The Big Blue...

The time came to leave Pai, and so Parissa and I headed back to Chiang Mai and Stella for one night. The next day we got a night bus to Bangkok, had to kill some time in the capital for 12 hours before we boarded yet another night bus to Surratani. From Surratani we boarded a ferry. We arrived on the magical Island of Koh Tao. After a well deserved nap I headed to the beach with some crazy fellow Irish.. the night was a right off! after 2 bottles of 7eleven wine and copious amounts of gin and tonic buckets, I had stolen the microphone and was promising free shots to everyone who jumped in the pool naked… I should not be let out!

The next day I checked into Bans Diving School and met my fellow course mates and our instructor Darren for the open water dive. We spent two hours watching terrible video’s in a classroom.. we left broken but excited for our pool session the next day! 7.15am we were gathered at the reception, all buzzing for the rest of the day. We all got kitted up and spent the day in the pool learning how to set up our equipment and what to do in an emergency!

After a lovely meal with the girls, I had an early night. The next morning we sat our written exam.. we all passed with flying colours… even Toby!! All super proud and excited we headed off for lunch and got our gear ready for our first dive! It was so cool!! We dove to 12m and did a bunch of skills (I had to do a full mask clear… Darren knows I hate that one!) Then it was basically a fun dive!

The next day we had two 18m dives which were both amazing! Although during the first dive my mask constantly filled with water my poor contacts!!!

That evening we all went out for dinner, and got super drunk. Darren was forcing buckets into me even though I had my advanced course the next morning!

The next day was jam-packed with diving, we started with a deep dive down to 30m. The next dive was a navigation dive, we were given compass’s and computers and sent off on our own for 45 mins (or until the air runs out!). The third dive was a night dive and I was petrified! when we were getting into the water we had to wait for a huge jelly thing to pass. We descended into the black water armed with torches, you can only see where your light points it was pretty scary but we did see some sting rays and puffer fish. At one point we switched off our torches and you could see the plankton light up as you moved.