Wednesday through Friday on Koh Tao

The learning continues, lol... Wednesday was my first aid (Emergency First Responder) course... it was much like any other course I've taken, other than it was taught in a dive school and I was the only student so it was nicer. This course was actually much simpler than the Red Cross and St John's courses that I've done, and it had fewer acronyms to learn and steps to take.

I think I have more experience with first aid than my poor instructor, so we went through everything quite quickly and easily and I had most of the afternoon to myself. She had a lot of questions about different first aid scenarios when we were talking about the 'best' way to handle them, so we spent lots of time talking and problem solving, it was fun! Karin (the instructor) and I went on her bike up the road to a little mom n' pop lunch spot cann KenYa, and I had some amazing Panang Curry Shrimp, omg it was so good... I think I'll have to make the walk back there again before it's time to go home!!


I was fairly happy not to be diving during the day, and once the course was done for the day (yay! I'm now EFR certified!! "My name is Shauna, I'm an Emergency Responder. May I help you?") I went for my first massage of the trip, and then I had a lovely pedicure. The girl who was doing my pedicure has a boyfriend (from Vancouver) who is apparently living in Korea and teaching English at Poly School, so we had a bit of a chat while she did my nails. It's a small, small world when you get right down to it!


I had dinner with my diving pals (one was going home later the same night)... I had these amazing beef kebabs on the BBQ at a resort up the path, they were so nice - almost as good as AB beef!!  :)  We stayed at the resort under cover from the rain storm, hanging out and watching the storm blow in across the water. Many of the restaurants along the beach have tarps they pull down as walls to protect you from the ocean when it starts to come pelting you in the face sideways, so we were warm and dry. By 9:30 I was wiped again (all this sun and surf and studying wears me out!!), and I was passed out in bed by 10pm, lol... I am such a party animal!!  :)

Thursday was a good day, tiring but good. It was the first day of my Diver Stress and Rescue course... we did theory in the morning in the classroom (watched videos, ran over possible panic/rescue scenarios, and the 'best' way to solve them), and then I was free from 1030-1230. I went down to swim at the beach for the first time since I arrived, and spent about an hour in the sun before I decided I should probably go hide in the shade before my upcoming stressful dives... I was really nervous about the in-the-water scenarios, I'm not sure what got into my head but I was nearly panicked myself about it, lol. In the end it was great. My silly instructor was falling off the boat every chance she got, splashing about and 'drowning' so I could rescue her, and before long other instructors were doing the same thing.

We practiced what to do with someone panicking on the surface with their scuba gear, or just out swimming; what to do if I find someone unconsious underwater, as well as a review of how to rescue myself in a variety of situations. Once we were back up on the boat I was afraid to be too far from my mask and fins because it seemed that every time I was about to sit down and drink my tea someone got busy drowning, lol. At the end of the day I got to log one of the dives, and I was Ex.Haus.Ted. The boat got back around 6, we cleaned our gear, logged our dive, talked about the scenarios and I went home to shower some of the sea outta my hair. I noticed that after just one day my pedicure was trashed and made a note that I'd have to go back again before heading home!

For dinner I went to a restaurant up the path that shows movies every night at 7:30. I had a coconut shake (in a coconut no less!) and some great curry, and watched the movie Ghost Writer, which I didn't have high hopes for but really enjoyed. I watched the movie while relaxing on the beachfront with my coconut shake, and by 9:30 I was soooo ready to crawl back into my rock-hard bed and turn on the fan.

Friday was the last day of my rescue course. We did the theory in the morning again, practiced using the compass in making search patterns on the beach (ones that I would actually do while swimming in the water if someone or something was lost), and then had about 45 minutes before the boat went out. The 'fun' started nearly as soon as we got on the goat, my instructor Karin and her assistant DiveMaster in Training (DMT) Jeremy made sure I got lots of practice saving people from death and drowning. The first dive we practiced the underwater search patterns, and I surprised myself by actually being able to do it (it's so easy to get turned around underwater and go east instead of west, or lose count of kicks/turns!).

In the second dive I was to take my 2 'worst divers in history' out on a fun dive around an area called Japanese Gardens... if this is any indication, my diving buddy Jeremy managed to put almost EVERY piece of equipment on wrong, so that I had to fix it all during our buddy check (more practice is good!), and after I was in the water Karin started her dive standing on the top rung of the ladder in her scuba gear with her mask on her head, her regulator hanging at her side, and a big piece of watermelon in her mouth, shouting down to me, "Can I jump in now?" When she jumped off the boat she hadn't inflated her BC (like a life jacket that you pump air into) so she sank like a rock and I had to go down and get her... the whole dive was like that once we got ourselves under water. One or the other was constantly losing a fin, or missing their mask (both of which I had to go find and put back on for them), dropping their regulators and trying to get at mine (which, at the time, I was actually using the BREATHE underwater, wouldn't you know!!)... at one point when I was sufficiently distracted by seeing a blue-spotted stingray float by, Karin did succeed in yanking my regulator out of my mouth (she had lost hers and couldn't breathe, panicked divers seem to go for the quickest solution when they lose their air, which often means they try to take YOURS!), but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to grab her straps so she didn't float away, at the same time blowing my little bubbles and calmly reaching for my alternate air source to breathe out of that until I got her calmed down and back on her own air... it didn't even make my heartbeack quicken, I was so impressed with myself, and got many many kudos for it on the surface!  :)

After that we actually got to do a fun dive (a real fun dive where I got to look at the coral and sealife rather than just the 2 crazies I was diving with!) for 30 minutes around Japanese Gardens, and it was so beautiful. I saw so many different fish, and lots of things I didn't notice last time I was there because we were doing training dives and not fun diving. I even got to do a couple of swim-throughs, where there are little holes/tunnels in parts of the rocks, and you can swim through them like an obstacle course, it was great for practicing my buoyancy, I loved it!!  And I was very happy once I reached the surface, as after ONE more panicked diver scenario I actually got to take off and stow my kit, officially an Stress and Rescue Diver - woohoo!!

I laid out on the sundeck for the hour of time we had left (the sky was gray but no more rain fell), visiting with the rest of the divers and my buddies. Once everyone was back on board, we headed home... we couldn't actually come in by longtail like we usually did since the waters were so choppy, so we took the boat back to Mae Head, the nearest big port, and unloaded gear, across the decks of 4 diving boats, oxygen tanks and gear bags from boat to boat, to boat, to boat, and finally to shore and into trucks to take everything back to the shop. My fancy new red diving card was reading and waiting for me when we got back to log our dives, and I have now hit 20 logged dives with rescue certification, woohoo!!!  :)

When the day was done and the gear was packed away I went out for a few drinks with the instructors/DMTs (the first time I've even had a real drink since being on the island because I've been diving every morning!) at one of the local bars, and laughably I was exhausted and back in my bed with my book before 10pm. I went to bed still feeling the world rocking beneath me, uncertain a few times whether I still might be on a boat, and hoping the feeling will go away soon... what a week, what a week, what  week it's been!!  :)