On our third day we had class room again but this time with Dan He was very good at explaining things, especially a symptom they call narced. Aoife loved that saying. She was using it even when it had nothing to do with being narced. It only happens to you if you go below 30m as you get too much nitrogen in your system and it feels like your drunk. But no hangover. Ha ha
Dan was telling us a story about a guy who got narced and he was so high, he tried to give a turtle some air from his regulator. Ha ha I have to say I found that the funniest. I can see some guy going “hey dude” and trying to give air to a turtle. “yeah man” ha ha
after our class work was over we then had to do our test. It was multiple answers so it wasn't to hard. Just had to make sure we filled in the right circle, that's where I went wrong for two of my answers. You had to get 40 out of 50 right. So aoife and I both passed and we got our pictures taken for our cert cards. Then we had free time for lunch before our next dive session.
Back on the boat and to our next dive site. We had to do exercise. We had to jump in the water and swim around the boat twice. Well did that show us how unfit we were. Aoife was abit scared to going swimming around the boat as she isn't a very good swimmer but Dan said to put the wetsuit on and it gives more bouyency. I jumped in and aoife took the ladder down to swim. And then we floated around for a while. We then got back on the boat to get our snorkels and fins as Dan was going to show us how to snorkel dive. This time aoife did jump into the water. She was slowly overcoming her fears. It was brilliant. To Snorkel dive you take 3 short hyperventilated breaths and then you hold it and dive underwater making sure you equalise. Dan would do it and then we would take turns trying to do it too. We were crap. Trying is the operative word here. I would get under the water but I would pretty much surface straight away again. And I was closing my eyes which was stupid cause I had a mask on. Ha ha. Aoife was worse though. It was so funny. Sorry aoife! But she was trying to dive underwater and she would get her top half under but her butt and legs wouldn't go under. So she looked like a flapping fish out of water. Ha ha after doing that a couple of times, and our bad attempts at it, Dan said that it was enough and we went to get our diving gear on. Once we were back in the water. We had to do some surface tasks before we went underwater to preform the same ones under water. On the surface, we had to take off our weight belt and put it back on again, and then we had to take off the gear and and sit on the tank while floating and put the it back on again. When aoife had taken off the gear she couldn't get herself on the tank and the gear back on. She kept falling off and the more she tried to do it, the more it didn't seem to work. Annd I can imagine getting more tired and frustrated. But I think Dan was the one who got really frustrated in the end. Ha ha.
Then we had to go underwater. And preform the same tasks. You would think it would be harder but it was actually easier almost weightless. And my most hated task again. But this time we had to take off our mask and keep it off for a whole minute. Once that was done we swam back to the boat and did an emergency training ascent up too the surface.
Back on the boat, switched tanks and went to our next dive site. We did a controlled descent down along the anchor line. I was having some trouble with trying to equalise my ears again. But I finally made it down slowly. The last couple of meters were free descent and I was abit scared of doing it with my ears. But Dan came up to me and helped me down slowly. But when I got to the bottom. I needed to equalise and when I finally did. It really hurt. But it was done and I was on the bottom. So we did more tasks working with our bouyency control and when that was done we got to swim around for a good time. It was really cool. Very enjoyable. When we were heading back to the surface. You always do a 5 minute safety stop at 3m. And while we were waiting, Dan got us playing tic tac toe on his writing board. I thought it was really funny. I would have loved to seen picture of it. So back to the boat and back to main land. We were to be up early the next morning to finish our course off with our last two dives. I noticed though that my ear was hurting a little so I went to the pharmacy and they gave me drops to put into my ears. She said that they might had swollen abit and the drops were to help with the swelling.
That night, Dan invited us to a bar down the beach to see a snorkel party. Its a party they have for someone who has finished their master course. They tie the person up and put a snorkel on them and then they pour drink into the snorkel for them to swallow. And the drink isn't nice its a mixture of everything that's happens to be on the table at the time. I have to say it was quite funny to watch. We also went out for a couple a drinks with the German girls as they were leaving the next day to go to koh phangan. We were sensible though. don't drink and dive. So we went to bed early so that we were fresh for the next morning.
