Birthday and Bans scuba diving resort

Happy birthday to me 🎂🎉, I decided to head back down south to Koh Tao, I'd missed out the popular island when visiting the Thai islands before and was keen to do my open water Padi diving certification, so what better time than around my birthday.

Getting there wasn't the most pleasent of journeys - I grabbed a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok then an overnight coach and boat to the island. The coach looked lovely, however unlike the Vietnamese night buses, it wasn't exactly a bed you could lay on, just a standard reclining chair, not great for nine hours. I managed about one hour of sleep. 😪

Finally arrived on Koh Tao and settled into a hostel. The island is very beautiful and really small so easy to get around. On my birthday I visited Koh Nanhgum (an even smaller island with an amazing view and crystal clear water). In the evening a bunch of us went on the Koh Tao pub crawl (apparently it's pretty well known). It was a laugh and a good way to celebrate my ripening age. The locals were spinning and throwing fire sticks. Some tricks were pretty good but one guy in particular kept dropping his... #embarrassing

Although I guess this trip is sort of one big present to myself - I decided to do my Padi diving course here. Koh Tao is very famous for diving (and also reasonably priced) so I signed up with one of the many centres on the island, there is at least 100, so I went with a recommended and well known place (Bans). The following day we started the course - the first day was just a couple of hours of intro and cheesy videos, then the next day we got in the swimming pool and learned the ropes. There's a lot to take in. You learn about how air is affected underwater, nitrogen levels, hand signals, equalising etc but everyone did well and the instructor was satisfied we were ready to enter the sea and not all immediately start drowning.

Up at 6.30 AM for a spot of breakfast then straight onto the boat; we'd be in the water by 9.00 AM. The first sea dive was understandably a little nervy, but as time went on we all got used to the feeling. We had to do a few skills in the water to pass the course then continued the dive. We did another dive an hour later in similar conditions and it was a bit easier.

The following day we went down to 18 metres (the max on this course) again much easier for the third dive. We did a few more skills including an emergency ascent and some breathing techniques to ensure you stay level in the water. The final dive was just a recreational dive and most enjoyable as there were no skills and we were just going around the area. Loads of fish and coral plus some unusual creatures. Upon surfacing, we signed the paper work and were officially certified open water divers. 👌

I'd enjoyed the diving a lot and there was an opportunity to do the advanced course at a discount with the same instructor who I thought was excellent. I therefore decided to take it. This time there are five dives including a 30 metre one plus a navigation and night dive as mandatory. I also opted for a shipwreck dive.

30 metres is quite a scary thought as it's a long way down, but it didn't seem too bad as the visability was good. I may have got a touch of the gas narcosis (a common condition at deeper levels) where you you feel slightly high underwater - I couldn't do the simple math problem that they use to test it, so either I had it or I'm just an idiot (maths isn't my strong suit to be fair).

The deep dive happened to be in the shipwreck too - it was very cool. As you decended suddenly this large blurry outline started to appear and as we went lower the shipwreck comes into view. We swam around the wreck site - there are still guns on the top of it too. After that we did the navigation dive. We had to plan where to enter and exit and navigate underwater with a compass - it's quite hard but I managed the basics. I won't be steering any teams around dive sites yet though. We went over a colourful coral garden too which was pretty cool.

The next day I had to complete three more dives, two standard ones and one night dive. The standard ones were great and by now I was a little more used to the feeling of diving. On one we swam through literally hundreds of small fish and they surrounded you. When it came to do the night dive everyone was slightly more apprehensive. There were a few special procedures to follow and obviously we had to have some lights down there. If you don't it's completely pitch black. It was one of the best dives though - you see a few different things and it's really freaky being in the water in the dark. We saw some big barracuda hunting smaller fish, a couple of purple spotted rays and various other things.

So after that, I'm now an Advanced Open Water diver which means I can dive to 30 metres, dive shipwrecks and dive at night. Hopefully I can squeeze one more in on this trip.

I'm heading to Myanmar next - I've heard it's definitely more challenging to travel than the typical backpacker route and it's technically the start of rainy season there, but lots of people have said positive things about it despite that - so lets see how it goes.Read more