Koh Tao Christmas and Advanced Diving

Christmas was strange. Everything felt wrong. The sun was shining and it was blisteringly hot. I had a massive hangover having celebrated with the continental Europeans the night before and this didn't help my mood. I thought I could make things more festive by Skyping home, but we managed to miss each other in the morning and, needing to be up early the next day, I was in bed before they returned from their afternoon stroll :-(I did at least make use of the weather by spending a few hours on the beach. It could have been worse.

Boxing day was much much better. I began my Advanced diving course with a 'Peak Performance Buoyancy' dive and a 'Navigation' dive. The first one required me and the one other student Mathis to perform a number of buoyancy skills, such as hovering, and swimming through a hoop. It sounds easy, but I can assure you that it is incredibly tricky. You have to control your breathing to control your height above the sea floor. Deep breaths in or out mean big changes in buoyancy, so once you achieve the right level you have to take lots of small breaths to keep the air in you lungs at a constant capacity. It is probably the hardest skill in diving, so good to get some practice. Naviagation was what it sounds like, where we had to navigate a square underwater, then lead a dive and return to our entry point.

That evening I successfully skyped home and found myself sat at the dining room table where a number of my extended family were eating a festive lunch! It was rather amusing, if a little odd, and definately nice to talk to people back home. I felt Christmassy at last, just a day late.

The 27th was my busiest day of diving. I woke early to go on the 6.00am dive boat and we made our way to Chumphon Pinnacle again. This was where I did my deep dive, all the way down to 30metres! Actually it didnt feel any physically different at that depth as opposed to 18metres, but it was very exciting to explore so far from the surface. Unfortunatly the visibility was not so great down there, but when we ascended to 18metres or so, the underwater world appeared even more vibrant than before. The next dive was a 'Naturalist' dive, where all we had to do was identify lots of different kinds of sea life. It was a nice shallow diver, around 8metres and it was very enjoyable. We saw butterfly fish, wrasse, parrot fish, all sorts of coral, anemone, and more. This was my favourite dive.

That evening I did a night dive! We set out just after sunset and reached the dive site in darkness. It was a very surreal experience to be in the ocean at night and then diving down into the unknown. We each had a torch and it was exciting to see spots of coral illuminated next to the darkness and the interesting sea-life that comes out at night. Unfortuately, however, I was having problems equalising the pressure in my right ear. As you descend you have to pop your ears so that the air pressure inside is equal to the increasing pressure of the water outside. It hurts when you cant do it and I was really struggling. I didnt enjoy much of the dive, because I was in a lot of pain and worried about doing damage. I was trying to signal to the instructor that I had a problem, but with all the darkness and quite a large group, he just couldnt see me. Eventually it equalized, but I didnt really relax.

All in all though, the diving was a great experience and I would love to do it again for fun. It is a wonderful thing to be able to explore a part of the world normally outside human capabiliy with such ease. Perhaps I will get a chance in India, who knows?