So from the capital, we had the longass journey down south to the islands, where we had to get an overnight bus followed by a 2 hour catamaran. As we'd already formed a pattern with Asian transport being crap, this was no different, surprise surprise! But it was in actual fact a French family who made it so eventful this time round.. Let's just say they were extremely rude & obnoxious and weren't used to backpacker buses with little leg room!!

Anyway we arrived at the ferry port at 5am and had a long wait for our catamaran, but one good thing was that we got to see the beautiful sunrise across the ocean. Now I'd actually surprised myself since coming travelling, as at home I usually get motion sickness on the road every so often, but hadn't suffered from one bout of it so far in Asia... until this moment. The catamaran was extremely high speed, the waves were SO choppy, and it just wasn't a very pleasant journey so I literally felt like I was going to be sick for the 2 hours it took to get to Koh Tao... thank god for Billy who was distracting me by constantly rubbing my hand! Now other than this we were both really excited to be headed here as everyone had said it was beautiful, but mainly cos we knew we were going for one main reason... diving!

A rep from Bans Diving Resort (the biggest diving resort in the world) approached us while on the boat, and he gave us a pretty awesome offer we couldn't refuse. So with that we followed him off the pier, were kindly taken to the resort with a few others, and given a tour around before booking our course for later on that afternoon! Our resort was perfect; all the rooms were placed together, with 2 central diving pools, all amenities on a cute little alley running right through, and the restaurant, bar & everything else diving related positioned right on the sandy white beach that was ours for the next few days! To make it even more perfect the water was crystal clear and the sun set directly opposite us, and it was seriously, seriously beautiful.

Off we went back to school with our first theory lesson, where we met our instructor Verity, who was down to earth just like us and from Cornwall. Although we were buzzing with excitement, we were both a little scared too, but she made us feel super comfortable and at home, and before we knew it it was time to get in the pool to kit up & learn our skills. STRANGEST SENSATION! The first initial breath under water was unnatural & strange, and I couldn't get the hang of equalizing, as my ears wouldn't pop. Eventually it got easier though, and we were soon professionals at putting on our equipment and doing our buddy checks without help!

In the evening the resort came alive and there was an awesome atmosphere at the bar & on the beach with fire throwers putting on EPIC shows every night... fire limbo, skipping ropes and ring of fire! Snuggled up on beanbags, with live acoustic music, a cider in our hands, a fire show in front of us, and the water quietly lapping up the shore was one of those perfect happy moments where everything was just bliss.... aaaah. THAT right there is why we came travelling. For some reason we decided to let our hair down a little bit with a few more ciders, and being the night before our first open water practical... this was a very silly idea. Billy ended up being a jerk, attempted to do a somersault through the ring, and landed on his shoulder badly & ended up bruising it. Have no sympathy though guys as he was trying to copy some other lad, so only did it through trying to show off haha! 'Silly Billy' as we Brits would say.

Up early for our 2nd theory lesson, then it was our big moment.... our first two dives in the deep blue sea. We jumped on a little boat that took us to our big diving boat, then we were gearing up ready to take the plunge! Again, my ears wouldn't equalize so we kept having to ascend the rope a little to get it right, and finally we were 12m underwater and it was a such a surreal feeling. The life down there was amazing; practicing our skills on the bottom of the ocean while all different kinds of colourful fish were swimming around us was unreal.. It was soon time to surface, then with an hour's break up on deck we were jumping back in for our second dive!

Billy panicked a little bit on this one, but Verity was very patient with us both and soon we'd relaxed enough for a little swim around the coral. Not wanting a repeat of the other night, we had an early one that night in preparation for our final two dives, in which we were due to be on the boat by 8am. It was my turn to panic on dive 3 as I couldn't get my LCD hose disconnected 16m down, and I did start to lose my breathing but somehow recovered. We were lucky enough to do this dive in the junk yard. This was a big diving project in which 'junk' had been placed at the bottom of the dive site in order for coral to grow on it - gym equipment, tables and chairs, a bike and even an old car were all there and it was awesome to swim around. Back up on deck again for a quick munch on pineapple & yummy biscuits with a cuppa thrown in, then it was the moment of truth...

We had already passed our theory with a series of little exams, so now Verity just had to observe us performing our skills without help in order for us to qualify. It was frigging awesome!! We had the clearest visibility yet, and the aquatic life was even better (if that's even possible!?) with SO much coral, fish, stingrays & eels. Getting out of the water knowing we were PADI qualified open water divers was such an epic feeling, and I felt so proud of us both, especially Billy, considering he had a fear of what was underneath the surface of the sea. We'd definitely caught the diving bug and we decided we didn't want to stop there... we wanted to become advanced! We had just a couple of ciders to celebrate that night, looking forward to a much needed day off but eager to get stuck in again.

