The boat to koh tao took ages as it was late and then we had to change in koh phangan, there were guys on the last boat selling diving packages and one said that we would be able to do the padi open water course in the time that we had as lessons started that evening. We didn't think that we would be able to so this really appealed to us and after the boat we took his pickup to bans diving school. All the diving places in koh tao charged pretty much the same amount but we wouldn't have had the time at another school. Luckily we found out after that bans is one of the highest quality diving schools on the island.
After lunch we had our first lesson with Liz our instructor who was also from England, on our course there were 3 guys Elie, Rob and Nils and 2 girls Josephine and Ava. We ended up making friends with the guys and Nils also had a sister Manon who wasn't diving. We had to watch 3 long videos and then answer some questions before getting a drop off to our hostel which was really annoying as we could have stayed at bans but we didn't know that we would be able to dive so are booked accommodation and it was crap!! The place was in the middle of no where and the dorm had never been cleaned or even have a lock on the door.

We checked in and went to get something to eat pretty sharpish, the people at the hostel did say there was a bar near the beach that had an hour of free drinks, so after dinner we went to try and find it. We couldn't find that bar but ended up at a beach bar that had a really cool fire show where loads of Thai guys would do tricks with fire. We ended up meeting the guys from our paid course there and staying out with them till the early hours.

The next day we were in the classroom at 9am going through the videos we had seen the night before with Liz and then after lunch we headed to the swimming pool with all our scuba gear. Liz taught us how to set them all up then we jumped in the pool.

First we stayed in the shallow end which was about shoulder deep and just got used to breathing underwater, then we went onto learning how to clear our regulators and masks from water. Finally we swam to the deep end which was about two meters deep and just got used to being underwater.

The next day we headed out early for our first two dives in the sea. We set everything up and then jumped in! The water was around 29 degrees but I still wore a wetsuit; Dan didn't though he's manly. We descended down to around 12m and sat at the bottom looking at all the fish before swimming around some coral. It was so cool seeing everything underwater and the fish weren't scared at all, they were actually quite nosey. We then swam over to this playground someone had made underwater with big metal objects and a metal shark and octopus to swim around. Dan cut himself swimming in the playground and because red is the first colour that goes the deeper you get it looked like a khaki green moss that was coming away from his skin. Dan also got low on air during the dive so had to surface around 5 mins before the rest of us. During the second dive his air was fine though which was good. I also kept floating and needed to have two extra weights on me to keep me low. We saw clown fish and angelfish and eels and these little sea worms that look like Christmas trees and if you waved near them they would shoot down into the coral and then slowly emerge again.

After our dives we had yet more classroom work to do and an exam to do in our own time to hand in the next day. We finished ours straight away with the aircon of the classroom but then saw the guys in the bar doing there's and gave them the answers. We sat and had dinner with them and all decided to get Thai massages next door. I asked for Thai but got an oil massage so I was all oily, Dan actually got a Thai massage and I could see him getting stood on and then thrown about all over the mat. After we went back to lotus bar but I was falling asleep and we went back to the horrible hostel for the last night.

Our final day in koh tao was spent again on a boat doing two more dives! This time we went to 18m and had to do the maneuvers we learnt in the pool like what to do if we run out of air. This time we saw a stingray! Its weird underwater because you kind of forget about the surface and there's so much going on around the corals to look at but if you look out into the ocean there's just a vast nothingness that seems really scary. We were then padi certified! And we can actually go out together independently and just dive upto 18m without a guide or anything! Scary stuff!