The next morning we were up for our dives. My ears were still little sore. But Dan asked if I would still try to dive and see what happened. So went along on the boat and suited up. The first dive was just to be a fun dive and I was looking forward to it. No tasks to preform. But when we started to go down the line again. It was just to hard for me to equalise. I got down 5m and I couldn't go any farther. So we had to leave it. I went back to the boat while Dan and aoife went diving. It sucked. I didn't even get to blow air rings cause they were going to do that on the safety stop coming back up. But aoife came back laughing. She said she couldn't blow any air rings and was spitting into the water instead. It actually sounded really funny I just wish I was there to see it.
Dan came over to me and said that he was going to give me the cert anyway. Which was really sweet of him. He said I did a dive of 20mins at 5m and he would count that. I burst out laughing, saying it wasn't much of a fun dive. So he said I just had to do some compass skills that he told me to do on the surface all suited up but that I wouldn't dive again. So at the next dive site. I did some compass skills with aoife and we did the surface taken off the gear sitting on the tank and putting it back on again. I was curious to see how aoife would get on and if she would have trouble again. But she did it really well and you could tell she was feeling more confident. So I had to watch them going diving again, while I sat in the boat. Trying to get you to feel a little pity for me. ha ha
well after they got back and we went back to shore. We had to wash our gear and then Dan sat us down to fill out our dive books. This is where he told me that he doesn't normally do this and that normally he is a strict instructor. But he said that I dived really well, that I was comfortable underwater and that I preformed all the tasks and said that it would be a pity I didn't get my cert because my ears wouldn't equalise. I must have charmed him. Ha ha. Sweet.
So we invited Dan out for a couple of drinks later to celebrate. And we went off swimming for the afternoon down the beach abit. Aoife and I had some great fun. Laughing and joking. Surprise surprise we were the loudest ones there and we got a few looks. But they were only jealous, they weren't having as much fun. When we got back later we bought ourselves some carabao t-shirts. And had a couple of drinks at the roof top bar. Dan joined us for one there before he had to head off. But said that we might see him down at the easy bar, a bar further down the beach, later on. So aoife and I did abit of a mini beach bar crawl. We started off at the roof top, went to the next one down for a buffet bbq food at the Buddha bar. And then we ended up at the easy bar. We got to see a fire show there while we were drinking. I got myself my first bucket. Dangerous! Its a mini plastic bucket with a large cocktail in it. By the end of it I was getting aoife to help me drink it. As it was late enough and there was no sign of Dan so we were going to head off.
And of course just as we make that decision Dan shows up. So we end up drinking a few more. I was teasing Dan about his name. Because on our cert card it gives the name of our instructor, and on it his name was adrianus! Ha ha so I don't know where he got Dan from. But it was funny. I got abit hyper and made a sand castle with my empty bucket. That aoife and Dan never saw :( ha ha and when the bar closed we joined the Burmese barmen for guitar playing and sing-along. Aoife tried playing the guitar but she couldn't remember the cords. There was only one song she could remember so she kept playing that one. Ha ha. Dan was very good though. Playing the guitar and singing. And it was quite late when we finally decided it was time to go to bed. We said goodbye to Dan, me telling him “you see me in January”. And we got to bed at 4 in the morning.
The bad thing was we were up again at 7 the next morning to catch our boat to koh phangan. So when we awoke we were still drunk and not only that we still had to pack. Ha ha we thought we would be fine to do it in the morning. Boy were we wrong. Aoife was the funniest. She wasn't sure what she was doing. Me, I was just laughing and I think I was abit louder than I needed to be. Aoife thought I was joking when I told her to sign for her money, so she was forgetting her money and passport. But we finally made it at the dock and we were on our way to koh phangan.
