ko toa - PADI time!

the view from our hut

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ko tao is know as the 'dive isalnd'. the island has only been populated by tourists for about 8 years but now every beach is full of dive schools and dive shops for the day and bars and eateries for the night.

in chumphon we'd put a deposite down for our PADI (proffessional asscciation of diving instructors) open water course. this was a bit of a risk as it had been one of the first we'd found but it seemed cool and it was on the quiter southern cholok beach which is where we wanted to stay. the course included subsidised acommodation so we booked oursleves into a posh(ish) bungalow and we were ready to go.

the course firstly involved some theory and homework and then it was into the swimming pool for our first confined dive. There we were intorduced tot he basic skills, relaxed breathing, removig the mask etc. me and al seemed to have no problems and after a couple of beers that evening we were already boring people about how cool it was.

al after dive 1

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the following day we had a 2nd confined dive but this time in one of the deeper bays of the island. the tiles of the swimming pool were replaced by suprise suprise soft sand and loads a fish. just as we were finishing our final swim around we were lucky enough to be surrounded by a school of bloody great baracudas. there were about 15 of them each about 1.5m long. i was half expecting to be freeked out when you're at eye level with them all the irrational fear slips away.

our instructor was the self proclaimed 'daddy' or 'papa jack'. he was ok but made you cringe with his not quite so funny jokes.

on our third dive al was fine but it rattled me a bit. we were going down to 12m deep and had to pull our selves donw a line all the way to the bottom. the sea was choppy with a slight current and the visibility wasn't great. the following dive that day was alot more relaxed and it was easy to get my confidence back.

tim pleased with himself

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for our final day we travelled about 15km off the island into open water and loads of other dive boats were already anchored off the submerged pinnacle. it was early in the morning the sun was shining and the wster crystal clear. when we first got into the water we had to wait while, and someone asked "have you looked down yet?". i put on my mask to seen thousands of bubbles from other divers rising up from the deep blue and blackness. it was fantastic and we couldn't wait to get down there. the dive was superb, guess what, loads of fish and i saw a shark. it was only a little'un but by the time i'd got back into the boat i think it might have grown a bit in my mind! 

the last dive was a bit like the last day of school, front flips into the water, wearing sunglasses underwater and finally a wheel barrow race along the sea bed! me and al lost. after 4 hectis days we were then qualified scuba divers, scary stuff! after it was all over we decided to celebrate and webt out with our fellow students and a couple we met back in vang vieng.

on our final day we hired snorkels and to top a really good few days we swam with balck tip reef sharks. they were about the size of a big dog and it doesn't matter how many times peoplem say they're harmless when they look you in the eye there's something in your stomach that flips!

sadly the pull south dragged us back to the mainland, but we're now ready to dive on the great barrier reef!