We have just spent the last 5 days in a truly magical place.
It is an Island called Koh Tao off the East coast of Thailand in the Gulf of Thailand. It is only slightly bigger than 21 square kilometers and is called Turlte island - How cool. Unfortunately did not see any turtles.

We headed there as I wanted to dive and hopefully get my Open Water PADI licence and Sue wanted to chill out and relax. To quickly explain, I had met up with Claires mum (Sue) who was also travelling. She had just spent the last 3 months in Oz and had flown over to Thailand. I only had to pay 8500 Baht which is about 170 punds to do a four day course and this included accomodation. To save on costs we managed to get a twin room. Yes - you are right, this meant that U have just spent a week sharing a room with my girlfriends mum. We survived and have not killed each other. We are getting on well which is good. Although trying to explain the situation to the people we were meeting was funny as they did jump to a few conclusions of their own!

Anyway.....we spent the first day just enjoyin gthe 32 degree heat and the glorious beach and sea. You could walk - yes - walk for 10 minutes in the sea and still be walking on sand. It was fantastic. In the afternoon I had my first lesson on diving and met up with Chris and Cybil - the other people doing the course. We had to watch a very dull movie about the first stages of diving.
The next dy we had four more people join the group - Liza, Isis, Wayne and Baz. We then had to learn about all the equipment and how to use it properly. I need to mention that we had a great instrucotr - James a top guy and he explained things really well. The first time I had to breath underwater was a stange event you do have to learn to relax and just breath normally. The first rule of diving??? Don't stop breathing!!!

The following day (4th March) had another few hours in the clasroom and then we headed out to sea for our first dive. I had a bity of trouble equalising but when I finally got to the bottom (about 3 metres) it was amazing - it is really a different world. We then did the skills which included filling the mask with water, taking out the regulator etc. and then we got to swim around and see the different fish (more on that later)

The next couple of days where spent diving and practicing skills on the surface and under the water. One of the worst ones was taking your mask off fully and then keeping it off for a minute (well it felt like a minute) and then putting it back on - after of course you had been given a pair of sunglasses to wear and do a silly dance. If we ever get the video I will try to put it on the blog. The other nasty skill was taking your regulator out and then swimming to the surface as your exhale - only about 3 m down but it si a little scary. The biggest dive we did was to 18m! The scenery down there was stunning, the different shapes and colours of fish and coral made the effort of the training so worth while.
these are some of the fish we saw:
Grouper
Butterlfy fish
Angel fish
Yellowback Fusiliers
Parrot Fish
Banner Fish
Blue ringed angle fish
Porcupine fish
Bat Fish

Sorry but no Whale Shark or Stingray (well one lucky lady did see 4 stingrays!!)

we did get videoed on our last two dives and I will hope to have the vdeo when i get back to England.

All of the group passed the course which was great news. Unfortunately in the final test I did not get 100%. I got 92% (not the worst) The reason was I did not read the questions correctly and rushed some of them - and it was multiple choice!!! A lesson learnt i think!!

Well we have returned to Bangkok for a day to sort out travel arrangements to get to Cambodia for the next 2 weeks.