We decided to get the tourist overnight train and ferry to Koh Tao to begin our four day PADI open water scuba diving course with Crystal diving. We spent the first day learning the theory of scuba diving by watching videos of diving and looking at equipment. The second day was the hardest day as it involved learning the scuba diving techniques in the pool. We had to learn the proper breathing technique, ascending and descending techniques and also what the recovery techniques are if something goes wrong with our masks or the air pressure while under water. Over the third and fourth day we got to do four open water dives in the sea where we gradually built up our descending depth to a maximum depth of 18 metres. The breathing and bouyancy techniques were slightly easier to do in the sea compared to the pool and as we got better at those techniques we we're able to be more aware of our surroundings. We were able to observe coral and fish swimming around us which was why we wanted to scuba dive.
When we returned to the beach and finished the paperwork required to officially qualify us as open water scuba divers our instructor Andrea started talking about further progression in scuba diving. She highly recommended that we do a further course to learn to dive deeper in order to explore better diving sites around the world especially as we are continuing to travel for the next few months. After a discussion we decided to do the deep dive the following morning which was the best decision I could ever have imagined. We got to do two dives, the first one was 30 metres deep where there were tons of beautiful schools of fish to see and the second dive was to a ship wreck. We didn't get to go inside the ship wreck as you have to be an experienced diver however visiting the ship wreck alone was amazing. We got to look inside the doors and see schools of fish inside which was very cool. I didn't think that I would really enjoy scuba diving however now I am so glad to have done the course. The three of us have already started to look at other potential scuba diving locations around the world for the rest of the trip.Read more
Thailand
