Taking the plunge!

Hi everyone, we're back again! Now, you're all going to have to prepare yourselves for a few rather dramatic shocks during this blog - so keep yourselves as calm as possible, you have been warned!

SUNDAY 27th May

As you know, we made our way back to Bangkok today. The hostel we were staying at in Kanchanaburi kindly called for a taxi to take us back to the bus station, almost as soon as we arrived a bus pulled up outside, which was destined for Bangkok, so we bought a couple of tickets and were soon aboard heading off again. Once in Bangkok we had to get in another taxi so that we could get to the train station. When we arrived, we bumped into a young lady who told us that most of the tickets for the overnight train had been sold (but we're not sure that was true, as it's low season at the moment) and she took us to the tourist information office to find out about getting a bus to Koh Tao instead. We decided it was cheaper and more convinient to get the bus (as we were also able to buy our boat ticket to the island at the same time and would be dropped off at the pier itself). The guy we were talking to also asked us about diving and showed Steve a few places he could do a PADI Open Water Diver's Certification. He ended up having a look on the internet (the most expensive one we've used - 20 baht for 5 minutes!) for reviews about the places he said he could get special deals for him, but some of them had very mixed reviews, so he decided we would wait until reaching the island to make a decision about where to stay and to do his diving course.
We had to wait for ages at the train station - we arrived mid-afternoon and our bus didn't leave until 21.00! So we sat around reading, playing cards, getting bored! We popped out for dinner across the road from the train station and ended up having to stay there for ages, as the most enourmous rainstorm started! We finally decided to make a run for it and only got a little bit soggy on the way back, and even saw a dog being shampooed in a really deep puddle! Finally the time came to board the bus and spend 7 hours on it being taken to Chumphon Pier. Neither of us got too much sleep, as would be expected being cramped up on a bus, but it could have been worse!

MONDAY 28th May

In the very early hours of the morning, we arrived at Chumphon Pier and got our stuff unloaded from the bus. We ended up having a couple of hours of waiting before it was time to get on the boat and be taken to Koh Tao, but we were soon on board and after a couple of hours we were pulling up on the shores of 'Turtle Island'.
Our first stop was breakfast (an introduction to the expensiveness of island-living as well!) and then it was time to scope out some of the hundreds of diving resorts! We'd heard about a place called 'DivePoint' and so eventually headed there and found it to be a really nice place and it was an absolute bargainous price (presumably due to the low season) of 130 pounds for a 4 day PADI course, inclusive of 3 nights accommodation as well! Now, one of the first shocks of this blog is about to come up, so get ready! After months of telling Steve that he was welcome to do a diving course, but to NEVER expect me to do it too (due to my well known completely irrational fear of sharks) - I actually signed up to do the PADI course as well!
We started today, in the afternoon and watched some videos and then had homework (it was like being back at school), to read and complete the questions in chapter one, two and three of our PADI manuals. However, we were so tired though, that at about 22.00 we'd only finished the first chapter and were so tired that we ended up going to sleep!

TUESDAY 29th May

We began the day with classroom work. We went through the questions from chapters one, two and three with our PADI instructor (a very nice German lady called Alexandra). We also had to complete some multiple choice quizes about each of the chapters as well. We then watched a couple more videos and it was time to venture out for the first time! We got changed into swimmers and then met Alex to go out on the boat with a load of other divers.
First of all we had to prepare all our equipment ourselves and check it worked etc, we then got kitted up and checked each others kit was working properly and then it was time to jump in! It was pretty scary having to jump in off the back of the boat, but we managed to do it and then made our way to the shallows, where we were able to stand up with our heads above the water so we could practise some diving skills. To get back to the boat, Alex took us for a mini 'dive' and we swam along the bottom and got to see tropical coral reefs, anemones, millions of different tropical fish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and goodness knows what else! After our lesson, we were allowed to do some snorkelling on our own, whilst we waited for the other divers to come back to the boat. So we went and explored the reef some more on our own. When we got back, we were both so excited that we'd made our first step into the world of diving and it was so excilerating to see a whole new underwater world that we've never experience before - it was wicked!
Our evening was spent doing more reading though, as we had to complete chapters four and five tonight - which we finally managed to do by about 23.30!

