‘S’ is for SNAaaaaaaKE!!!: Caught the boat over to Koh Tao today for a few days of diving. The diving course kicked off that evening with a bit of theory to get us set up for the days ahead. Quiet enough night that night until we were heading back to our hilltop room to turn in for the night and ran into a rather slimy new friend. First snake we’ve seen in Thailand and it was black and about 1.5-2 metres long just hanging out on the footpath home. Couldn’t believe our eyes at first and then once safely passed and perched up on our balcony we watched him slither back into the trees.
Team Ireland: First full day of diving course today so we hit the dive centre to get geared up. Got our BCDs, regulators, weight belts, wetsuits, fins, mask and tanks and we're good to go. Pool diving day today to help us get used to the breathing and learn a few underwater skills. There is way more to the course than we expected at all but it is great craic. There are three other Irish guys in our group and our instructor is also Irish so we’ve been dubbed team Ireland.
Finding Nemo: 7.30am start this morning to hit the open waters for our first two sea dives up to 12 metres. Found nemo (clown fish) and all his friends including bannerfish, trigger fish, a scorpion fish, butterfly fish and loads of other fish whose names we can’t remember. It was like being in a big fish tank in an aquarium with loads of colourdy fish around. It was unbelievably fantastic. Couldn’t have ever imagined that we would love it so much but it’s amazing and we’ve only just hit the tip of the iceberg with diving. Roll on the two 18 metre dives tomorrow!
Scuba Steve: Final day of our dive course. We headed back out to Twin Peaks and White Rock for our two 18 metre dives. It was fantastic. The whole group was getting into the swing of it all. We did a few skills under water like taking our mask off, putting it back on and clearing it out again so we could see. We also practiced some under water signals, breathing using our buddies tanks etc etc. The rest of the time under water we explored the sea bed and came across a shoal of yellowtail barracuda, a blue spotted ray, angel fish, wrasse fish, sergeant major fish, pink anemone fish, a puffer fish and loads more. Have a look in our Koh Tao pictures for a chart showing some of the fish we have seen. Now fully certified as PADI Open Water Divers. Bring on the Great Barrier Reef!! We celebrated that night with a big feast with the diving crew.
