Ko Tao - The Great Scuba Adventure

Day One:

We arrived in Ko Tao! Yay!

But now we don't know where to go. Boo...

As we waited to see if the Scuba Junction taxi was going to pick us up, we were approached by a Canadian man who currently works in Thailand. He asked if we needed help or directions. Lucky for us, not only did he know his way around Ko Tao, he also knew alllllll about how evil the US and Canadian government is. We were looking forward to scuba diving, but I don't know what could beat listening to how "the man" is out to get us, first thing in the morning. We also learned that using hair spray makes our hair receptors for the micro processors the government has implanted in us. Fun fact.

We thanked our new BFF for his help and decided to walk to Scuba Junction to get away from him, I mean... to enjoy a nice morning walk.

The walk actually was very nice. Ko Tao (turtle island) is a small and beautiful place. It had more to do than Ko Lanta but had a more laid back feeling than Ko Phi Phi. We were greeted at scuba junction by our instructor, the incredibly awesome Natalie. She was one of the many people that came to Ko Tao on vacation for three days... about five years ago. An incredible scuba master, hilarious, and very nice - we thought she was the coolest person ever. Cooler than Fonzie.

After a less than spectacular lunch at a Thai interpretation of a Mexican restaurant (onions and spices in scrambled eggs? I wanted to cry), we went for orientation back at Scuba J. I forgot that low budget videos from the 1980's are a very important part to any educational system.

We finished our first day with ice cream and going back to the bungalow to do our scuba homework before going to bed early. We are such nerds.

Day Two:

The Scuba J taxi (a pick up truck with benches in the back) picked us up for our high speed roller coaster like ride into town. Reviewing homework isn't so bad when you can do it sitting outside by the ocean eating delicious baked goods. This is how we started out our mornings, followed by videos, then lunch.

Lunch was super great everyday. The wife of one of the scuba masters makes really good Thai food we could buy everyday. Scuba Junction had a great small staff of people who were all friends so it had that "we're one big happy family" thing going. After lunch arrived everyone sat outside to chat and eat together.

After lunch: time to climb aboard the boat and sail off to the dive sites. Steff and I did our equipment checks for about 15 minutes, assuming we had attached something wrong, and our oxygen tank would go floating out to sea. All that was left was to take a big Monty Python step off the boat into the water.

The first part of the afternoon is spent in shallow water doing skills. Steff and I were getting more anxious as we were descending down for the first time. She was nervous about something going wrong and not being able to breath, I was nervous I would do the skills wrong and be "that kid" in class again. Thankfully, our worries were all for not. Steff didn't die, and I did my skills just fine. Natalie and Ferron (our assistant instructor from Oregon) watched us very carefully the whole time to make sure we were ok. Natalie was also an excellent instructor, who went through all of our skills slowly and clearly.

The first time breathing underwater is very strange. We expected it to feel like it does when you're snorkeling. Not quite. It takes a few minutes to adjust to keeping your breathing slow and steady. Also not being distracted by hundreds of bubbles surrounding your face every time you exhale.

After we finished our skills we went for our first short free dive (swimming around). We were surprised to learn that you control your position in the water by how deeply you breath in an out. This takes a little practice... Breath out too fast - crash to the ground! Breath in too fast - fly upward toward the surface. We looked like little scuba yo-yos at first.

Got back to the boat, cleaned off the equipment, wrote about all the little fishies we saw in our PADI log books.

Walking back to the bungalow:

"That... was amazing..."

Day Three:

We had the Scuba J taxi driver drop us off at the bakery down the street (New Heaven - mmmm), so we could pick up breakfast on the way. When we arrived at Scuba J, Natalie greeted us.

Natalie: "We had a bit of a situation this morning."
Us: "Oh? What happened?"
Natalie: "When the taxi driver (who is Thai, and doesn't speak much English) returned with out you we asked:
'Where are the girls?'
he responded 'at the burglary down the street.'
'What?!'
We figured out he meant 'bakery' not 'burglary' but we were so confused for a moment wondering why the driver dropped you off in the middle of a burglary and calmly drove away!"

This was probably our favorite communication fail of the trip. Of course, we have continued to refer to "bakeries" as "burglaries." I'm sure this will amuse us until we are arrested for plotting a robbery.

We kept to the same schedule as Day Two: homework review, videos (we entertained ourselves by making origami cranes from a torn out page of our PADI manuals during video time), lunch break, diving time.

Natalie told us that the skills today would be easier than yesterday. We thought that may have been a huge lie when we found out some of our skills included taking off all of our equipment underwater, and putting it back on again. I'm still amazed we were able to do it. That success led to much under water high fiveing and dancing.

It felt much more easy and natural to control our position in the water today during the free dive. We felt comfortable enough to actually look around with out thinking of what we needed to be doing at every second.

That night we were invited to a BBQ at Scuba J. It was also celebrating one of the students, Sam, finishing his classes and becoming a "dive master." We had a lovely time eating amazing grilled food, and watching the other dive masters torment Sam with as series of initiation games such as: pretend you're a fish and make others guess what type, run down the street in scuba fins, and chug a large alcoholic drink that is being poured down a snorkel into your scuba mask. Those crazy scuba kids! We also got a chance to talk more to Ferron and some of the other dive masters in training. All super nice and a lot of fun. It makes it all the more tempting to stay in Thailand to become a scuba instructor.

Although Steff and I were beat, we wouldn't let ourselves leave the party and go to bed before the 5-year-olds that were there. We're lame, but we have to stay up later than children to keep some portion of our pride intact. When they finally left we ran home and crashed in bed.

Day Four:

Change of routine for our last day. Last day? How can that be? No videos because we were done with all of this "learning" stuff. Baked goods and our final exam by the ocean. Not as relaxing as the other days, but we both passed. I thank the tasty muffins for the success.

We had an extra long break, so we walked back to the bungalow to get money for our bus ride to Bangkok in two days. When we got back, we enjoyed one last wonderful Scuba J lunch, before heading out for our afternoon dives.

We had the paper final exam, now we had our scuba skills final. A few fin pivots, an emergency assent and... Ta-da! We were officially open water certified! Much underwater dancing. Fortunately (and unfortunately) our last dive and all this dancing was video taped. Yeah.


Following our final skill test, we had one of the best days... ever. We increased our depth and our dive times, from 30 minutes to an hour per dive. It felt like we were flying, in the little mermaid, and surrounded at all times by 5,000 amazing/adorable creatures. We saw an itty bitty baby box fish. It looked like a drawing of a little square fish come to life. Make sure you have the right mental picture in your head: four adults in scuba gear, giggling and staring at a 1x1 inch fish for about 15 minutes. Turn another corner, and there are hundreds of silver fish, swimming all around perfectly in sync. I see no reason those fish should exist other than to decorate the ocean with sparkley silver flashes. Amazing amazing amazing. Don't EVER bring up scuba diving around me and Steff, because we will never shut up.

Writing about scuba diving just made me feel a little bad, because nothing I say can do it justice. It's the same feeling I get when I take a picture of yet another beautiful nature scene here. Please stop reading this blog. Stop. Book your flight to Ko Tao, Thailand. Check into Scuba Junction. Go scuba diving. Do it.

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