"Entering a new world"

"Koh Tao" means "Turtle Island", but there are in fact no turtles left there. The island is today one of the most known scuba diving places in the world, with people coming there from near and far to see the beautiful marine life, but maybe most of all, inexperienced divers come to get their scuba diving license. I am one of those inexperienced ones. I had never done a single dive in my life, and I was looking forward to entering the underwater world.

I got to the island early in the morning, asked around at the pier and got recommendations to a good diving school. From what I had heard before, and now say with my own eyes, there are license factories on this island. There are a total of 46 diving schools on Koh Tao, and a few of them are enormous. They take out groups of more than ten students to one instructor, and they never get proper training. The place I got recommended, is called "Dive Point", and is located right next to where I got off the boat. An Austrian man runs it, and most of the crew is from Germany. Naturally, most clients were German speakers, so I turned out to be the only non German-speaking student. There are also diving schools where everyone is Finish, Swedish, Norwegian, and so on. Dive Point only takes out groups of four students to one instructor, but I was lucky, and there was only one German woman and I, to one extremely experienced instructor. He was even a teacher for educating instructors.

The island is very small, and it would not take me any longer than five minutes to cross it by a motorbike. The beaches are the most beautiful I have seen, and the water perfectly clear. There are no dangerous animals on land, and they have never had serious injuries to people in the water either. This is really a paradise island.

That first day I only watched some videos about diving and read a little in the textbook. The next morning I was going to start diving. This was the first time I sat down with a textbook since I was in school, and even though this was very different (especially when it came to motivation), I did get the boring feeling of reading a textbook. It is something about the language of textbooks that just don't appeal to me. They are all written in the same pedagogically correct way, and they are all dead boring. I ended up watching a football game in a Thai restaurant run by a man from Leeds, England, and his Thai wife. Earlier I went to the beach with a couple Finish girls. When reading again in the bed, I fell asleep after a page or two.

The Dive Point boat was by far the nicest and best equipped on the island. It was a big boat, with an emergency medical room, showers, bar area, classroom and sun deck. The area in the bow, where all the ropes are stored, was not for us, but only for the captain. It was his temple. The boat was equipped with new scuba gear, which felt me a lot safer. The first thing we were going to do was to go to Mango Bay (the north side if the island) and practice some skills in the shallow water. We got our gear on, took a long step into the water, and swam towards the shore. Under water we practiced taking off our mask, putting it on and clearing it, we practiced how to find the regulator (mouth piece), if we lost it under water, and how to do some signals. Then we headed out towards the coral reeves. I could already before we got far down understand that the corals here would be a lit nicer than the ones I saw in Hawaii when I snorkeled in Hanauma bay. The corals were colorful and alive; they were orange, blue, red, green, purple, white, and so much more. Corals are living creatures, and the coral reeves are built over thousands of years, as corals die, and new ones grow on top of the dead ones. Some of the orange and blue ones would retract their waving "fingers" as I put my hand close to them. This was one of the first things my instructor, Ditleif, pointed out to us. I soon understood the value of having an underwater guide, because as he pointed at something, I started seeing it everywhere. And the whole experience of diving turned into a search for familiar marine life, and not just a "fun thing to do". For my next dives we headed out to Twin Rocks, that is a Coral Reef between the Koh (island) of Naang Yuan, and Twin Rocks Island. The two islands are connected by a blinding white beach, and a lot of tourists take long tale boats out there to swim and tan. Here we went a little deeper, and we could see all kinds of marine life here also. But before the exploring, we trained on some more skills, like taking all of our equipment, including vest and weight belt, on and off at more than 10 meters deep. During the exploring we saw a lot of different fish, many of them I recognized from Hawaii, but there were a fear amount of new ones as well. They were all colorful, and not too scared of divers, so they would often come over to play. Some of the most playful ones were the Clown Fish, like Nemo in the Pixar movie "Finding Nemo". The people behind the movie must have done good research, because the places that the fish lived in in the movie, were just like the places they live here in Thailand. An orange, puffy coral that almost look like a tassel, moving gently back and fourth with the currents seems to be the perfect playground for the Clown Fish. I could put my hand towards it and the orange fish, often with a couple white stripes, would do loops, coming out to play and hiding in the coral.

