We're Certified Open-Water SCUBA divers!

Thursday, 24 February 2005

Today, we teamed up with about five others who were also finishing their Open Water course today. I have to say, having a 1:2 ratio has been nice, and Cathy and I were really lucky to have the extra attention. We joked about it often, that the dive resort probably doesn't see too many overly excited, giddy girls coming through to dive. Everything was just so new and exhilarating and fun; we were on cloud nine the whole time we were in Ko Tao! We made friends with Seb, from France, and others who were anticipating the fun dives. We headed first to Southwest Pinnacles. I have to admit I was nervous, especially after yesterday's incident. But I told Rob, and he told me just to stay close (which means I held his hand for most of the time!). Today's dives would be deeper, to 18 meters. We talked about all the fish we would see and learned the various hand signals. We learned to "James Bond" dive in the water, which I liked better than just stepping in the water. I did my somersault into the water off of the dive boat, as the videographer took clips of everyone. He came diving with us too, but didn't take too many shots as the visibility was poor today.

We did the mask removal exercise, then we swam down to the ocean floor to swim through schools of barracuda, angel fish, clown fish, beautiful corals, and stroked the soft sea anemone. On our fourth dive at 10 meters to Three Rocks, we did very poorly at compass navigation (when Cathy and I both go in opposite directions that's not a good sign) and struggled with our neutral buoyancy. I still need to practice using my breathing more to keep me buoyant underwater. But, it was fun doing somersaults and sideways spiral rolls. We ran out of time to do foot races on the ocean floor and make a human pyramid, but by noon, we were finished with our dives and PADI certified open water SCUBA divers!

Cathy and I bought Buddha View Dive Resort t-shirts and had instructors and the people we finished the course with sign them. Did some last minute shopping and relaxing before we headed to the pier to catch the Lomprayah Catamaran, where we met Rob and teased that we're just stalking him to whereever he goes (because Cathy needs to be on the left, and I have to always be on his right!). We enjoyed the ride in to the coastal town, Chumphon, where we hung out at a cool farang restaurant, showered off in a clean shower, then treated Rob to dinner. We all went to the train station together, talking about diving of course and about Rob's plans to start his own dive expeditions all over the world. We wished him a fun vacation as he goes to Europe to visit family, and reminded him how glad we were that he was our teacher the past few days. Not only is he an excellent instructor, but he's a total sweetheart on top of it all and made our first diving experiences very memorable ones. Cathy and I celebrated with a bottle of Chang beer on the train, as we both went on and on about the wonderful time we had in Ko Tao. We couldn't stop talking about it the whole time we were there! IT was definitely the highlight of our vacation!

Without any train delays this time, we headed to Nakhon Pathom, playing Texas Hold 'Em with a couple of Swedes.