The hardest thing about Koh Tao, was getting there. The travel arrangements to the island were easy to book, but it was the boat itself that put a little bit of a "stink" on our trip. Simply put, we dealt with several people inside a crowded commuter boat that could not handle the rockiness of the medium sized waves. The boat docked in Koh Tao with more bags than just the passengers carry on.
Our main goal while at Koh Tao was just to get SCUBA certified and get some sweet diving under our weight belts. I had spoken to a good friend of mine, Mark, who had worked on the island for a few years and tried to arrange our open water dives with him. Upon landing, I found out this his dive shop had closed down a few nights before we had arrived. Luckily, there are about 650,000 dive shops on the island and it was super easy to find a place that would help us out. We ended up booking our class with Ban's Dive Resort and got a free hotel room out of the deal as well.
DAY 1
The first day of diving started at around 7:30 in the morning. We loaded up the speed boat and went to the dive boat. We were briefed by our instructor Bex, who was super hot, and she told us what skills we would be covering and how deep we would be going. It was nice to get in the water and see what was beneath us. We saw an assortment of fish, stingrays, sea snakes, and brightly colored coral. Brandon and I had mentioned to Dave that sea snakes are one of the deadliest snakes in the world, but no matter how many times we told him, Dave always asked everyone he saw about the toxicity of a sea snake. So for the record Dave, SEA SNAKES ARE POISONOUS!! Regardless, we were never in any immediate danger with the snakes as they stayed away from us and we never ventured close to them either.
That night we decided to hit up the Fish Bowl, which is the bar that Ban's Dive Resort owns. Bex had mentioned to us that the next day of diving would start a bit later than today because she was going to party for a while. We did what any good student would do, and followed the lead of our instructor. The three of us went to the Fish Bowl and ordered the traditional Thai bucket of Coke, Red Bull, and whiskey. DELICIOUS! We split a couple of those and bought Bex a drink of her own and then called it a night.
DAY 2
We got started at the crack of noon today and were definitely super excited about the last day of our course. We went to the same area that we had gone to yesterday, but we went to the opposite side of the dive site. Our test this morning was to do an emergency ascent from 6 meters below. The three of us jumped in and Dave did his dive first. As Brandon and I were floating in the water watching Dave to his test, i heard a small whistle coming from my suit. Apparently I had a tiny hole in my air gauge and it was leaking little bubbles in the water. Bex took a look at it and said not to worry so I didn't. Next thing I know, I am floating in the water and I feel something dragging me from behind. I asked Brandon to take a look at my tank and he came up to the surface and yelled a profanity and then told me that my tank was just dangling in the water behind me. Brandon being quick on his fins fixed my problem that my "dive buddy" didn't catch. I'm not mad...
We had one more test to pass before we officially became certified divers. We had to master our neutral buoyancy. We sat at the bottom of the ocean, about 18 meters down, and learned the art of neutral buoyancy. We let out our air and took deep breaths and started to float in the water and as we exhaled we were able to bring ourselves back down. The art of neutral buoyancy is being able to rise and fall using only your breath. We mastered the art and shook Bex's hand underwater and the continued our dive as PADI certified scuba divers.
That night was concluded with a Ban's fashion show with free drinks and fire dancers. It was a taste of what real island life is and it was AWESOME!!!
Koh Tao was incredible and I would definitely love to come back again for an extended period of time..
