Hi everyone hope all is well back at home.

We arrived in Ko Tao we had not got anywhere booked to stay but had the name of a few place we liked the look of, anyway we did not realise that it's high season here so everywhere was fully booked up when we arrived luckily we managed to get the last room at a place which is cheap and quite nice and near the beach.

We love Ko Tao apparently they issuse more diving certificates here than anywhere else in the world even more than Australia. It's a tiny little island think you could walk round it in about two hours, we knew as soon as we arrived we were going to love it, it's really realxed chilled out and most people come here to dive or snorkel.

We ended up bumping into a guy (Danny) we met in Laos he had been travelling for 7 months one of the funniest people we have ever met, he was with an english girl he met in Bangkok and a diving instructor that was living over here, we had a great night with them and ended up deciding to do our Advanced Diving course with Nicky the diving instructor, it made sense as it was only 150 pounds each and this is a good price compared to other places and its the next step up from the course we did before.

With the advanced you have to do 5 dives over 2 days, the five dives that you do are:
1. Navigation- how to use your compass under water and navigate you was around
2. Buyouncy - How to control your breathing underwater and flaot smootly
3. Deep dive - With our current certificate we can only dive up to 18m deep this shows you how to safetly dive to 30 meters.
4. Naturalist - How to identify types of fish and coral and the names of them
5. Night dive - Diving in the darK! (Yes I know very scary)

We had to get our equipment all prepared the night before suits, fins etc. We had a great day first day as Laura and Danny came to dive with us Nicky the instructor was good fun I had problems with the first dive my mask kept filling with water and I had to keep clearing it which is a pain but on the 2nd dive I had a new mask so relaxed a bit we saw loads of fish and the water was really clear even though on the surface it was really choppy. Laura and Danny had a camera so got loads of great photos underwater.

Second day we had to be up at 5am as we were leaving for an early dive we did navigation first then the deep dive. The deep dive can make some people feel as though they are drunk underwater called narcosis we took a packet of crips down and a bottle of water as when you are that deep you see different colours so the crisp packet was differnt colour than normal and the water bottle compressed its wierd the only difference really is that you can not just come straight up you have to do safety stops as it's dangerous to come up too quickly! We enjoyed the dive and were back in town for 11.30am it felt loads later. We then had to get prepared as that night we were doing the "night dive". You dont have an exam at the end of the course you complete knowledge reviews as you go through. Anyway the night dive, I was really not looking forward to this one but tried not to think about it , we left before the sun went down just me, Joe and the instructor and got to the boat, we headed out it was really choppy like I have never seen it befoe the waves were coming over the sides of the boat which made me even more scared. We got our gear on and stopped in the middle of the dive sight we jumped in the waves were unbelievable and dragged you about so we decided to decend quickly as the waves go once you are underwater, we had a torch with us and well you can imagine as soon as we were down to 18 meters it's pitch black you can only see what you shine your little torch on I hated it immediatelly I could not see a thing and I am deep underwater, we swam for a bit and I concentrated hard on keeping the instructor in sight as i did not even want to look around it eerie in the dark even the coral looks scary when you shine your torch on it, we saw a huge baracuda and a massive sting ray and i thought a huge grey thing with blue spots on touched me though i'm not sure if it was another person as there was other divers down there too. Cut a long strory short someone swam over me so Joe moved out of the way next thing I turn round and Joe is missing I have never been so scared I chased after Nicky and waved my torch about to get his attention he realised Joe was missing so went straight to the surface I swam to the boat and Nicky went to look for Joe, two Thai guys who were driving the boat got me in (they did not speak English so had no idea what was going on) and I was as you can imagine hysterical thinking all sorts. I could not believe he had gone missing after taking my tank off I was screaming his name and I saw a torch in the distance come up and knew it muct have been him it was and he screamed he was fine, I cannot tell you how relieved I was Nicky came up not long after and they both got on the boat. Joe had moved out of the way when another diver had passed me and carried on following what he though was me and Nicky he eventually realised it was the wrong people and swam to find us but its pitch black you cant see anything, luckily he did not panick(well not too much anyway) and we had been revising some stuff in the day and of the things is if you loose you buddy (me) you only look for one minute then head to the surface that way you are never too far apart. I can honestly say we will never do a night dive again we laugh about it now but at the time it was horrible possible the most horrible experience ever, the boat ride back was really scary also think a storm was on its way! I think even if Joe had not gone missing I still was not enjoying it but we are really glad we gave it a go. Anyway we passed the course and the instructor said Joe showed he knew what to do in an emergency so we are now Advanced open water divers,which means we can dive anywhere in the world to a depth of 30 m on our own (god help us) !

We showered and headed out for a well deserved drink (we had not really drank whilst doing the course), Danny was leaving the next day so it was his last night everyone had heard about Joe going missing so were taking the mick had a great night ended up going to a cool little club called the cave did not get in till early hours.

Chilled out the next day and said goodbye to Danny who was heading back to Bangkok then home. We have decided to stay here until Thursday because we love the place and we have not spent that much time on the beach etc with doing the course. We were going to head to Krabi but apparently the weather is really bad at the moment so we are gonna chill here and relax all the bars and restaurants are cool and at night the restaurants on the beach put huge bean bags and candles and you can just relax down there. We have been to the beach this morning the weather is hot but there is a lovely breeze on the beach. There is a place where you can learn to do trapezze swinging I have always wanted to do that so gonna give it a go tomorrow I think.

It's our 100 day tomorrow so we will be celebrating I think and so far we have stayed in 41 different beds since we started!

Anyway hope everyone at home is well we are flying to Sydney on Saturday for the next step in our adventure looking forward to it though we are gonna miss here definately love to you everyone. We will update the photos in the next couple of days.

Love Gem & Joe