Monday and Tuesday in Thailand

Monday morning was gray and cloudy but still warm with a pleasant breeze. We had to be at our course for 9am to get started on the advanced diving course. On this island, Koh Tao, you hear a whole mix of languages walking around everywhere you go... German, Dutch, Swedish, and French seem to be the most of them, it seems there are Europeans everywhere! In my course this morning I met my first American, Brian from Newport Beach in CA. Luckily he's one of those Americans who breaks typical young-US-traveller stereotypes, and it's been a pleasure diving with him so far...

So we started our course Monday morning with the bookwork and the training on land. We marched around the beach making little squares using our compasses (new skill for me, never used a compass before!!), mimicking the activities we would be doing underwater. The longtail came for us at 12:30, and the water was choooooooooooppy!! I was considering losing my lunch as we were pulling up to the dive boat, but my stomach sorted itself out and all was well again.

Our first dive of the day was the Navigation Specialty... using our compass along with our buddy to make little patterns in the water, hopefully arriving back at the instructor and our course partners (provided we used our compasses and counted our kicks properly!). We managed well, my buddy and I, and the 4 of us all passed the Navigation section of the course.

Second dive of the day was the Peak Performance Buoyancy... in the water you float, right? Add a neoprene wetsuit and you float some more... add a steel tank full of oxygen and you sink... put on a vest that fills itself with air, you float, add about 7kgs of weight around your waist, you sink... breathe in... you float, breathe out, you sink... get the picture??  :)  Yes, lots of floating and sinking that goes on while you're under water, but the key is to control where you're at in the water using your breath... the best way to learn how to do this is by taking this special course, and I was so happy we did... I can now float mid-water in the cross-legged lotus position, standing on my head, I can get myself through narrow passes and take photos with my head looking under rocks and my feet up in the air, I *love* it!!  :)  I am now officially buoyant!!  :)

At the end of the day we arrived back on the island around 5:30, logged our dives, cleaned our equipment, and then did the review/bookwork for the next day's dives... we finished that all up around 7 and decided it was time for some grub - all that mucking about underwater sure does make a girl hungry!!  We went for dinner, the 4 of us who are diving together, at this amazing (really really amazing Indian place up the road...

Tuesday was much the same, met at the shop in the morning but this time at 7am, the boat left at 7:30. Dives of the day were the deep dive, the digital photography dive, and the night dive. The ride out at 7:30 was fine, but once we got to the dive site visibility was less than a metre... this means that you couldn't even see a full metre in front of you as you were descending... to 30 metres... ugh! The first part of the descent was along a mooring line, so we held on to the rope and stayed really close together. At about 20m our instructor led us to the sandy bottom, though I can tell you that I wouldn't have known it was sandy but for actually setting my fins down on it!! We did our few exercises (including navigating a there-and-back course, pretty much blind, with only our compasses) and then slowly made our way up. When you do deeper dives like that you can't just rush your way to the surface or you might end up hurting your lungs, so we kinda meandered our way up blindly behind the instructor. Part of the way up I bumped my leg on some anemone (I thought it was moss at the time, but 5 minutes later I could tell by the burning feeling on my leg that it wasn't so friendly)... we made it back to the boat safe and in one piece, with 4 tired, fairly unhappy but relieved divers... Oh, and Mom, the burn is fine, you almost can't see it anymore, so don't worry!  :)

Back up to the surface (well, to the boat deck) for an hour to relax and get ready for our photography dive... that dive was pretty cool, though I have to say it was difficult to monitor my depth, and my air, and my buddy, and my divemaster, all while taking pictures of pretty sea creatures!!  :)  It was a pretty good dive, much clearer and less stressful than the first dive, and with that 4 of the 5 certification dives were out of the way!

We arrived back on shore around 5:30, cleaned our equipment, logged our dives, grabbed a quick bite to eat and met back at the dive shop for the night boat that went out at 6:30. The night dive, in my opinion, was pretty awful... we were all 4 very nervous on the surface, and while it was beautiful descending in twilight, I am NOT (not even a LITTLE bit) a fan of diving when I cannot tell what is around/beneath me! While we each had a torch (i.e. little underwater flashlight) to shine around so we could see all of the sea life, it didn't make enough light so that I could actually see coral shelves and things before I practically ran into them, so I really didn't enjoy the dive. Top that with the fact that the instructor forgot to pack an extra torch, and of course her light burned out at the bottom, so we had to cut our dive short and come up early (it's not safe to dive if everyone doesn't have a light).

It was neat to see how some creatures behave quite differently at night than during the day (e.g. I saw a huge minefield of the spiky sea urchins, as they leave their rocky hidey-holes and actually sit out on the bare sand - so don't hit bottom on night dives!!). We also saw some giant baracudas out hunting (though we didn't see them catch anything) - they were huge! One the DMs torch burned out we couldn't all see her any longer, and I didn't see any hand signals, I just noticed by checking my dive computer that we were making our safety stop and final ascent (early)... she denied at the surface that she'd forgotten the torch, though I was first up on the boat and saw it sitting dry in the lock box... so yes, even DMs can make mistakes (even if they won't admit it)!!

All-in-all I thought it was a pretty stressful diving day, and I was happy when the boat finally brought us back at 8:30!! We 4 divers went out for dinner together and then they went drinking, and I went back to relax with a drink on my patio before calling it an early night... what a day, what a day!

However, I now have a new diving certification, I am an SSI Advanced Adventurer now (same as PADI's Advanced Open Water), and on my way to doing more in the morning!!