You for Scuba today?

It's been awhile.  I should probably tell you all about scuba divin because I'm sure you're dying to know.  So here goes:

We signed up for the PADI Open Water course which is 4 dives taking us up to 18 meters and teaching the basics of scuba diving.  There were 9 people in our course, all of them were couples (except the english dude who's girlfriend didn't want to do it).  That's pretty much how the entire island was.  Tarik and I make a cute couple I think.  Our instructor Marcel was a crazy Dutch man who told ridiculous stories.  He definitely made the boring parts of the course entertaining.  The first night we had to watch 2 hours worth of boring videos.  Then the next day we learned most of the basics and then went into the pool for the whole afternoon.  In the pool we practiced all of the skills we would need to have for diving in the ocean including: obtaining neutral bouyancy, clearing water from our masks, regulating and checking how much air we use.  I thought most of the skills would come naturally but I found that I would breathe much more shallowly than I should and it was difficult to relax at first underwater.  Breathing through the regulator was very strange at first.  It feels like the air is being shot into your lungs so you inhale very quickly but then exhale forever.  Also, my jaw got very sore from biting down too hard on the mouthpiece.  It took me a long time to ease up on that because I was worried it would fall out.

On the first 2 dives I was nervous about equalizing my ears as the pressure feels very strange.  You have to plug you nose and try to blow through it every foot or 2 while decending to equalize the pressures.  I got much more comfortable with this later on.  I seemed to relax a bit once we got to the bottom and rested on the sand but i had a hard time finding neutral bouyancy and found it difficult to control where I was floating.

The 3rd and 4th dives on the next day were much better than the first 2.  I was able to control my breathing and bouyancy much better and actually had time to look at what was going on around me underwater.  The 4th dive had visability of almost 15 meters which was way better than the first 3 so it was cool to see all of the fish swimming around and coral at the bottom.  There were lots of angelfish and damselfish (the orange one from the pictures).  On this dive we went to 16.5 meters but after about 10 meters you don't notice the change in depth except that it gets a little bit harder to see.

We decided to continue on and do the Advanced Open Water course which makes us certified to go to 30 meters depth anywhere in the world.  The first dive we went down to 28.2 meters.  It was much darker and difficult to see at this depth on this site.  With lower visability the group has to stay close together and then everybody is always running into each other.  At one point I was above Tarik and he rose up kinda quickly and all of the sudden his air tank was between my legs.  Our instructor happened to be looking back and he nearly spit out his mouthpiece he was laughing so hard!  Unfortunately nobody in our group got nitrogen narcosis - which makes you act buzzed and high because of the depth - but usually that doesn't start until after 35 meters or so.  Our instuctor was really hoping one of us would be it's hilarious.  No dice though.

On the 6th dive they told us how to use dive computers and to navigate the dive site and after 20 minutes underwater sent us off in our pairs by ourselves.  This was cool as we could take our time and go wherever we wanted.

The 7th dive was a night dive.  Unfortunately the dive site we wanted to go to was too rough and it would have been difficult to get on and off the boat so we had to switch to a shallower, less exciting site.  That meant we didn't get to see any big fish or barracudas and there was a lot of silt on the site so the visability was terrible.  The colors that usually come out when you shine your flashlight on the coral weren't really there.  It was a totally different feeling though being in the dark and seeing only a few beams of light in the water.  Also at once point everyone turned off the lights and moving around in the water lit up the bioluminscent planktons.  It was really cool, all of the little bright green particles floating around us.

The last 2 dives had incredible visability compared to the rest: you could see 25-35 meters.  THat makes everything much more relaxed because you can always see the group you are diving with.  We also had an underwater camera on these dives which was fun to play with and try to capture the colors and fish.  At one point I was trying to take a picture of a small bright blue fish with rainbow stripes (I forget the name) and it kept attacking the camera and swimming circles around me. I think I was too close to his home or something but it was quite entertaining.  The last dive the instructors just briefed us and sent us into the water by ourselves - making us true divers.  It was awesome to go at our own pace and navigate the site by ourselves.  I felt very accomplished afterwards.

