Koh Tao will definitely go down as one of our favourite places and periods out of this whole trip. The moment we got off the boat we could see how clear and clean the water and beach was even at this - the business - end of the island. This is quite a long post, but it was such a happy and actioned packed week that we really want to document it.

We had one aim here and that was diving. We'd been told that this was the cheapest and best place on earth to learn to dive and judging by the dozens of dive schools driving competition and the colourful coral you could see from the shore, we were pretty sure they'd be right. While picking our dive centre for the week we met Ben and Juliette - funniliy enough from Bristol too - who proved to be our neighbours and partners in crime for just about all our antics here right up to the last meal (more on food in a bit.) A simple concrete beach hut 20 metres from the water was our home for the next 7 or 8 days and it was ours for the princely sum of $6/night as we were coughing up $300 each for a 4 day diving course. Worth every penny.

We wasted no time and started our course with Simple Life Diving the afternoon we arrived. Our group of 5 made up of Ben, Juliette and Paul, from Essex (the one with the fabulous hair in the dive video.)Our dive instructor, Jo, was great and took her time with us in the pool on day one so we all got familiar with our kit and practiced our skills.

Our first day out on the sea for our first 2 dives was awesome despite Brett having problems equalising his ears as we descended and having to swap masks with Jo while 10m under water! Seeing the huge range of tropical fish and coral, even a snoozing sting-ray was something else. Its such a cliche to say it's a whole different world down there, but it is so true. All we kept saying and thinking when we came back up was how we couldn't wait to get back down there! Brett and Ben had eyeballed an all-you-can-eat pizza joint, and Ben being a well-stacked lad with a big appetite and a competitive streak, and Brett being half American, you can imagine how the next few hours went! Management lost a lot of money on our table that night! Brett topped out at 24 slices, with Ben putting a few more away.

Our second set of dives the following day were equally cool, and after we completed some more tests, we were officially "Open Water Divers" - not that Stace or I would ever go out, just the pair of us, although now technically we could. We had a good knees-up with the Simple Life Crew that night to celebrate. Brett of course had to a) do a running-diving-face-plant through the ring of fire, b) order buckets of G&T instead of a glasses (by accident) and c) go swimming in the private pool of beach-front villa because some Irish blokes said it was fine. Good times, bad hangover. Stace also did the worst fire limbo ever.

We kept our chest-thumping 'Wolfpack' together (watch the Wolf of Wall Street if our video doesn't make sense!) and returned to the sea after a recovery day. We did another Adventure 2 dives to start counting towards our advanced qualification, this time going down to 28m and also swimming right around a huge wreck (HMS something or another) which was really eery. After another "day-off" we headed back to the shore with Ben and Juliette, but this time to go snorkling for sharks in Aow Leuk Bay. Yes, somehow Stace had gone from sea-fearer to aquatic adrenaline-junkie in 1 week and rounded the week off by swimming in the open sea with 11 baby 2ft black tip fin sharks. (That look exactly like you would imagine them to - sorry no pictures).

Okay, so we blew our budget to s***. But it was worth every penny! We had great company for the week with Ben, Juliette and Paul and learned a new skill/gained a new hobby that we will definitely do more of in the States. Our final day was topped off with a return to the ring in the all you can eat pizza joint for Brett and Ben, with Brett finishing around the mid-twenties again, but Ben pushing through to an epic 35 slices of pizza. Time to move - those orang utans in Borneo are not going to save themselves.....