The advanced open water course requires five dives in different categories.  On the first day I did two dives: peak performance buoyancy and underwater navigation.  Both of them were actually kinda fun.  For the buoyancy dive I had to hover without moving, swim through squares and hoops without touching them, pick up and set down weights, and knock over a weight with my regulator.  The catch was I couldn’t use my hands, I had to control my location just using my breath.  For the navigation dive I had to measure how many kick cycles it took for me to cover 30 meters, and then use visual cues and/or a compass to navigate to and from certain points.

{This is where all of the great underwater photos would go, if I had an underwater camera. Let me know if you need my address to mail me one.  🙂 }

After dinner I met my Italian roommates for dinner.  It was great because we got to order and try a bunch of things, including this dish which my scuba instructor recommended.

After dinner we got “best and the best” pancakes, or roti.  One with sweet egg and banana, and the other with banana, Nutella and peanut butter.

The second day of the course I did a deep water dive, a multilevel and computer dive, and a night dive.  To show the effect of nitrogen narcosis at greater depths, I had to do a number finding test on land, and then again at 30 meters.  It took me twice as much time to find the same numbers on a card as it had on land.  My instructor also brought an empty water bottle down with us to show the effect of the pressure.  Although it had been filled with air at surface level, at 30 meters it was crinkled up and crushed.  He then filled it with air and when we got back, at the lesser pressure on the surface, the bottle looked like it was about to explode.

The night dive was kinda fun, especially since we saw a cuttlefish and a bunch of blue-spotted rays.  The cuttlefish looks like this: Cuttlefish.  It looks like something from a horror movie with those finger-like things in front of its face, and the fact that it moves like a hovercraft.  Afterwards I went to dinner with my dive instructor and one of the dive master trainees.  I ordered the “spicy and sour shrimp with peanut betel” because I didn’t know what it was.  Betel ended up being some sort vegetable that was like a cross between celery and okra.  It was cooked with peanuts, some sort of ground pork, and really delicious!

Walking home I saw this guy selling pancakes wearing this shirt:

And after three dives and the approximate 5 mile walk home, I thought I’d earned a roti.  I got one with peanut butter and banana, it was good, but not as good as the one with the Nutella.

I chose Ko Tao for a couple of reasons, but mainly for its scuba diving.  Ko Tao is the diving capital of Thailand, and I heard they’re number two in the world for scuba diving certifications completed per year.  Most people come to do their Open Water certification, but I took scuba diving as a gym class in college, so I’ve had my PADI Open Water certification for 15 years (wow that makes me feel old).  I was looking to finish the next step, and earn my Advanced.  Having your advanced opens up more possibilities and dive sites because with an open water certification, you’re only allowed to dive to 18 meters/60 feet; but with your advanced, you can dive to 30 meters/100 feet.

I got off the ferry around 9 and although it was hot, and I had all my luggage, I decided to walk the few kilometers to my hostel in Sairee Beach.  I was still in yesterday’s clothes after that hot day in Bangkok plus a night spent sleeping on a bus and a bench, so figured I couldn’t get much sweatier or smellier.  Plus I figured I’d get to see something of the island on the way.  Sairee Beach is the island’s most popular, on the West coast of the island.  I stayed at Good Dream Hostel and it was nice, the rooms were clean and air conditioned.  Each bed had it’s own pull down desk, light, outlet and safe.  Not a bad deal for 420 baht a night ($11.80).  Sairee itself feels really touristy, in both good and bad ways. It reminded me of beach towns from other trips: lots of hotels, bars, motorbike rental spots, pharmacies, convenience stores and touristy restaurants.  An easy place to be, with everything you need nearby, but not much local culture.  I spent the first afternoon recovering on the beach, the first time on the trip I’d gotten to use my bathing suit.  The sun was really intense, and I was surprised at how shallow the beach was, at high tide, the sand practically disappeared.

My laundry also needed to be done pretty desperately, so I dropped it off.  It cost 40 baht ($1.20) per kilo (2.2 lbs) and when I got it back, I was surprised to find this:

I apologize if that’s TMI but it was too funny not to share.

The next day I was due at the dive shop at 9 am.  Due to my poor planning, the dive shop was in Chalok Baan Kao, all the way on the south of the island, so I had to take a taxi.  The driver dropped me off where the road ended, pointed in the general direction of the dive shop and told me it was only a two minute walk.  I wandered around, trying to find my way there for a bit more than two minutes.  One thing I’ve found in Thailand, especially near the water is that it’s hard to differentiate the line between public and private property.  Oftentimes I’d think I was on a street to find that I was in the backyard of someone’s house, or the grounds of a hotel.  No one seemed to mind though and eventually I found a sign pointing to the shop.

There was a bit of a miscommunication regarding when I was supposed to start my class, but we got it sorted out and I headed out that afternoon to do two fun dives.  I hadn’t dove in years and wanted them as a sort of refresher.  Alvaro Diving has a pirate theme, and even a pirate ship for dive boat. I was too nervous to take out my camera on the longtail ride out to it though, so I didn’t get a great shot of the boat itself.

Since Ko Tao is such a popular and inexpensive spot for diving, people come from all over the world to complete their more advanced certifications.  They stay for a few months, often working at the shops while working their way through the necessary steps to become dive masters or instructors.  Many (most?) of the divers on the my boat were dive master trainees.

We dove at White Rock and Green Rock, and both were great.  The current at White Rock was pretty strong, but I didn’t mind, it was so great to just be back underwater.  I love the water, and grew up swimming, in the ocean, lakes, at the YMCA, wherever I could. Scuba diving to me is kinda like magic.  Besides the more obvious part of getting to see all sorts of amazing marine life, in its natural habitat, the actual experience is amazing.  A big part of diving, or diving well is achieving neutral buoyancy.  That is, according to Wikipedia “a condition in which a physical body’s average density is equal to the density of the fluid in which it is immersed.”  What that feels like is weightlessness, like walking on the moon, or not being affected by gravity.  It’s incredible.  You can just float there, right-side up, like you’re standing, or upside down, on your stomach, on your back, or any position you like.  When you do it right, taking a deep breath with make you float up towards the surface slightly, and expelling it will drop you down.  You can just hang out there, in mid-water, watching, living in the aquarium.  It’s amazing.  My dive buddy was a dive master from Spain, and he had a Go Pro.  I’ve never had any interest in owning one before, but I promise you I’ll get one before the next time I go diving.  We saw so many amazing things, and I can’t explain them all to you as well as photos would.  I gave him my email address and was hoping he’d share them, but haven’t gotten them yet.  The short version is I basically saw the entire cast of Finding Nemo.  This a link to the marine life around Ko Tao, and I saw almost everything on it except turtles, whale sharks, and sea horses.  http://www.simplelifedivers.com/gulf-of-thailand/marine-life-guide.html

Afterwards, I decided to walk back to Sairee.  I saw a fruit stand selling these:

Luckily, the woman spoke English and she offered me one to try.  They’re called sala or salak, I think in Thai, or snake fruit in English.  They look kinda like pine cones but come from a type of palm tree.  When you peel them, they have two lobes, each with a pit.

They taste kinda bright and acidic, and are a little bit astringent.  They have a nice sort of tutti-fruity flavor to them, and I bought a half kilo of them to snack on.

I also stumbled into a market or carnival on my way home.  It had a lot of the usual carnival things, food stalls and games, and a couple of unusual ones as well.

There was also a woman making and selling coconut wafers on my walk.  They were kinda like the pizzelles my mom makes for Christmas.  Unlike my mom’s electric iron though, she was making them over hot embers.

The sunset was really beautiful, andI got to see all of the colors change as I walked along the beach.