Learning to Dive in Koh Tao

The ferry from the mainland arrived just before 7 am, and the captain did an astonishing job of working through the jumble of boats surrounding the harbor. When the boat was finally moored, the passengers followed cars and cargo onto the waiting dry land. When we made our way past the bustling mix of divers and dockworkers, the town was decidedly sleepy with most shops still closed. Unsure of what exactly was required of me in order to start my class, I decided to make my first stop at the scuba school, luckily not far from the pier where we landed. When I arrived, the scuba school was clearly closed, but did have a Whatsapp number listed and a start time (9 am) listed on the door. Fairly confident that they wouldn’t have required me to be on an early morning boat day 1, I resolved to text the number and come back at 9. In the meantime, I accompanied Noemi (my friend I had been travelling alongside since Phuket; I’m trying to use names now for readability) to her hostel. When we arrived, it was also extremely quiet, so we let ourselves in and found somewhere to put our bags before lying down and enjoying the island air in the hostel lounge for a little while. As the morning progressed, hostel denizens began to emerge and join us. Unfortunately, they were all fairly confident that we wouldn’t be able to check in until about 12. I spoke with some of the others about their time on the island, and even met a British man named Harry who had been on the island for more than a month, and about to complete his divemaster certification. I was happy to hear great things about the island and the hostel, but pretty sure there was not much to be gained from waiting even longer at the hostel. Confident that whatever the scuba course demanded, I would want some breakfast, Noemi and I walked around the Island streets looking for a good place for breakfast. Most places were still closed when we left a little after 8, and we ended up finding a relatively authentic looking Thai breakfast place. Their offerings were limited outside of drinks, either porridge with some stewed meat an egg and herbs or some type of Thai frybread. When we both asked for the porridge, they were already out, so we ended up splitting an order of the bread and some Thai tea. The bread came with condensed milk and a sweet pandan (a local plant with a subtle floral flavor) sauce, and ended up tasting essentially like delicious fresh doughnuts when dipped. Very happy with my meal, but a little more sugared-up than I had anticipated, I saw a response from the dive shop confirming that I should arrive at 9, which was fast approaching. Leaving money with Noemi so that she could pay for our meal, I rushed to the dive shop and arrived just in time. I spoke to a woman at the front desk, paid, and finally it began! the first step was meeting my instructor and getting paired up with some equipment. My instructor was named Damien, and he had been diving for 6 years, all around the world after getting started in the Canary Islands and getting his teaching certification as quickly as possible. The equipment search went well, and when equipped with a full set we learned to pack them into bags and then all got together in a small conference room. The next half day was fairly technical, first lots of paperwork, but subsequently lots of video and demonstration, going over all of the pieces of our equipment, how to set it all up, and what we would need to do in the water. Close to 1 pm, we finally finished and were sent off to get lunch with a strict return time and a plan to take the gear to the pool for the rest of the day. After a quick lunch I returned, and after a drive in the back of a truck to a dive resort we brought our equipment up and prepared for our first dive. In the multi-tiered pool we practiced buoyancy, hand signals, and more. Some people in the group really struggled with breathing underwater without panicking, and I certainly struggled with some of the exercises as well, so we went fairly late and ended up leaving the pool close to 7 pm. I enjoyed the dive, but felt fairly uninspired by the pool. Tired and excited for the next day, I got dinner and enjoyed a small walk around the island at night, before returning to the hostel, starting my electronic reading/tests for the class, and falling to sleep.

The next day didn’t start terribly early, so I got time for breakfast and more online learning. When we did arrive at the harbor, we climbed through a few other dive boats to get to ours. We rode out to the first dive site and after setting up our gear and checking each other over, we stepped off the boat and into the Gulf of Thailand. We started with lots of drills, but over the next days started swimming through more and more coral gardens and beautiful fish. It was absolutely scary and difficult to adjust to fully breathing underwater, but with time I also grew more comfortable and more efficient with my air. When the first course came to an end, after three days filled with dives and online learning, I found myself enjoying it so much that I elected to do my advanced certification as well. This more independent course had a focus on depth (it allows you to go to 30m depth rather than the basic certificate’s 18m) alongside the basics of diving at night and through wrecks. This came with more practice in navigation and buoyancy, two very important and hard to master skills. These dives were even more incredible, the night dive had incredibly vivid color and a completely different feel, the wreck dive took us to 30m and had us swimming through a small enclosure in a decommissioned and sunken US battleship, the HTMS Sattakut. I saw two beautiful turtles, but unfortunately missed out on the local whale sharks and manta rays. After the advanced course came to a close, I was very tired, but having spent a full 6 days on the island, and halfway through my time in Thailand, I wrestled my urge to do more dives while in town, and booked my ticket to Bangkok. Also- the timing is sort of a blur, but food highlights on the island included a delicious massaman curry, red curry fried rice, and fruit smoothies, though there was not much of a street food scene there. I met lots of great people but most of my time and energy was going into diving. After she did a couple dives, Noemi and I parted ways as she headed to Bangkok and then Japan while I was deciding to do my Advanced course. Ultimately the island was really fun, and a great place to learn to dive, but felt very tourist (especially dive tourist) oriented!