All in all I loved everything about it.  The island of Koh Tao is beautiful and all the people there are laid back divers (who seem to chain smoke, not cool).  The resort we stayed at was great and so were all of the people in our groups.  I'm totally hooked on diving and can't wait to go again!  We're in Cambodia now will blog about the travels to get here soon.  But want to say that I really enjoyed Thailand and think I could have stayed there for another month and not gotten sick of it.  For the most part everyone is friendly and the food is really good and everything is cheap.  I'll have to come back sometime... Who's with me?

Also, yes I buzzed my head before I came here because I knew it would be too hot with hair.  So far I'm liking it though I'm still not totally used to it.  Gotta do something about the widow's peak...

Scuba and more Koh Tao Pics

I have more pictures but this computer is being difficult with the cd.

 Me underwater.

fishes


Justine and Merius
 
Sea Urchin

Marcel, our crazy Dutch instructor.

Tarik Gearing up

Our Advanced Open Water crew 

Fire Twirler

Me with a bucket of Sangsom

pretty fish

Pictures

The Grand Palace in Bangkok.

Koh Tao

Where the Hell are we?

Soooo, we got to watch the last 15 minutes of the World Cup Final.  That was probably the most normal 15 minutes of the journey from Bangkok to the island of Koh Tao - and that was in a strange building on a pier in what I can only assume was the town of Chumphon or Chumporn as it was often spelled.  But let's back up.

We made it to the travel agent where we bought our bus and ferry tickets a few minutes before six.  10 minutes later the women tells us to follow a very emo looking Thai man outside.  He told us to stand across the street with a few other people standing with packs.  After  few minutes on the street corner he tells us to follow him: through an alley, into and through a muay Thai training center, down another dark alley to a cafe, where we sat for another half hour until the bus came.  Once on the bus it was ok for the first 3 hours while Avatar was playing, except I think we were going like 40 miles an hour the whole time and stopping every 20 minutes for no apparent reason.

Somewhere along way we dropped a man off in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway.  Literally the middle of nowhere.  The was a big building in the dstance, nothing on the side of the road except a sign indicating a town was 28 kilometers away.  At this point I took a NyQuil because I thought we would be on the bus for another 6 hours and I wanted to be able to sleep.  BAD IDEA.  An hour later we stopped at a shack on the side of the road for a bland overpriced plate of rice and egg.  I was like a zombie there, couldn't really focus my eyes or carry on a conversation.

I managed to sleep for the next 3 hours until the lights came on and a man told us to get off the bus.  We wre just at the side of the road again.  Our bags lumped in a pile.  He said get into that minibus, pointed to a white minivan, then hopped on the bus and drove away.  We threw our packs in the back and crammed 10 people plus the driver into he van.  I had to sit next to the driver on the front bench sea.  He was drinking cough syrup I'm pretty sure.  The town smelled like rotten fish.  We drove for half and hour, I tried to sleep by resting my head on my 2 liter bottle of water but it didn't work.  So instead I prayed that we didn't crash and that we weren't getting kidnapped - those seemed like the 2 most likely possibilities.  After half an hour of honking at stray dogs lying in the road, we pulled up at the random building and watched the soccer game.  The man told us the ferry would come at 7 am, then drove away.  It was 3:30.

After the game we pulled up a couple of old van bench seats and attempted to sleep.  At sunrise, after buses of people arrived every half hour, the boat came.  We boarded, were accosted by men trying to get us to stay at their hotels, found one from the hotel we wanted and then slept for 2 hours.  After disembarking the boat we followed the hotel man to a free taxi - a pickup truck with bench seats like before except with no cover and were on our way. 

The hotel is great and we started scuba diving today.  More on that tomorrow.