Just Remember To Keep Breathing... (Thailand)

Mid March, 2006

I arrived on Koh Tao, a little island in the gulf of Thailand, having already selected a diving centre from the thirty or so outfits which operate on the island. Koh Tao has a reputation for not only some of the best diving in Thailand, but also some of the cheapest. At 9300 Baht (about 140 GBP), my 4-day PADI Open Water Course was going to get me the qualification cheaper than if I went to Koh Phi Phi or Koh Lanta on the other side of the peninsula.

I arrived, checked in and straight away was introduced to my instructor, Annika from Finland, and the others on the course: Matts, David and Simon from Sweden, and Veibeke from Norway. The next day at 9 a.m. we went straight into the pool! A quick swimming test, (14 lengths), and a treading water exercise, (10 min), quickly reminded me that I could be fitter and also that I am quite dense and prone to sinking.

So we quickly learned about the gear and then it was time to breathe underwater. No matter how much you understand about how it all works, it still takes a leap of faith to put the mask on, put the regulator in your mouth, put your head underwater and try to take in a big lungful of what you hope will be air, not water. But air it is, (assuming you've cleared your regulator of course!), and breathe you indeed can. Having crossed that threshold, you start to see the possibilities of this neat little trick!

The next few days were spent covering theory in the classroom, followed by going out on the boat to learn skills in the open ocean. Having only decided to learn to dive a few days before, (I'd previously had no long-standing desire to do it like some of my fellow students), I had quickly come to realise how addictive diving can be. At one point on my second dive I rounded the corner of a large rock wall to find that the ocean floor fell away dramatically into a deep canyon below me, and at that point I realised what this experience was like. It was like flying under your own power, just gently kicking your legs to soar along and surveying the landscape below. It was just incredible.

So after four days at Asia Divers I received my PADI Open Water qualification, which makes me a "qualified diver" and able to dive for fun anywhere I like, (within certain limits). However, I had loved the experience so much that I stayed on to do my Advanced Open Water qualification straight away. This involved making five more dives, and getting instruction in the areas of deep water diving, photography, peak performance buoyancy, underwater navigation and night diving!

The night dive was a very different experience to a day dive. You see different sea life at night, such as the very large sleeping trigger fish we saw wedged into his crevice. During the day they are very territorial, and chase and bite divers who stray into their patch, but we managed not to wake him with our torches! Also you see the colours of the ocean differently by torchlight than by filtered daylight. The colours are much more vivid, with the red end of the spectrum being particularly stronger as that is the part of daylight that gets progressively more filtered out by water the deeper you go.

The deep water dive was also interesting, and involved a nitrogen narcosis test. At around 30m or so, the increased dissolved nitrogen content in a diver's blood can induce a narcotic effect which impairs judgement and can make the diver act strangely. We tested this by timing each of us performing a simple task at the surface, then again at 30m. We all managed to take much longer to do it, but more tellingly thought that it was incredibly funny that we were all taking longer to do it! The effect goes when you ascend.

The photography dive was excellent, although I still haven't received the pictures from the dive centre's digital camera. Never trust a dive instructor to get it together to do anything other than dive! Although often likeable, they do tend to have a "mañana" mentality about everything else. I took this fish pic with a waterproof disposable camera on another dive. My dive buddy, (you always dive in pairs), took these other two of me jumping in and making bubbles. Anyway, I found that underwater photography is tricky; there are lots of things to think about at once, especially as an inexperienced diver!

My diving courses on Koh Tao ended with another novel experience - rain. Having not seen a drop of it in the two and a half months since leaving England, I was surprised that the sound I heard outside my bungalow one afternoon was not the gardener hosing the lawns! As anyone who has visited the English seaside knows, beachy environments are no use to man nor beast in the rain! So I decided to flee west across the Thai/Malay peninsula to see if the climate was more hospitable on the island of Koh Lanta...