Saturday 7th July

We got up nice and early and waited for our pick up to the ferry port. There wasn't as much of a rush to get tickets as last time, thank god! We had some breakfast at the pier before boarding the boat and heading to Koh Tao.

There was the usual scrum of getting bags, which is getting tiring now and disembarking and heading over to Crystal diving.

We started to fill in our health and safety forms etc and I ticked I suffer from asthma, and the result of this I was not allowed to dive with them at all. Period. I was pretty pissed off! To top it off, Stu couldn't get a refund for his dives and we couldn't stay at the resort as we were diving. The reason being was because the rescue dive course was quite hard I might suffer an attack. I knew for a fact that this would never happen and was annoyed. We also didn't receive any help where to find another room. This whole process took two hours so it was no midday and the second boat of the day had arrived in search of rooms.

We started walking, for at least maybe two miles, with no success. We managed to find a room; it was possibly the worst room in the world. The door could have easily been kicked in and the bathroom wasn't properly attached to the actual house! Lovely! Well it was only one night (hopefully)!

We then got lunch, I had managed to calm down and we started thinking of a plan of action! First we went to another dive shop, Big Blue, and booked in some dives. I decided not to tell them about my asthma, but after 10 minutes everything was sorted. I had a refresher dive tomorrow morning to start the process!

We also went on a hunt for a better room, we headed over to one place and they said to come back in the morning. We worked out that the first boat leaves around 10am so most people will be checked out by 9:30am, so we would check then and move rooms!

We spent the rest of the day walking back down the Crystal diving to book Stu's dives he has to do, and get the deposit back for the keys they forgot to give to us!

Sunday 8th July

We woke up early and checked if there were rooms at the hotel we asked yesterday, SUCCESS!!!! I have never been happier! The room was more expensive, but so much nicer! We were both happier! We moved out of the other room and went to our new room all happy and pleased!

On this note, we went to get breakfast before I had to get ready to go for my refresher dive course.

I got give my equipment, fins, BCD and a wetsuit (the height of fashion me!). We got on a small boat to reach to the bigger boat and off we went.

We went to Japanese Gardens and Twins, we got the refresher course done quickly, which involved some skill work of controlling your buoyance and all that jargon. After, we had some time to check out the fish, there are so many fish here. We came across a lot, some giant porcupine fish with giant eyes that look really sad! We also saw some yellow tail barracuda, a school of glass fish, six bar angel fish, blue spotted sting ray, Muay Thai moral eels, Jenkins ray, bat fish, dancing shrimp and Jann's pipe fish.

I returned back to the room where Stu complained he was bored and I took so long to return.

We went out for some food before heading to bed for an early start tomorrow.

Monday 9th July

Today I had my course on the EFR, emergency first response. It's the same basic things I did in my lifeguarding, but more updated. I had another guy on the course just for today; we had a good laugh at the video for the EFR. It was very B movie rated, I would more class it Z.

I won't bore you with all the details, but involved some scenarios, giving the kiss of life to a dummy and an exam.

Luckily this was only half a day so by lunch time I was done! Yay!! I returned to my now 'stay at home wife' and to grab some food.

We had a wander around the town this evening where we encounter our first, obvious, lady boys. Some were convincing, if you had your beer goggles on! They were all advertising for the lady boy cabaret down the road. Stu stayed close to me, maybe a bit too close! On that note we found shelter in the room!

Tuesday 10th July

Today I woke up ready for my lesson; however there was a miscommunication somewhere and my instructor was late! No bother! I watched another Z rated film about rescues while diving. It was all pretty amusing, the best part being a diver being scared of being eaten by a shark, while in the background a puppet shark was eating him up while diving! All very amusing!

We joined the boat in the afternoon after some lunch to do the first set of dives; once again I was at Japanese Gardens and Twins.

The dive consisted of search patterns, how to calm someone down in the water, what to do when they steal your breathing regulator etc. All standard things. We also did some surface rescues, where Laura literally tried to drown me. I have come to realise I also have a poor throwing arm for life rings…! I blame the boat; there are no free spaces to swing your arm!

The worst part was how to deal with a non-breathing casualty. Too many skills involved, but the worse is carrying them up the ladder, literally! It did not help that the boat ladder steps were miles apart! I'm just glad that Laura was quite skinny! After doing this three times, I was knackered! It didn't help that I couldn't stop laughing and that I had to man handle Laura. Each time I laughed I had to stop and start again as I couldn't hold the weight anymore!

I enjoyed the ride home back in the sun!

I went to find my wife and had some dinner. Stu also did his refresher course today with Crystal; they also forgot to pick him up so he had to walk down to them, which takes 30 minutes!

Wednesday 11th July

Today I watched the final part of the exciting video, did a quick exam and then it was lunch.

We went back on the boat in the afternoon to, Japanese Gardens and Twins again to do the final part of the course.

Some more surface rescues etc and then it was the 'hell dive', which is basically the instructor does random things like, lost mask, no regulator in, lost fin, lost weights, swimming for the surface etc and I had to sort it out.

It was ok; I never let Laura out of my sight in case she did something! There were a few times I couldn't work out what was wrong!

