November 5
First off, I'd like to say thank f'in God for Dramamine and that I officially change my last opinion of the worst ride of my life. Our 3 hour ferry ride to Koh Tao was quite possibly the worst experience of my 22 years of life. We knew as soon as we pulled up to the pier that it would be a rough ride, but we had no idea what was in store. I have no idea how to describe the ride other than that it felt like a 3 hour rollercoaster ride to Hell and that I actually wanted to die. I think 90% of the passengers threw up, including one lady who, thankfully we didn't see, went to vomit in one of the trash cans as we hit a big wave and thus proceeded to smash her forehead on the wall. Basically, when we all walked onto the pier in Koh Tao, we looked wrecked haha but luckily when we got to our hostel, the 3 boys already in the room weren't horrified and chatted us up. They were from England and ended up being great fun and we spent most of our time with them for the duration of our stay.
November 6
I signed up for my open water scuba certification classes in the morning (and stay free at the Hostel for the duration of my course) and was told to come back at 4:30 for the first day's activities. Having the whole day ahead of us we all rented some motorbikes and hit up some great beaches around the island where we swam in awesomely clear blue water and played 'HORSE' with a volleyball we found. At 4:30 I went back to the dive school for the 3 most boring scuba diving videos ever, finally finished after what felt like 5 hours (but I think was only 2), and then meet back up with Hila and the boys to get dinner and eventually go out to the one bar that was open. This was also the start of our new pancake obsession, nutella and condensed milk over a crunchy crepe basically. Mmmmmm we got so many every night to follow :-D
November 7
Day 2 of my certification started at 9:30, and we finished up the last 2 videos, took some quizzes and then split at 11 for a 3 hour break. The afternoon portion was in the pool and we learned a bunch of skills and practiced everything before our first real dive the next day. After my class was done, we pretty much did the same thing as the night before but another girl, Abby, who had been traveling with the boys earlier, met up with us and joined the fun.
November 8
My third day, and the day Hila and Nate were also scheduled to dive, I started earlier than them to take my final exam (got a 94 wee!) And then we all went on the boat to our dive sites. Unfortunately since we were all in different programs, we didn't dive together or spend much time together on the boat but the dives b were still lots of fun and we saw some cool fish and underwater life! My group practiced more skills but this time officially in the ocean and we survived them all, and then we swam around for ~40 minutes at each site. The two we went to were called Twins and Sairee Bay. The boys were headed back home to England soon and leaving Koh Tao the next day while Hila and I would be diving so we had some drinks and said or goodbyes early.
November 9
Our last 2 dives were scheduled for the morning and we had to be at the dive school by 6:30am! We crawled our way over and had to settle for 7/11 croissants since our pancake man was nowhere to be found that early. We done at Green Rock and White Rock, practiced more skills and saw more cool stuff, which I would post pics of, but got them on a CD and have no way of transferring over... So you'll all have to wait until I get home to see haha
By the time we got back at noon, the boys had packed up and left, so we took naps to recover from our early wakeup - and I ended up sleeping for 5 hours... We made a new dorrm friend, Dave, who we hung out with that night.
November 10
Today we had to check out at 10am, and are currently sitting in a cafe charging all our devices and killing time before our 3 hour ferry and 12 hour bus ride to Bangkok. WISH US LUCK!