That first day in the water I did a total of three dives, all of them between 35 and 45 minutes. I came back to my room, feeling very content, and was already looking forward to the next day of diving. The only thing I was not perfectly happy about was that I had no pictures to document the fantastic experience. Before I went to Hawaii in 2008, I bought an underwater sleeve for my camera, so before I got on the boat that first morning of scuba diving in Koh Tao, I had put my camera inside and was ready to take it down into the deep. It turned out that it was not allowed to take the camera down during the course. International standards, apparently. I do understand it, it is easy to get distracted with the camera, and don't pay attention to what you have to pay attention to while submerged. Nevertheless, I still feel it was a pity that I was not allowed to. The instructor told me that he would let me take it down on my last dive. I kind of settled with that.

After eating some good, thick rice noodles, a very common dish in Thailand, I went to bed, ready to read a little, but ended up falling asleep over the textbook, again.

The next morning I was up and about by 6 AM, had some cinnamon pancakes, and was ready to get on the boat half an hour later. Here in Koh Tao, the main street food is pancakes. The street carts are found everywhere, and the salesperson take a small ball of dough that they stretch out by holding one end and smashing the other end in the aluminum tabletop. They repeat this procedure until the pancake is thin as a couple sheets of paper and round. Then they throw it on the frying surface and put one some oil. They put on whatever you have ordered, but the most common is banana. I often buy cinnamon and raisins, unless they have fresh mango. You can also get Nutella / Nugatti, often together with banana, and that is one of the most bought pancakes I think. They also put on butter if you don't ask them not to. The same goes for condensed milk, some of the sweetest stuff I have tasted, as I forgot to tell one pancake man in Cambodia that I did not want it. The pancakes are all over South East Asia, but especially on the islands of Thailand.

My first dive of the day, but my fourth total, I did at Japanese Garden. This place is close to Twin Rocks, and has earned its name by all the boats taking Japanese tourist there. None of them can swim, but they all want to explore, so they all get in orange life belts and splash their way towards the beach with their diving masks on. The sight is supposed to be amazing, at times as much as 100 Japanese in orange life belts, looking like small flowers in a Japanese Garden. Then some Cambodians working on the boats swim out to them with a rope to pull them after him, 10 at a time. He will continue this till every one of them are on board, smiling and happy, as all Japanese tourists are. During the first dive we did some more skills, but the main difference from the day before, was that this time had only half as much weights as we did the day before. This made it a lot easier to control the buoyancy. I could now swim towards a big rock underwater, take a deep breath, and that was enough to float perfectly over it, then exhale as I was over it, to make a fast decent when I had passed it. I also practiced staying at neutral buoyancy, at different depths. So by regulating the BC (Buoyancy Control Unit, which is the inflatable vest you wear. It is connected to the tank, so you can fill it with air if you need to go higher up, and of course release air if the ascent is too fast.) and my breath, I could decide if I wanted to go up, down or stay at the same depth. I figured out the buoyancy very fast, and trained on doing it while on the back. The feeling of being weightless and able to move three-dimensionally was one of the best things about the diving. We also practiced the signals for being out of air, and the procedure for giving and receiving air from our "buddy", which is what your diving partner is called. The sign is a fast horizontal movement, back and fourth, with a flat palm in front of the throat. Then you ask for air by pointing at your regulator. When Practicing it we would take our regulator out of the mouth, hold the diving buddy's arm so we would stay together, then grab their octopus (extra regulator) and since you are out of air, your buddy will slowly inflate his/her BC a you reach the surface by kicking your fins. Then the person who is out of air will have to inflate the BC orally, while held afloat by the buddy. If your buddy let go of you, the weight belt and empty cylinder will take you down fast.

