Diving in Koh Tao

Jess writes...Have you ever scuba dived? If not - come visit Koh Tao. Less than half the price of diving certification in the US and you get to learn in beauiful, clear waters full of amazing fish. You get off the ferry and are bombarded with diving companies more than willing to extract money from you. How do you decide? It's not easy, especially as they are standing their collecting tourists into their open pick up trucks. They give you a total of 8 mintues flat to make a decision. Needless to say, prices are all the same, accomodations are included, therefore, we are left with no determining factors and a confused look. We end up following up on a lead from another backpacker only to find the staff to be somewhat void of friendliness. We bum a ride from them to view their secondary location (knowing that the other place we were interested in was nextdoor to it). Jackpot. Nice people, good prices, beautiful resort - the offer of two free dives didn't hurt either.

We started our Open Water course at Coral Grand Divers that afternoon. Lucky for us, we end up in a group with just the two of us and a very cool German chick instructor. After minimal course work we head to our first lesson in the pool with an ocean view. Believe it or not, we passed the swimming test. Donovan took to it immediately. I, on the other hand, had some issues with breathing underwater. I have a tendency to be claustrophobic at times. I think it's something that has come with age though because I've never really had a problem until our honeymoon in Italy. We headed up a tower viewpoint in Venice, the small circular stone stairs we're packed with people, it was hot and I was freaking out. It took me a good 30 minutes at the top before I was able to embark back down into hell. That was the first episode, diving apparantely was the second. After some coercing and deep breaths, I was able to conquer my fears. It still takes a good several mintues every time I dive, but the sight and feeling of being part of the underwater world - even for only 40 minutes at a time - is an amazing feeling that I hope you are also able to experience.

The open water course included a pool session, a final exam and four open water dives - two one day, two the next day. My favorite was the gigantic eagle ray and the spanish dancers. We liked it so much that when they offered for us to take the Advanced Open Water course for a discounted price - we said, "why not?" As an open water diver you can only dive to 18 meters, as an advanced diver you can dive to 30 meters. Big difference.

There were five us in the advanced group together with our red-headed Canadian instructor - "Captain Ginger." Captain Ginger, British Police Officer Andy, Double Dutch and Donnie and Jess. The first trip included two dives to local sites and the next day we headed to a place called Sail Rock several hours away by boat. Three dives that day, a couple beers (and a couple buckets) later we crashed hard. Good times, good people, GREAT diving (25 meters visibility!).

In all, we spent 5 days, did 9 dives (Donovan did 11), saw a school of 15+ giant barracudas, met some crazy Dutch girls, a great couple from England and an ex-hippie Australian (Gus the Snail), drank several buckets of red bull vodka, danced on the beach, watched Holland kick ass over Italy 3-0 and soaked up the beautiful sun in Eastern Thailand. I could go back tomorrow.

However, it was time to say goodbye to our new friends and head to Krabi and Koh Phi Phi on the west coast. Our fingers are crossed that the rainy season will hold off for a couple days.