We left Koh Phangan with a heavy heart, early on the 7th of October. Me and Kim both brought the cheapest possible boat ticket from the hotel next to our's (as are hotel was charging another 150 bhat per ticket), which meant we left hat salad at 11am. We made friends with three Irish girls from Belfast on the boat, little did we know at the time but we would spend most of are nights in Kot Tao in their company.

On the boat journey to Koh Tao, i spoke to a dive rep from 'Big Blue' dive school and decided to do my open water scuba diving qualification with them. On arrival to the resort we were placed in a dorm room with four lads from Ipswish, who were all doing there advanced open water scuba diving qualifications. The lads in the dorm were all really sound but it wasnt very convienant being in the dorm, as everyone was coming and going all night, so me and Kim decided to only stay there one night. That night me and Kim went for a walk along the beach and i spotted a dive school called "Sea Shell', on speaking to the dive instructers there i decided i would much preffer to do my course with them.

Day one of my course consisted of being in the dive school class room from 4pm until 7.30pm learning dive theory (was like being back in school all over again!). Day two was when the fun started and we were able to dive within the resorts swimming pool (which was 5 meters deep), extremely cool to be able to breath under water for a long period of time. The down side to the day was this was also followed up by several hours back in the class room doing more theory work. Day three started off again with more class room work, then in the afternoon I did my first two open water dives to a maxauim depth of 12 meters. The first dive was spent mastering my bouyancy, then followed by a brief swim over a small coral reef. My second open water dive that day was out of this world, we dived at a site called "Twin Peck', which consisted of two massive coral reefs that had every different type of marine life known to man.

Day three started at 6am, as our school liked to be one of the first people on the dive sites in the morning. My two final dives were also mind blowing in every sense of the word. As i had a lot of trouble equalising my ears on the decent, I had extreme pressure in my head......

On dive three and four we had a another diver come and film are whole experience, which made for interesting viewing when i watched the film back with my group later that night... The last few days that me and kim spent of Koh Tao were spent on the beaches in the day and in the bars at night celebrating the fact that I am not a qualified open water diver (as i actaully managed to pass the final exam 47/50 to my surprise).

Me and Kim finally left Thailand (kicking and screaming) for are long journey to Malyasia. The journey started off with a 4 hour boat journey to Chumpon, where we caught the over night train to Butterworth Malayisa that took about 20 hours. The another ferry ride to are final destination Penang......