You can tell by my rookie error of leaving my pizza in our room that I don't come from a hot country- there were loads of small insects also sharing by the morning! After breakfast, we went to the local beach, although the tide was so far up, there wasn't much shore to sit on. It was fairly empty and so felt almost like it was our own personal beach! Along the way, we had a look at some beach huts, although they weren't as nice as the ones the restaurant...

I was very angry when the Dutch (?) boys staying in our dorm were so rude as to come back from their night out, making absolutely no effort to be quiet, and even talking to each other in foghorn voices, and I didn't manage to get back to sleep after, although maybe partly because I was being sick still. This meant I couldn't go along with Alice, to do my final 2 dives which would qualify me as a PADI Open water diver. I was still determined to take the exam tho...

With the help of Dingo, me and Alice spent the morning filling out our review questions of the first 4 sections of the scuba theory, and then watched section 5. After lunch it was time to do our first proper diving session! We got a boat to Koh Nangyuan, which allowed us to see Koh Tao from the sea- an even more stunning view than it is on the island. The first dive spot was called Japanese gardens, and we descended 12 metres for 39 minutes. It's a lot easie...

We went to 7-eleven to get yoghurt/ hot water to eat with our cereal we had got for breakfast, and then went for our first scuba theory lesson. Eddie and Adina, the couple from the US, had managed to get on our course with us (we had seen them yesterday after we had booked onto it). The morning was a bit dull as we just watched the DVDs for section 1-4 of the theory. Given this took about 3 hours, our concentration wasn't at its peak by lunchtime! We put ou...

I had a pretty good sleep although we got to Koh Tao at 5 am. It was dark when we got there so brought a coffee from 7-eleven (and I splashed half of it up my arm because my rucksack had slipped from my shoulder to the crook of my arm). We sat in the waiting area because we couldn't get in to the hostel until 8 am, and met a Parisian girl who was also staying in Soiree Beach- she was going to walk when it got light so we joined her. It was a fairly long way to ...