On the next dive, at White Rock, a one square kilometer coral reef right outside of Mae Haad Bay, which was where I stayed, we also did some skills before swimming around. Here we say a large Blue Point Sting Ray. It was gray with almost glowing dark blue spots, the size of small tennis balls, all over it. It was just lying at the sea floor, under some corals. That turned out to be the largest fish I would see while diving in Koh Tao. After the dive we had lunch on the boat, and there was always coffee and tea available. I always drank a lot of water and ate a lot of watermelon while on the boat. Being in the water dehydrated me a lot, and you want to stay sharp when the pressure above you is 3 Bar (At 20 meters down, you have three times the atmospheric pressure. That is one from the air, and one for every 10 meter of water.) During lunch, we also went to shore to pick up Nitrox tanks. Nitrox is air that contains more than 21 % oxygen. I decided to take the license for diving with Nitrox while I was at it. There are many good things about Nitrox, but it also has its dark sides. The biggest danger of diving with normal air (about 21% oxygen) is decompression sickness. When you breathe in air at sea level, the nitrogen, (which the air in our atmosphere contains about 78% of) is easily exhaled from our lungs because the pressure inside our body is larger than on the outside. When you add pressure, for instance by diving, you increase the pressure on the outside, but the pressure is still the same in our bodies. Therefore the nitrogen in the lungs will go through the thin skin in our alveolus, and enter our blood stream. When we dive, this process will happen all the time, but at a greater speed the deeper you go. If we ascend to the surface to fast, the pressure will drop faster than the nitrogen gets time to return back to the lungs, and we get time to breath all the nitrogen out. The nitrogen trapped in the blood stream may cause some blood vessels to be blocked, and as this happens in your brain, your body will stop functioning. The only way to save someone suffering from decompression sickness is by taking him or her to a re-compression chamber. 90 % of the people who make it out of there are in a wheel chair. So it is very important to plan the dive, and dive the plan. Then you can calculate how much nitrogen you have in your blood stream at any given time, and you can know how deep you can go, for how long, and how long of a break you need in between dives.

With Nitrox, there is less nitrogen in the air you breath, and that makes it almost impossible to get decompression sickness (As a result of the fact that the cylinders are not big enough to allow you to stay submerged long enough to build up a lot of nitrogen in the blood stream.) However, with a larger percentage of oxygen, you cannot dive very deep. With an Oxygen percentage of 32 %, one of the Nitrox standards, you should not go deeper than about 30 meters. If you do, you might face a shortcut between the nerves in your body, and you will not be able to control anything. What happens is that the oxygen will tear down a layer that protects the nerves. Epileptics are missing some of this layer, so that is basically the same thing. And I don't have to tell you what happens if you suffer an epileptic attack under water. The relation between oxygen content and depth is, yet again, related to pressure. Since the pressure at 30 meters is 4 Bar, the air that you breathe in is compressed to 25% of its original size. That means that we can breath in four times as much air, which then becomes four times as much oxygen as you usually would breath at the surface. At really deep dives, like 100 meters, they only use air with 2 % oxygen. With a pressure of 11 Bar, that is the same as breathing 22 % oxygen, the same as at sea level. Again, if you plan your dives, and dive your plan, you will be alright.

My sixth and final dive at Koh Tao I did with Nitrox 32 (32% oxygen). I could not tell the difference from diving with normal air, but I was now aware that the processes that were going on inside my blood stream were very different. During lunch Paul had come out on the boat, after staying a little longer in Bangkok, as I was taking my diving course. Hi was doing some fun dives that afternoon. They thought him to put on the mask under water, and took him around, all the way down to 17 meters deep. He loved it. This time we were back at Twin Rocks. For some reason the water was not clear this time. There was also a small tidal current, so I think that has something to do with it. It was fun to dive, as the current took me around the corals, and both the instructor and my German buddy were always moved exactly the same. This time I was allowed to bring my camera, so it sucked that the water was not clear, but I did get a couple decent shots before my camera said that the battery was dead. I don't think the battery could handle more than 10 meters depth, because on the way up again, it started working. I was afraid the plastic sleeve would not last, but that did not even seem like it would be a problem at all. I made it back up with the camera still dry.

Back on land I had some food before taking the 50 questions multiple-choice test to get my license. I passed it, and I am now certified to dive down to 18 meters in some countries, but 30 meters in most. I then had my final lesson about the Nitrox, and did that test also. Paul was leaving the next morning, but I had to stay and wait for the licenses to be produced.

I spent the time before my boat left to catch up with Paul at Koh Pa Ngang doing research for where to go after Thailand. I knew it was about time to buy tickets across the Pacific if I wanted decent rates. After hours of problems, I had bought five plane tickets. I would spend a few days in each place, before heading on to the next destination. The route from Singapore to South America will be as follows: Sydney, Fiji, Honolulu, Maui, and San Francisco. I have not bought the ticket out of San Francisco yet, but I will buy one to Buenos Aires, via Toronto, so I get to spend one day there. This should be a sweet way to get to South America.

This new world that opened to me under water have come with so much more than just the skills and experience of diving, but also with the knowledge of elementary rules. I loved every minute of it, and I am very excited to learn new skills and knowledge as I am traveling on to new destinations, with new opportunities.

One last thing to remember, always breathe like normal, and never hold the breath while scuba diving.