and do some more things like fill your mask up with water and then emptying it by blowing through your nose. Again, all goes quite well, nothing to worry about, and we saw loads more stuff, but had a horrible strong current, which was knocking me over when sitting on the bottom, so we used up our air pretty quickly, but still so amazing, its hard to explain!

The final day was the best, after both doing the things we hated doing, but this time doing them at 18metres, we saw an octopus and leopard shark, both were crazy to actually see right in front of you, never thought I would be doing some thing like that! And the colours of the fish and the corals were just amazing, the whole experience is hard to put into words, I just think if you get the chance to do it, as horrible as some of the skills are, once you have got them outthe way its so worth it!! I think we both agree that its the best thing we have chosen to do, by a million miles!

Any ways, thats about all the time i have, Will upload more photos when we get to a better internet cafe - have 100's that the instructor took of us, and they are really good, so will put up asap! Off to Phi Phi tomorrow, so will be in touch soon!