A week in paradise..

When I stepped off the boat in Koh Tao I was amazing at how beautiful this island was. It had the mandatory long golden stretches of beach with cocoanut trees leaning over and the mountains to the rear.
I was staying at a hostel down the far end of the beach. The hostel was of a good standard and looked fairly new, all I wanted to do was sleep! I can't have slept for more than 2 hours the previous night.
I relaxed in the hostel until later in the afternoon, once again I was trying to plan what exactly I wanted to do here on this island! Koh Toa is world famous for diving so I figure I have to get in the water here! That afternoon I was walking along the beach looking for a place to eat when I noticed a big sign saying "1 breath, 1 dive,How deep can you go?- free dive here!!" That court my attention straight away, I have always loved to dive down and see how deep I can go and how long I can hold my breath. I remember watching a program about a Swedish woman who held the world record for a 200 meter dive! That's further down than scuba divers can go! It was something I had to consider doing!
When I made my way to the end of the beach I decided I needed a nice cold Chang! When I sat down I realised I was next to an English girl I had been chatting to on the bus down here!
After a few drinks we had dinner and then a few more drinks.. And once again I had found a new travel buddy! There is no such thing as traveling alone!
The next day we chilled out by the beach and did a little snorkelling, we had heard about the boat trips around the island for snorkelling and signed up for that the next day!
We left the port at 10 am and didn't get back until around 6 so it was a full days trip and we were both exhausted from all the swimming! The reefs around the islands were amazing, we saw so many fish. I had decided I was going to sign up for the freediving course the following day so I decided it would be better if I laid off the beer that night!

I was joined on the freediving course by 2 other English people, Ben and Rankee both really nice people. We spent the first half of the day learning breathing styles and the theory behind free diving! The key thing to do whilst free diving is to hold your breath... That's about it really... You learn that when you need to breath you just need to ignore your body and keep focused!
well that afternoon we putnit all in to practice and Ben and myself managed to dive down to 15 meters and I could hold my breath for around 2 minutes, not bad for a few hours in the class room!!

My good fiends from up in Chang Mai had now arrived on the island and were staying in some posh hotel down the beach! We all really wanted to see each other so arranged to meet at Fishbowl which was conveniently just below my dorm room!

Dean had spent the week with 10 girls and was in desperate need of some male company! Let's just say we had a little too much to drink... And I woke up the wrong end of the islands which was lucky as our room had no air conditioning!

Freediving with a hangover I don't think is recommended so luckily I still felt drunk for about half the day! I managed to sober up for the important practical part of the course. Today we had to dive down to 20 meters and perform a series's of different manoeuvres to demonstrate what we had learnt including a rescue test at 15 meters!
When I finally made it to 20 meters and came up I was so happy! Happy enough to get back on it that night and have another drink especially as it was my last night with all my friends from the GAdventures tour!

After another great night out we were all saying our final goodbyes as they left for Bangkok and i left for Koh Sumari!