Scuba Steve says...

Scuba diving is so creepy!!!  I have done three dives so far in the Japanese Garden and the Twins, two of the most popular dive sites here.  It takes some time getting used to the fact that you are breathing under water.  I had no idea there was so much technically stuff to learn about it too.  I had to write my final exam this morning on water pressure and density, all the diving illnesses there are, yada yada yada... It is one thing to read about it and quite another to actually do it.  I had a little freak out at the beginning of the first dive today because I got a whole mouthful of sea water by breathing through my nose instead of my mouth (its harder than you think!).  Its amazing how just inhaling to expand your lungs can make you start to float and then exhaling to shrink them makes you sink.  We had to follow the buoy line down to the sea floor and once you get down there its so freaky!  I got really claustrophobic for a bit because you can't just shoot back up to the top when you swallow a little salt water or anything because of the pressure on your lungs and the nitrogen in the compressed air you are breathing.  Today we went down to 12 metres.  The limit for recreational diving is 30 metres but we won't be going that far.  Tomorrow we do two more dives in the morning where the ocean videographer is going to tape us! Then we get to watch it in the afternoon when we get our certification cards and dive log books.  Apparently we have to have a theme for the taped dive so it is more interesting so we are all wearing camoflauge over our wetsuits.  The instructor is really excited about this so I am just going to trust her... LOL.

Last night our instructor was running a quiz night at the local hangout so our scuba group made a team.  Who ever came in first would win all the entry money (it ended up being around $250!).  We were all stoked and ready to play, but all the questions were about England!  Apparently 80% of the island are Brits!  You could definitely tell by the way they objected to any little question they got wrong. LOL.  So anyways, imagine my team made up of 4 Canadian (2 from Quebec so they didn't even understand half the questions!) plus some random French guy that joined our team... We came in dead last!  Although in the sports category they asked "In the NHL what is the name of the team from Toronto?" so at least we got one right. Haha.

I am working madly on my tan because I leave Ko Tao Thursday morning and get back to Bangkok around 8:30PM, and then leave for Cambodia on Sunday.  I am getting my visas for Cambodia and Vietnam made up in Bangkok right now so hopefully there aren't any problems with that.  I am interested to see what they look like because the Thai visa was pretty cool.  Now I have to get to bed because we dive tomorrow at 7:30 AM!  That is earlier than I get up for my lectures for school!  But the random roosters that are all over the island "cock-a-doodle-do" loud enough to wake me up around 6AM anyways.  Oh well, it could be worse!

P.S. I added a few photos to some of the earlier entries but it takes a long time to upload photos on the internet connections here so you will have to wait until I get home!!