We flew down from Chaing Mai to Phucket over night. We'd booked the flight in a bit of a hurry before travelling and had booked our diving course in Koh Tao with little research. So this meant we had one day to get from Phucket to Koh Tao, not clever! Although from what we saw of Phucket we were glad that we weren't staying there any longer. It was really claustrophobic and built up, and there was a seedy atmosphere to the place to say the least, especially at night. We had booked our transport in Chaing Mai and had been assured that it would be safe - unlike the buses - so at 7am we were picked up from our hotel to wait the Asian standard 1 1/2 hours at the bus stop. Upon the bus we met Beverly who had been diving for the last few days and was on her way to Koh Tao so we chatted to her for a while.

After 5 hours we stopped off to board our boat which would take about 3 hours as it went via Koh Pang Yang and Koh Samui. The journey was very scenic though, and much more enjoyable than the bus rides!

We then waited for our pick up as promised by the dive company, which didn't come, and instead we were hounded by local taxi drivers for half an hour who wanted nothing more than to rip us off! We were pretty agitated as we'd rushed across from Phucket to keep our booking, but eventually we got hold of the dive company and they sent someone for us immediately. We then had to set up the pre-paper work before we were settled in to our beach side bungalow with a view of Sarie beach which calmed us down a little.

Luckily the first day of the diving course didn't start until 4pm, as Mike had got food poisoning the night before and was pretty sick all day. We had to sit and watch the retro PADI videos which were filmed at least 20 years ago while the power kept going off. There were 7 of us in total, 4 Americans and an English girl called Judy. We would be diving with Judy and the others would be with a different instructor, so it was nice to get to know everyone while we traipsed through the videos!

The next day we had another morning of lessons and tests - it was like being back at school having to answer things on the spot and complete exams! The instructor taking it was a French guy named Yan who had been in Asia a while, so any question was answered with 'same same' which kept us amused.

That afternoon we got our first taste of diving! We went out on the boat and were taught how to set up all the kit by our moody Polish instructor who we nicknamed Gru (Despicable Me). A little less relaxed than Yan, but really thorough and equally amusing due to his lack of social skills and that he wound Judy up so easily. We had to prove we could swim so were sent around the boat a couple of times and to tread water for a while (Judy was already annoyed - great start). We then headed over to the shallow water with the 30 k of equipment on our backs to practice breathing, flooding our masks, weights and other general skills. As we had all done ok on the way back to the boat we had a 'fun dive'. This was about 5/8metres deep, and was a great taste of what would be to come with the deeper dives as the coral and fish were way better than anything we had seen snorkelling! Back on surface we had to learn how to massage cramp out of your buddy's feet - another excuse for Gru to wind Judy up as she winged in pain!

The next morning consisted of our final lesson and test - this time taken by Gru and a lot more serious than Yan! We all passed with top marks - 98% - so were now able to go out for our first proper dive! It was about a 10 metre dive, and luckily none of us had problems equalising or descending so we had plenty of time on the bottom. The were some really cool colourful fish, but we didnt have much time to take any notice as we were too focused on remembering how to breath and trying to stay boyant instead of floating all over the place!

On the final day we had to be up at 4.30 as we had to be at the dive school for 5.30 - bad news for me as I hate early mornings, and Mike made us leave extra early to pick up breakfast. It was pitch black and there was no lighting from bungalow to road so was pretty freaky. Once we had set off on the boat the sun started to rise which was beautiful across the sea and made the last couple of hours worth it! The dive conditions were amazing. When we got to the site you could see the ocean floor, 30m down, from the surface. Gru couldn't get over how good it was, and was almost angry as he said we couldn't appreciate how good it was as we hadn't seen it when the water wasn't so clear! After descending down - this time to 18m we had a few more skills to practice again - mainly because Judy struggled with flooding her mask and Gru enjoyed making her repeat the skill as much a possible! As we were further down and a lot more competent than during our previous dives we saw loads of fish really colourful fish including trigger fish and barracudas, and loads more which I don't remember the name of. We also saw huge great skols of fish, sometimes thousands at a time which was amazing as they almost swam with your every movement as you pushed along.

All in all the PADI course was one of the highlights of the trip so far, and we both couldn't wait to go diving again!