February 9th, 2023
Max and I woke up, got coffee and breakfast, then headed to the dive center for our courses. He did his open water refresher with Perry, one of the dive masters, since it had been more than six months since his last dive. I had my open water course, which was a total of six students with my instructor, Martin. Two of the students are from Vancouver, and Max and I met them in a restaurant in Hoi An a month ago and had exchanged recommendations when we recognized the accents! Max and I couldn’t believe we had run into them again.
Max started in the pool, and I started in the classroom. After learning a bunch of theory, we went out and put together then took apart our equipment over and over again, performing all the checks until it became familiar. My buddy is a British guy named George; we will have to stay together during the dives and do our checks and drills together. He seems really nice!
Finally, we hopped into the pool to tread water for 10 min, then swim 200 m without stopping. I was surprised at the lack of swimming skills in a scuba diving class. People were very tired and slow, and four people quickly switched to elementary backstroke, which basically turned my experience into threading the needle through people going in various, non-straight directions. But everyone passed! Thank goodness.
We broke for lunch, and I met up with Max to catch up and get some street food (noodles). His refresher went well and he is done for the day, so his plan is to drop off our laundry and read his book on the beach.
I went back for pool skills. We put on all of our scuba gear and went into the pool around 12:45pm. We had to do so many skills (tow a tired swimmer, take off your mask, then put it back on and clear it, take off your regulator, then put it back on and clear it, become neutrally buoyant and control your depth, run out of oxygen and share air with your buddy… and on and on and on). It seemed like for every skill, one of the six of us would struggle and the rest of us would wait patiently while Martin and/or Jordan (our assistant instructor and dive master candidate) worked with them until they mastered it. George and I mostly picked things up pretty quickly, but we both hated the mask removal parts. There are two other British people in the class who are driving the instructor crazy because they always talk and don’t listen.
By the end, it was around 630pm. My hands and feet were pruney up to my wrists and ankles, which has never happened before, and I was freezing cold and shivering. Everyone was very tired. We cleaned and put away all our gear and got to go for supper. Max was shocked how late I was back. I had a hot shower and we crossed the beach to get food - we both said we wanted our food “just a little spicy” and they made it very spicy!! I had tears in my eyes and Max was sweating. It was pretty funny, but very delicious food. We went for a walk and then went back to our room so I could complete my knowledge reviews.
The next day, Max met his advanced open water class of four people, and I met up with my class. I had some more theory to do, and then we planned our dive and got our equipment together. It turns out, both of our classes will dive off the same boat in the afternoon, but just do different things. We got some lunch and then went out to the scuba boat in a “long tail boat”, which is basically a cool boat taxi.
During our first dive, we had to do some of the same skills we did in the pool, but in the ocean which feels a bit more real. As we descended the rope, slowly equalizing our ears, the lady from Vancouver had some serious trouble equalizing and started to panic. The instructor tried to help pull her toward the surface, but because the pain was disorienting her, she thought he was pulling her downward and tried to fight him off. When she was back at surface, she seemed a bit traumatized and even though everyone was very encouraging, she decided to leave the course and head back to the boat. I felt so sad for her.
Underwater, we completed our skills and saw some cool fish and corrals, including a lion fish! The next dive was similar. We got to see whatever we happened to see while doing our skills, but couldn’t really go looking for animals.
We got back at a more reasonable time (5pm) but I had another hour of videos to watch plus two quizzes. This course is turning out to be a bit more intense than I had bargained for! After going for a walk to get some water, I got to work on my reviews. Max went on a night dive and saw a stingray, and a sea turtle! I am super jealous. We got some curry when he was back and I was done my coursework with some people from his class, then went for drinks with them. Probably stayed out later than we should have, but they were a really fun/funny group.
Feb 8 was our final day! My class met up after breakfast, and did some final theory reviews. Then we had to do our exam, which was pretty easy. I think Martin was an excellent teacher. We planned our final two dives, got our gear together, then went for lunch. I felt very excited - we had a couple of skills to do during our first dive, but the second dive was supposed to be only fun!
We went down for the first dive with a photographer who took fancy photos of us. The skills were tricky (and running out of air related), but we got them done and then got to swim around the reef which was incredible. The second dive was even more incredible! We saw a sea turtle and lots of amazing fish, and Max saw a great barracuda.
We headed back to clean and put away our gear, log our dives, and get our certificates. Max tried to sign us up for a “fun dive” the next day, but there was only one spot left! We were told to check back in the morning. We had celebratory beers as a class, and it was really nice to just relax. We went for dinner with people from both mine and Max’s classes at a cool local Thai place, then went out for drinks at a bar that had beer pong, then went dancing at a Latin dancing place! Overall, a super fun night.
On Feb 9 we headed to the dive center to see if they had any new openings for diving, and they said they did not. We wandered up the street to a small dive shop they recommended, which was closed, and then back to another small outfit “Seashell Diving”, where we met a Turkish guy named Can (”John”) who agreed to take us for a fun dive that afternoon! He said it would just be us three, and he would bring a go pro to take photos and videos. We were excited. We went for breakfast on the beach, and a sudden downpour happened, then we went back up to get snacks and meet Can to get our gear organized. He is the most happy, enthusiastic person you can imagine.
We went diving at two pretty famous sites here: Twins and White Rock. The dive boat was a big yellow boat with complimentary tea, cookies and pineapple. I descended into my first ever dive with Max and my first dive without Martin and George. At first, I had trouble equalizing my ears because I had no frame of reference, but I went back up and took my time and it was okay. The dive was amazing!! We saw big groupers and some beautiful angel fish. Max waved at the colourful anemone-like creatures and they all disappeared. We managed to dive for a long time - 51 minutes - because Max and I both use our air relatively slowly. Max is a good buddy and always points out cool things and checks in with me.
We hung out on the boat to rest between dives. The crew are very nice, but we went up top and had the whole place to ourselves. It was really lovely.
On the next dive, we saw a trigger fish right when we got in the water! I did a better job at descending slowly and steadily, and we were off. We saw another beautiful angel fish, and a moray eel poking his head out. Then Can spotted another eel swimming through the water! Very cool. We headed back to surface, went back, put away our gear and logged our dives. Can said he would send us his go pro photos… he is great.
We had our last dinner on the beach, and then headed to our beach bungalow for one final night. I am especially sad to leave Koh Tao, because it really feels like the end of the vacation. The next few days will be a lot of logistics. What an incredible trip we have had!
