After three weeks of drinking like an Englishman, I needed some rest and detox! I hadn't decided where my next destination would be after the Full Moon Party. But with the rest of our crew heading out, Ryan and I decided to team up and continue on together! Him and Jo had just been in Koh Tao getting their Open Water PADI scuba certifications. Scuba diving is one thing I have always wanted to do but never I thought I would be able to because of my claustrophobia. Hearing that Koh Tao is the 2nd cheapest place in the world (behind Honduras) to get your PADI Scuba license I had been debating for a while whether to do it or not. So, when Ryan and I were talking about it, I asked him one question,"Do they take Credit Cards?" His answer, "YES!" and that was it! I was going to get my Open Water license and Ryan was going to go for his Advanced Certification! After seeing off Jo and a solid night of normal sleep, we were back on a ferry for the two hour ride that cruised back past Koh Phangnan and docked on the island of Koh Tao!
We went back to Davy Jone's Locker where Ryan had done his first course, and I was able to sign up and start that day! The first day consisted of sitting in a room watching a very corny instructional video. I started as the only one in the course. But as fate would have it, after about 20 mins, an English girl from London named Natalie joined me and would soon become an amazing new friend!! We got really lucky and had not only one amazing instructor Mike, but Tom was finishing his Dive Master Trainer Course and would be shadowing/training with us too! The next day was spent half in "class" and the other half in the pool. We had to put on all the gear and learn all of the underwater skills. We started just by putting our faces down in the water. It felt very unnatural breathing underwater for a long period of time. I did really well the whole time until they made me take my mask off and put it back on underwater. I had trouble blowing the water out of the mask, freaked out and shot up out of the water. This was the first and only moment that I thought, "Maybe I'm not going to be able to do this after all." But I pushed through and we made it through the rest of the skills just fine!
Day 3 was the day we would do our first real dive! We were up at the crack of dawn, loaded all the gear and ourselves into the back of a pickup truck and were off to the port! We did two Open Water dives that day off the coast of the island. I didn't have any panic moments and loved every second of it! It's a totally different world down there. It's hard to even put into words what it was like to be down on the ocean floor surrounded by some of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen! It was one successful day, and we decided to celebrate with a Chang and some of the best Thai Curry on the island that night!
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| Ryan and I loaded up on the way to the Port |
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| Survived my first dive! |
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| Beautiful sunset on the way home |
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| Celebratory Chang and the best curry on the island! |
Our last day of the course was a big one. Not only would we be doing our final two dives to finish our certification, but a videographer would be documenting the whole thing and we had promised to not dissappoint! With a small group of only four, we had to bring our "A" game to make a great video, and that we did! We had so much fun hamming it up for the cameras all morning and on our first dive. Then it came time for the second dive where we would have to finish performing our underwater skills on the bottom of the ocean. For some reason, Natalie and I had had gotten ourselves all worked up about doing the full mask removal on the ocean floor (I think because of my panic in the pool a few days before). Everytime we would go down for a dive I would have a mini panic where I wanted to go back to the surface just for one more breath of fresh air. Usually I'm able to push right through it, but with the added anxiety of the mask removal, I wasn't able to and panicked big time! I looked at my instructor and just started frantically motioning upwards. Thank goodness we had gotten really close with our instructors, and he was able to calm me down and get me through the panic without going back to the surface! Once we got down to the bottom I anxioulsy watched Natalie do her skills and then breezed through mine as well. As soon as we were done with those I was A-Okay and back to my preformance for the camera, ie moonwalking on the ocean floor and trying to run without our fins!
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| Ready for our last day of diving! |
We had an amzaing last day and once we came up from that last dive we were officially PADI certified (if we had passed our written test!) We celebrated with the viewing of our video, a big dinner and night out that night, complete with some more bucket straight arms and Ryan tackling Natalie and I into the ocean fully clothed!
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| Scuba Group with Jessica, our amazing videographer! |
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| Ready... |
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| Set... |
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| Straight-Arm! |
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| After being Rugby tackled into the water |
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| The culprit |
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| The Aftermath |
I"m so excited Ryan talked me into going through with it. It was such an amazing experience and I look forward to lots more scuba adventures in the future!!
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