At one point she stole my regulator and I had to use my spare, until I realised it was broken and then I had to ask for help! It was rather amusing! The end of the dive involved non-breathing rescue. I managed to get her out of the water first time today! It felt good once it was over! Hurray!!!

Stu had his two fun dives today, and we booked two more for tomorrow and a day trip the day after.

We had dinner, and we bumped into Jacquline from Vang Vieng and enroute since then. It was good to see a friendly face and we invited her out for dinner tomorrow.

Once we returned to the room I passed out after all the work out I had over the past few days!

Thursday 12th July

Today is Stu's birthday! Woo! I gave him my present, a little cat I brought in Luang Prabang in Laos, it cost me 50p, what a cheap arse I am!

We were up early 6am to get the boat to Chumporn Pinnacle. We jumped aboard the boat and had a 30 - 45 minute boat ride to the dive site. We had one instructor to ourselves today because Stu was doing a quick 'course' to allow him to dive to 30 meters without having to do his advance course.

We did a quick maths test to see whether we were feeling the effects of nitrox in our body. Which is basically too much nitrogen in the body; this has similar effects to alcohol and slows your reaction. I got my answer wrong, but that is down to me being crap at maths. Stu and the instructor laughed at my expense! He also brought down an empty water bottle full of air, which had now crumpled under the pressure. We filled it full with air, so when we reach the surface it should be bulging! When you're down at 30 meters the first colour to 'go' is red, the bottle had red written which now looked brown. This was really bizarre!

After these tests that lasted for no more than 10 minutes we were off on our way. We saw hundreds of fish; the main thing we were looking out for was the whale shark, which gets spotted at least once a week. We were keen to see one, but not this time sadly.

We got out of the water and set our equipment for our second dive. We also looked at the bottle we inflated at the 30 meters, it was now rock solid, Stu opened the lid into the bin and it went off with a loud hiss! After an hours break we were back in the water, which was quite choppy today, which proved difficult to get out of the boat.

We saw lots more of the same fish with the bonus of seeing an octopus, which is quite rare during the day. We enjoyed watching the little octopus fend off the bigger fish trying to eat him! We also saw bearded scorpion fish, banded coral shrimp, porcupine fish, white eye moral eel, potato grouper (odd name!), yellow tail fusilier, yellow tail barracuda and bat fish. All in all, a great day!

Before long it was time to surface and head home. We felt that we had seen lots of cool fish, half of them I can't even remember! But I have never seen so many fish in my life!

We returned back to the room and did the normal routine of washing my hair 50 times to get rid of the salt and finding some late lunch.

I took Stu for his birthday surprise which was a traditional Thai massage. It was rather nice, at a good price of £8 each for an hour! It was quite a rough massage which involved a lot of bending, poking and pulling. But we both felt much better afterwards! We met up with Jacqueline and had dinner together. It was really good and bizarre how we keep bumping into people all the time!

We went to bed early as we had another early start!

Friday 13th July

We woke up at 6am again and headed to the boat, we had two hours ride today to Sail Rock, another good dive site. In our group we had another couple from England, no living in Hong Kong, Zoe and Gordon.

We arrived at the dive site and got in the water as soon as possible. The water was as choppy as yesterday. I ended up breaking the water, like a whale while surface swimming and got a face full of water.

We had rented a camera today (I don't trust mine! Plus the lens cover doesn't open properly without me aiding it, stupid sand!).

I took a lot of photos, which is quite hard when the fish move quickly! There was also a lot of Japanese diving with us and the equipment they had was CRAZY! Like 50 flash lights and huge cameras! It looked like a royal pain in the arse to operate!

We got out and had a rest before getting back in for our second dive; we swam through a mini chimney formed from the rocks and daw hundreds of fish. I hope I managed to get the concept in my photos of how many fish there were! Hundreds hovering just about the coral! It was insane!

After our dive had finished we had a cat nap on the top deck while we had and hours ride to our last dive site which was closer to Koh Tao.

We jumped back in and saw more of everything, unfortunately no whale sharks, we all had our fingers and toes crossed to see one. Never mind, I was impressed at our octopus find!

Over the three dives we saw a lot of big schools of fish, bat fish, yellow tail barracuda, and silver queen fish. We also saw Spanish mackerel, crabs, copper band butterfly fish, live shark sucker (attached to Stu's tank), varicose slugs, Malabar grouper, brown Malabar grouper, butterfly fish, chevron barracuda, yellow stripe scads, titan triggerfish (stay clear, they will attack it you get too close to their territory!) streaked rabbit fish and finally lined butterfly fish!

On the way back home I noticed Stu got a bit red from sunning himself on the boat earlier, he looked rather silly!

We returned back to the island and decided to stay one more day (I couldn't be bothered to book a boat or hotel for tomorrow!). We did get a boat ticket for the day after, just in case they ran out by tomorrow!

We didn't do too much this evening as we were both tired from diving.

Saturday 14th July

We had a lie in today, before heading out in the heat to find the mini golf, which was a good 40 minutes' walk away. We had a good time with some of the holes quite crazy, I won (i.e. I got the most points hurray!!) and we headed back home in search of shade! It is quite hot in the midday heat and on the way back we tried to walk in the shade as much as possible!

We arrived back and chilled out in the pool opposite us for the rest of the day, before packing our bags (as I had a clothes explosion!) ready for tomorrow.