The final day of our Open Water Diver course finished today. Yesterday was our first sea dive, we went on a longtail to some reef about 1km off the Nai Yang shore and went down about 7 metres. We swam around for a bit for the first dive just to get the hang of it, then we resurfaced and headed back down to do our first set of skills.
Basically we had to re-do what we learnt in the pool, i.e. buoyancy control, buddy breathing and so on. Panicked a bit during my mask removal exercise - the strap snapped so I had to put the face mask back on, blow out the water so I could see again and me and my instructor swapped masks so he had to swim around holding it to his face rather than me.
This morning we were down the dive shop for 10am, and went out to a different reef called Monkey Rock, for a deeper dive down to around 16 metres. My right ear was a bit painful after about 10m but I went up a metre or so for half a minute, kept equalizing, and continued down and it was fine. The reef was a lot nicer here and we saw lion fish, star fish, leopard moray eels and giant sea cucumbers. The practical skills went well for us all, including one where we had to navigate to a certain degree using a compass. We had two dives then came back in the afternoon to do our final paper exam (not as easy as I thought). I managed 40 out of 50 though which was good enough to pass, as the others did.
So tomorrow we go to Similan! I thought the dive today was good but according to our instructors it’s nothing compared to the Similan Islands. We meet up at 6.45am (ouch) because it takes two-and-a-half hours to get there via speedboat, then we get three ‘fun dives’ throughout the day. Our instructor is a very likable 6′3″ tattood, speedo-wearing behemoth of a man called - appropriately - Wolf. Think Ultimate Warrior meets Dog the Bounty Hunter. Anyway, I’m quite confident if we see any deadly sharks tomorrow, while we’re all making our emergency ascents Wolf will be wrestling it into submission. The course has been wicked fun I’d recommend it to anyone. Luckily our buddy Sam (see photos), our trainee instructor, has got a digital camera with an underwater case so he’s going to take loads of pictures for us at Similan tomorrow, I can then transfer them to my camera and upload on here.
In other news, another familiar face has arrived in Kirsten’s dad, Roy, who is partial to the old Singha’s. I’m a Chang man myself. I saw my second ever shooting star last night, a big bugger flying over Nai Yang beach at an incredible rate of knots. My first was over Brackley Town Football Club so a slightly different backdrop this time. To all those who’ve emailed me I’m sorry I haven’t got back to most of you, I will do.