Up early and heading to Koh Tao, it was a pretty straight forward trip, a boat, a minivan, a bus followed by two more boats, suffice to say we arrived safe and sound in sunny Koh Tao. There is only really one reason to come to Koh Tao and that is for diving. We checked into a hotel and headed straight to a dive shop that had been recommended to us, and within an hour of being on the island we were booked on to do two fun dives the following day....exciting! That evening we went for a few drinks with the guys from the dive shop, unfortunately we had to turn down the chance of going to another lady boy show as we didn't want to be hungover for our diving.

The next day we headed down to the shop, met our guide for the day Michael, and sorted out our equipment, we were so excited to get back in the water. Our first dive site was called Japanese Gardens, and the second Twins, both dives were amazing, the visibility was pretty good and there were loads of fish such as Butterfly fish, Titan Trigger fish (which can be quite vicious), Nemo's, Cleaner Wrasse (the same as he ones that nibble your feet at the foot spa's; they wouldn't leave Pete alone), giant groupers and parrot fish. During our surface intervals Michael was recommending for us to do the Advanced Open Water course which would allow us to build and improve on our current skills, and of course allow us to go to 30 meters instead of 18 meters.

The next day we went to the beach and had a think about doing the Advanced course, it was a lot of money but by doing it, it would open a lot more dive sites that we can go to in the Philippines and Indonesia. Luckily we were well under budget with our money so decided to go for it. So, the next day we had three dives lined up to start the course.
The first dive site was called Chumpon, and this would be our deep dive. This dive meant going down to 30 meters and completing a few skills at the bottom. Once we reached the sea bed at 29 meters we were given slates which had coloured blocks on, we had to write down how the colours had changed due to the depth we were at. Easy enough you say, well Pete was given a bigger tank to try out that would give him more air and make the dive last longer, however being bigger means that its a lot heavier so he had trouble standing upright on the seabed, Michael had to hold him up. And then there was Kate, who was firmly grounded to the seabed but was now suffering for Nitrogen Narcosis which basically feels like being drunk, so completing the slate took some time and provided much entertainment for Michael. We saw some Cobia's which look exactly like sharks, Kate got a little over excited with the Narcosis and steamed forward to get a photo, luckily as we slowly ascended through the dive it wore off and she was back to normal. This dive was by far the best yet, the amount of fish we saw was incredible and the visibility was amazing.

After our two hour surface interval and lots of laughs at Kate's expense we got ready for our next exciting dive. This dive was a wreck dive, again in this dive we reached 28 meters and had a few skills to complete. These included a natural navigation and identifying hazards, this was dead easy. The wreck was HMS Sataku and had been sunk a year or so ago, it was incredible seeing it under water, luckily Kate didn't suffer from Narcosis this time.

Our third and final dive of the day was a night dive which again we were extremely excited about. After having some food we headed back to the boat and watched the sunset as we headed out to the dive site, we were heading back to Twins. Finally the sun set and we jumped into the eery dark water. We were each given torches and made our way down. It was like being on a different plant, so eery looking. Again we saw an abundance of fish including a couple of Moray eels, a blue spotted ribbon tail ray, a decorator crab and a big hermit crab. As you can imagine this was a pretty exhausting day, we had an early night ready for our last day of the course.

The next day we had two dives, these were both skill dives so not much swimming with the fish was done. Our first dive at Japanese Gardens was where we would be tested on our navigation, we were given compasses and had to navigate a square, simple enough but not when there's a current. Kate ended up being just over the marker and Pete just under, but this was fine due to the current. Other skills we had to complete were natural navigation, where you navigate using your surroundings to get back to a particular point and counting our fin cycles over a predetermined distance. We passed with flying colours.
Our last dive was at Buoyancy World, here we would be tested on our buoyancy skills. There were a number of things we had to do such as, hover in a Buddha position, hover upside down, swim through hoops, each time picking up or putting down an extra weight, more challenging then you might think! Anyway it was a really funny dive and a good way to end our course.

We are so glad we did the advanced course, we have learnt so many new skills that have improved our performance underwater, and we are now able to dive some of the wrecks in the Philippines.

That night was spent celebrating with the guys from the dive shop with one to many drinks.