WEDNESDAY 30th May

This morning we met Alex for our final classroom work, of going through chapters four and five and doing another quiz, before having to take our final exam! It was kind of nerve-racking, but each of us only got 1 question out of 50 wrong (you're allowed 12 wrong answers in total), so we were very pleased.
In the afternoon we got to complete our first and second open water dives. We had to complete a few skills in the process, but most of the time was spent swimming around and exploring the amazing flora and fauna! It was just incredible - the water was so blue and clear, you could see so far! There was also so much to see, clown fish, crown-of-thorns starfish, clown trigger fish, titan trigger fish (one of the most dangerous fish to divers, as it's very terratorial and over a metre in size - not diver friendly)! We saw lots of different varieties of corals, as well as tonnes of other fish! It's just so hard to explain everything we saw - you need to be able to see it for yourselves to understand properly how breathtaking it is! You might be able to get some impression of what it was like, as we bought ourselves an underwater camera and our instructor took photos for us!
We finally had a free evening tonight, but ended up spending most of our time packing up our bags, as we had to check out the next morning before our last 2 dives of the course! The accommodation was nice, it was basic, but the problem was that it was only a fan room and we could never get any breeze through, so it was just like an oven all of the time, no matter what we did! So we've had a couple of very hot and sweaty nights, with relatively little sleep, which is a pain, as diving itself is pretty tiring and so you need lots of energy to do it!

THURSDAY 31st May

We went diving first thing this morning and unfortunately there was a storm last night and so the water was much rougher than it has been over the other 2 days and I very much felt the effects of it! I was just about OK on the way there. We got our kit sorted out and put it all on straight away and were in the water and beginning our 3rd dive. Once we were underwater, I felt fine - thankfully! This dive site was further out than the previous two and was a mass of huge reefs and rocks and we felt like we were constantly swimming through millions of fish scattered around. Now, here comes the next shock for the blog and this is a HUGE one! I have actually swam past a real live, wild shark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so flipping scary! It was about 3 metres long and only about 10 metres away from us! After a bit of hyperventilating, we were moving on again, enjoying the reef. Alex showed Steve an urchin, which ended up pricking his finger - he later on showed me that he was bleeding, so along came some more hyperventilating, as sharks can smell a single drop of blood from 2 miles away, so I was now petrified the flipping thing was going to come back in attack mode this time (Steve wasn't bothered though, as it was only a pinprick)! As you can expect I used a lot of air up on this dive, but we were soon ascending and getting back onto the rocky boat!
We had to wait a while before we could go for our fourth dive, so we had some breakfast on the boat and were then taught how to use a diving compass. I started to feel more sea sick, so Steve and I got back in the water to do some snorkelling, but it didn't make me feel any better, so I was glad when Alex started to pass us our gear to go back under. Once under I felt better again. We had to do a few more skills with Alex, which I managed to get a bit flustered on at one point, as my regulator came out of my mouth and I was gulping in water and not air! But we were soon back on the reef and had the shock of seeing another 2 sharks, although these ones were very far away and possibly not quite as scary?! We saw much of the same as before - millions of fish, anenomes, urchins, sea cucumbers, we even saw a lion fish (very poisonous) - we just saw too much to list really! It was soon time to get back onto the boat, wait for the other divers to return and then make our way back to land. Unfortunately on the return to land, seasickness got the better of me and I wasn't a well bunny! But I did feel much better afterwards (I think it's pretty impressive that this was the first time I've been ill in the 2 months we've been away though)!
We finally got back to wonderful dry land (although I felt like I was still bobbing up and down) and filled out our log books and PADI certification forms. So we are now both qualified PADI Open Water Divers! So, if you ever go to DivePoint in Koh Tao and look us up in their book of qualified divers, we'll be there!
After all the paper work, we got our luggage together and got a taxi to further down the island on Sairee Beach to spend a couple of days resting and relaxing before moving back onto the mainland to continue our adventures!

Well, we think that's about all there is to know at the moment. Apologies for another long blog! We also hope you managed to survive the rather impressive shocks as well! Hope everyone is well, missing you all loads and looking forward to some more comments from you all!