We took advantage of a rest day, headed straight out onto the beach (which only took 20 seconds), soaked up the HOT rays for most of the day, and walked along the shore, taking in all the diving resorts. Koh Tao was everything and more of what my friends had told me it was, I found myself falling in love with this beautiful place through our diving... it was literally paradise.

As we sat down for breakfast the following morning waiting for Verity, she came over with this man who seemed to be dressed all in white, with a mysterious helmet on & who didn't speak... yes you've guessed it, it was the STIG!! Hahaha, just messing, although his name really was Stig! He was this really funny Norwegian guy instead. This was to be our instructor for the next 2 days as Verity unfortunately couldn't dive for a few days. Our advanced course consisted of 5 dives this time, one of them being a night dive which was a scary thought! The first dive was much deeper, down to a shipwreck at 30m, where we ascended without the rope (which my ears struggled with) and Stig let us swim around. Once we'd done our deepest dive we only went down to 18m for the rest of the course.

That night it was time for our night dive! We got back to the resort in time for a quick bite to eat, then it was time to jump back on as the sun was setting. It both scared & excited me that we were about to jump into pitch black water, not knowing what what was underneath us, with only a little torch! You wouldn't really dream of running into the sea late at night when there is darkness all around you would you?! It did feel a little like that to be honest, but of course as soon as we jumped in and submerged ourselves under water, it was incredible! It wasn't as dark as we'd imagined, mainly because it was a clear night & the moon illuminated quite a lot of the coral too. At one point Stig told us to turn off our torches and wave our hands around... no sooner had we done that did all the plankton around us light up, it was pretty fascinating. We got out after 40 minutes having achieved something massive, adrenaline was definitely rushing around my body!

After doing something as thrilling as that you don't really expect anything to go wrong... which is why my heart went in my mouth when I slipped down in between our diving boat & the small boat whilst transferring. I'd been pretty lucky growing up and in 24 years had never had a near death experience, but I can safely say this came very, very close. The waves were so rough & choppy that as I went to place myself onto the other boat it moved so much that I lost my footing and fell backwards into the space between both boats, becoming pretty squashed. Thank god I'd put my towel around my neck, as one of the girls instantly grabbed hold, as did Billy with my leg and they pulled me back to safety. It took a while to calm me down as I was almost on the verge of hyperventilating, but luckily I only came away with a fairly nasty big bruise on the side of my leg! I guess that's 7 lives remaining now, haha.

Our next dive the following afternoon suited us down to the ground, as it was photography & videography and fish ID, so we took Billy's GoPro down with us, as well as Bans' own underwater camera... we got some brilliant footage cos the fishies decided to come out in full force that day & we could even identify most of them by name too. The best dive of all though was our final advanced, cos we got to dive just us buddies! Stig was feeling abit lazy on our last dive and he decided to stay on the boat. He told us to get our gear on and if we didn't surface in 45 minutes then he would send out a search party.. as he was our instructor & we didn't want to let him down, we jumped right in! No sooner had I jumped in did I lose my compass, which fell to the bottom of the ocean but luckily another diver had retrieved it by the time we'd got out.. this meant that we had to rely on Billy's 'impeccable' navigational skills, which actually somehow got us back to the exact right spot!! Ha. Diving with no instructor was amazing, epic, scary and exciting all rolled into one... being underwater in this whole other world was so surreal, but incredibly tranquil and peaceful too - you almost wish for longer than 40 minutes worth of air in your tank, so that you can take it all in and appreciate the beauty of what's around you for as long as you like...

Surfacing the water we gave each other the biggest proudest high-five, knowing that we'd just achieved something so great, and also that Stig (who gave us a proud wave) wasn't going to have to send out that search party! Big celebrations back on land at Bans with Stig, Verity & some very well deserved ciders, and we were even tempted to book on for our rescue dives just so we could stay on this idyllic island longer! We'd actually fallen in love with this place over those 7 days, and until you ever step foot on it yourselves, I don't think I'll ever be able to describe just how amazing it really is.

We made sure we'd allowed ourselves one more day here before catching the ferry over to Koh Samui, so we headed to the view point via quad bike. This was by far the best means of transport to get up there, as it took us about 20 minutes of non stop off-roading to reach the breathtaking view of complete Koh Tao coastline. But boy was it worth it! There was even a little mountain bar there too meaning we could have a much needed coconut whilst soaking up the last few views of our new favourite place.. I even got to drive the quad bike around for a while before returning it which was so awesome!! One more fire show at the resort, and then we were packing up our lives again for our ferry over to the next island. It was an understatement to say we were sad to be saying goodbye!