Hey everyone, Well I am now back from Koh Tao after being there for 5 days doing an Open Water PADI dive course which has been really great. The island itself is beautiful and a lot smaller than Koh Phangan but strangely in the area where we were staying there were lots of western restaurants and not many thai! I guess they are simply catering for the western divers that fill this island. The weather has been absolutely glorious over the last few days - not a drop of rain (yay!) which has been good for diving as it was very calm and the visibility was good. The first day we arrived, we simply got settled into our rooms and found out about the dive course and filled in lots of forms. That morning the boys had said goodbye to Liberty (bunglaows where they stayed) and the lovely lovely lady who owned them - Eiuw - and it was all very sad. Thankfully me, Dorette and Steph were going back to Koh Phangan so we didn't have to say goodbye quite yet. We started our course early the next day - 9am - with the morning spent in a classroom watching very cheesy American dive videos (PADI is American) and filling in quizzes and and learning the basics for diving. The we had a few hours for lunch and then spent the afternoon kitting up with all of the dive stuff - my god it is soo heavy! - and then in the pool for about 2 hours, which we spent mostly underwater. It is sooo cool how you can breathe so long and so easily underwater but I really had to master the technique as you have to breathe much much more slowly than usual which is tricky at first but then comes natuirally - you just feel like a fish! We did lots of skills in the pool like taking off our masks, breathing, doing things with our buddy and lots of skills in case of emergencies but hopefully that we will never have to actually use. We only finished about 5.30pm and by then we were all so tired from carrying the equipment and form being underwater so long. My friend Max was at the same dive resort so I saw her for a bit and we all went out for dinner that evening to a great mexican. The next day was pretty much the same but just learning more skills and then another 3 hours or so in the pool in the afternoon. We had to do more swimming around and doing buoyancy skills and as the pool was very dirty it was really difficult to see so i kept crashing into the walls and losing my instructor! Our instructor's name was Jo and she was really lovely and she had another guy assisting her while we were in the pool, called Archie, who was absolutely crazy! The interesting thing about that day was that the group who went properly diving that morning - Max was one of them - saw a whale shark!! Apparently they are very rare around this time of year and they were extremely lucky to see one - Max was very impressed. We saw a video that evening of the whale shark as the camera guy had luckyily been there as well and it looked, well, awesome! Went out for dinner at an Italian and to bed failry early as was rather tired. On the 3rd day of course we finished doing the last module in the morning and then we had to do the exam which was actually fairly easy and we all passed which was good. In the afternoon we went for our first proper dive down to 6 and 12m!! We carried all the stuff to the boat and then set off and went to a place called the Japanese Gardens about 20 mins boat ride from where we were on Koh Tao. We had to kit all our stuff up on the boat while it was speeding along which was a tad difficult with the boat swaying so much but we managed, then we had a briefing and then we had some time before we had to put everything on. Jumping off the boat with the tank and everything on has to have been one of the scariest things in my life, especially when the second time we had to do it backwards! The first dive we simply swam around and got used to being in the sea etc and clearing our ears as the pressure lowered and we saw lots of lovely fish. The second dive - which by this time I was exhausted after already heaving everything back on and back off again of the boat - we did lots of skills like sitting on the bottom, clearing our masks, doing an emergency ascent etc which went well as well as lots of swimming around. Unfortunately by the end of this dive I wasn't feeling very well - stomach ached - and on the boat ride back I wasn't very well. However I though it could maybe just be sickness and hoped it would pass but for the rest of the evening I wasn't very well and couldn't keep anything down and felt like I was going to faint. So after trying to eat dinner I went back to my room and watched a cheesy film and tried to sleep but to no avail. Eventually I was so worried that something was really wrong I wondered down to the bar in my pyjamas (!) looking for my instructor but instead found Darunee (one of the POD support people) and she took me and one of the guys, Tim, who'd had a nut allergy reaction to the doctors. There they treated Tim and then gave me a look over and before I knew it announced that not Tim but myself would have to stay overnight in the clinic! Apparently I had low blood pressure and a stomach infection. Goodness knows how I got either of these as I'd been careful about food and we hadn't gone very deep in the diving but nonetheless I had to stay overnight and they put me on a drip - not very nice.Didn't sleep well as they kept giving me tablets and injections but Tim and Darunee stayed with me quite a while and my room was nice with a TV and air conditioning. All of the next day though I had to stay in the clinic on the drip and so I missed my last two dives and couldn't complete the Open Water course which i was very annoyed about and I missed being on the video they made on the last day of the Open Water dives :-( But still Steph was great and she came to see me in the clinic and spent the whole day with me and we watched a dvd and chatted and read so it wasn't too bad. Went home about 6pm feeling a lot better and even managed to go out and have a bit of dinner and see the others. It was our last night together with the guys so that was a bit sad but we said goodbye to them the next day properly when we were on the same ferry together. The last day we just spent doing some shopping and watching the video which was very good and checking out. I still wasn't feel great but it was nice to come back to Koh Phangan. I'm now staying with the girls in Seatanue as I had to move out of my bungalow. We are just doing lots of last things on the island and saying goodbye to all the lovely people we've met here and of course buying those last minute presents! I'm really looking forward to coming home but I just can't believe that my 5 months of travels are finally over. Hope everyone is well and to see you all when I get back, Love Sam xxx