As a prairie dwelling native of the vast Canadian prairies, it feels odd to have become eerily familiar with a different kind of vastness. The endless oceans that once scared me, the same waters that I once upon a time would have found reasons not to go in, are what I am about to embark across on tomorrow, travelling from Koh Tao, up to Koh Phagnan, and past Koh Samui into Ang Thong National Marine Park. Part of me wonders if this is going to be like driving from Calgary to Saskatoon, except instead of endless seas of say sunflowers or canola it will be the waves coming to greet us as we travel along. I still haven’t managed to familiarize myself with all the terminology (and seemingly complicated knots and such) but I am pretty excited for a new adventure. It all is so crazy and new to me, being comfortable in the ocean and on a boat, that it brings a kind of different sense of calm to my whole adventure. A serious change of scenery for this land locked Calgarian but one that is very happily welcomed (especially after knowing all the fun and excitement my own folks had when they had a chance to sail the BC coast). I leave tomorrow around 9 am, and won’t be back until the 21 afternoon, hopefully as a competent crew member (and not someone who crashed the sloop on a lee shore).
So after the last update I haven’t really gotten up to much, just really enjoying and savoring the opportunity I was given by coming back to Tao (even though the weather hasn’t been very spectacular, mostly rain and over cast, and thankfully, a little cooler). As I wrote, I was going for my advanced open water diving. That wrapped up on Thursday and was only two days and consisted of five dives. I dove at Pura Vida (which was the cheapest place I could find and the people there are really amazing, and very friendly, and really awesome if espanol is your first language). The first dive was a buoyancy dive, which was a blast, and the point of it was to use your breath and a proper amount of air in your bc to float at neutral buoyancy (where you don’t hit the bottom or float all the way up) in many different scenarios (like touching your nose to the ground but not bashing your face). Finishing that was the navigation dive, where you are given a compass, told to swim from one point to another and then exactly back to where you came from, followed by a square directional swim (and of course, the instructor comes with you or I am sure there would be a few ¨missing¨ divers, me maybe or maybe not included). The dive I was second most anxious for was definitely one of the most fun dives. It was nice to find my own way around as opposed to following someone else. But this dive was quite possibly the most incredible as not only did I get the chance to see a giant sea turtle up close eating, I also swam through a ginormous (like I mean a GINORMOUSLY HUMONGUS, like from the sea floor to the very top of the water) school of a fish that was part of the tuna family. They completely encircled my instructor and myself, and it was two hundred kinds of spectacular. After that we broke surface and finished for the day.
The next day, my first dive was my deep dive, where you go down to 30 m. Oxygen gets used up pretty fast the deeper you go (especially when you haven’t quite exactly mastered oxygen use ie there is a guy on the island who can do two dives both over an hour, on one tank, and still have air left over). After that was the naturalist dive, where you just swim around identifying different fish through hand signals. Unfortunately due to the weather, the conditions weren’t so great and not many fish were seen. After that dive I had my dreaded night dive. I was very anxious about diving into the ocean (something I was just getting over my dislike of) at night. I was kinda dreading the idea that the only things I was going to see where those that my flashlight saw. But surprisingly, it was absolutely wonderful and in the weirdest of ways reminded me very much of walking through the mountains at night and I was much more comfortable in the night dive then I had ever been. I think I found my new favorite water activity. The fish are so much more different at night and things just seem so otherworldly, I felt like I could have been on an alien world deep in space. It was such a thrill! After the dive I pretty much called it a night.
On Saturday it was Thai New Years and is celebrated by a giant water fight (which symbolizes to cleansing and renewal). Water gun in hand I was up early to meet some people at a local bar to begin the mayhem. People would drive by on bikes with guns, spraying passersby (even if they had just got to the island, with gear and completely unprepared). We hung around in the rain for a while before deciding to make our way to another bar (Maya Beach Club which was having a massive 20 hour house music celebration) for a while. The chilly weather persuaded me to take a break and warm up and change into some momentarily dry clothes before rendezvousing at a diver bar for more chaotic water throwing. Calling it a day relatively early, I crashed.
Sunday, Monday, and today were all relatively nonchalant (I meandered around town, showed some girls from Calgary how to get to the next town, attempted to drive a friend home on his motorbike – which we both survived without incident, and burnt a swim suit tie bow on my back, you get the hint). Tomorrow morning I meet my skipper at 9 to go over things, drop off my gear and head out to the open waters to being the next stage of my adventure. I’ll try to update this when I get back so you guys know I am still alive.
Wish me luck!
All my love and wish you were here!!
Jen
