Koh Tao is like Paradise, white beaches, beautiful sunsets and chill out bars!

We found this place a lot better during Full Moon party period, because everyone went to that isalnd instead of Koh Tao so it was very chilled and the dive sites were slightly emptier!

We were staying in a beach bungalow roughly 5meters off the sea, it was basic with only a fan but we were happy as the beach view was amazing and we had a hammock, which a local lady kindly assembled for us!

We booked out PADI open water diving course through our resort as they were a dive centre too. Our instructer was an auzzie guy called Ant, he was really chilled and easy going which made us relax more. It was a 3 day course, day one was half academic with a confined water dive in the afternoon, just so we could familiarise ourselves with the gear under water and do basic tasks like emptyiing masks under the water and swapping regulators, we did a small dive down to 8m after just for fun.

Day two we went out to the do next stage of dives and skills, we went roughly 12m on two dive sites, did skills lke how to safely accend ifour air was to run out etc..

Day three we did our first 18m (max for Open water) dive, and our first mid sea dive (with no land near by), we dived at two sites, Chumpon and Green rock, both 18m depths and both filled with marine life. On the first dive, amoungst other fish, we saw a Grey Reef Shark, which was pretty scary as it came racing up from the deep towards us, a fish was harrasing it, amaznig to see. Our second dive that day was at Green Rock, Mark had some issues equalising but they sorted themselves out after a small accent. The coral reefs were huge and we went to the bottom and did a swim through (like a cave) and saw some rare species of fish and also a a group of Trigger fish, seeing one can be dangerous but we saw a group of eight that came straight towards us from the sand banks, even our instructer was slighly scared and had never seen so many, we hid and stayed calm as they passed only a few cm away from marks head!

We passed and got our certificates and our log books so can now dive anywhere in the world. Next we are planning to go advanced and do some adventure dives, ideally becoming qualifies instructers eventually. to become an advanced open water diver you need to do 5 adventure dives, two compulsory and 3 of our choice. Navigation and deep water dives (30m) are compulsory, we're thinking of doing a night dive, conservation dive and a photography dive to make up the 5!

We're on Ko Phangan at the moment for the half moon party, our resort has about 3km of white beach and we are the only ones on it, apart from the local dogs. We have never been anywhere before where sitting on the beach you cant hear any man made noises, only the wind and waves breaking over the coral reefs out at sea!