Back to Koh Tao

On the big blue free tuktuk back 'home' (I never checked out to secure an actual room when I'd get there) I met two annoying canadians. The kind of people that talk incessently for no good reason, and way too loudly. I ran into bigblue1 with a massive grin on my face and saw jake's back in the distance. Missioned towards him and threw my arms around him telling him I was a cambodian princess, no ladyboy. We caught up all afternoon and then met danique and jost, as it was their last night in koh tao (the night before they celebrated their 2 year anniversary of being together. He's 34, she 23, but such a good couple), for a bigblue dinner. I tried barracuda which was pretty yum and then we went off to a ladyboy cabaret, which is like a musical lip syncing show with only ladyboys and much dancing. It was well talented and hilarious to watch, especially as they'd randomly 'attack (with gropes and gestures)' male audience members. Jake was terrified, and jost was a common product of the joke. 

After it was done we took pictures and went off to the fishbowl for more drinks and dancing. I met a guy with the most ridiculous long dreads that he'd been growing for 11 years. I ended up also seeing trav, louise and will and following them back to trav's bungalow for more chilling, before passing out for a way too early, but finally sleeping in, 10 am advanced orientation.

It all moved so quickly as we chose the 5 dives we'd make, with the only mandatory ones being a deep dive (30m) and a buoyancy dive. We settled on a night, navigation, and ship wreck as the other three, and before we knew it we were buddied off and ready for that days 3 dives. There were 7 of us, which caps the 6 person limit meaning we'd have 2 instructors and maybe end up splitting. Jake and I decided to be buddies, and it was about half and half, the split of padi and ssi. I went ssi because I wanted to have ami as my instructor again. 

The first dive, a perfect buoyancy dive at japanese gardens was an absolute mess. 7 students, 2 instructors, and a dive master in training all trying to stay together in shit visibility and constant unsureness of who we were to follow. Tasks included hovers upside down, standing, and laying, as well as being handed weights and having to balance ourselves out to still maintain neutral buoyancy. We did a limbo game and it was all hard, but I learned a helluva lot. Someone ended up going up early, and it was hilariously uncoordinated which led to the most perfect split for the next dive. Jake, joey and I stayed with ami, and the rest with petra, the very sexy swedish instructor. I'll explain why this was the perfect split. 

Ami's team: jake: obviously comfortable with him already, he's fucking capable as, and there's literally no problem he could possible cause sans using air slightly faster than the rest of us, which is like perfectly normal since ami doesn't breathe, and joey and I would only be 10-20bar behind him. A non issue.

Joey: from singapore, hilarious sense of quiet humour, was a bit all over the place the first day, but never lost his shit and improved like mad. Most relaxed person ever, who again, could cause no problem sans making me laugh underwater.

Ami: well, it's ami. Obviously a win.

Me: can't toot my own horn, but for the most part, I'm definitely not below average on this weird lazy sport.

Basically, this group was the group of people who had all just finished their open waters on the same day, but in 3 different groups, and all capable and ready.

Petra's group:
Petra: she's an instructor, I didn't have, but jake loved her and I wouldve been fine with her too, so no worries.

The hilarious misfits of petra's group:
Asian chick whose name escapes me: she was throwing up all over the boat the first day, sea sick, bobbing in the water like mad, getting lost, and crying incessently on the swims back to the boat. What.

Miles: awesome comic book lover from the marines. Unsure of his scuba ability, but he was hilarious and british, with his only flaw (a fucking why the fuck are you even diving flaw) being that he wore glasses, and didn't wear contacts, so he was literally diving blind.

Joe: canadian, attached to his go pro, and did nothing but continuously ask questions. He was, in the way hat apple juice can sometimes be too sweet, too nice, and when one's stressfully trying to remove the fucking 55 pound tank from their back whilst wobbling on a rocky ass boat, annoying. Also, a 'guzzler' as he put it, finishing his tank ages before anyone else. During the buoyancy task he kneeled on the ground. That is all.

Zach: to be honest, no complaints. He was the other person, who if we hadn't had joey, wouldve been a great teammate. From chicago and had been living in chiang mai, he was funny and sweet and down to earth. Only slight issue was his massive headaches at resurfacing and hilarious (or terrifying? He seemed thrilled about it) nose bleed whilst underwater on the night dive.

For the navigation dive it was just ami's group we went down with, and we went to twins, where we had been twice before, but actually saw shit with the slight visibility. We stopped at a sandy patch and all I could ask was, "what the fuck is that dinosaur?" A massive corally sculpture built where we stopped, which I learned was there when we went before, we just couldn't see it. We did little tasks with oner pserson navigating and the other counting strokes and distance. We were warned the natural response was to shoot up immediately, and as jake began to nav, that's what he did. Joey on the other hand over compensated and swam into the ground. We didn't do the real nav task because of low air, but it was still cool.

We had a wee dinner break later on land before leaving again for the night dive. Armed with torches we went down. Our group was added by a chick who was a dive master from italy, and super sweet with no added stress fom her obvious skill level. It was so weird as it was difficult to determine what level you were on, and we saw crazy animals like turtles, stingrays, filefish, shrimp and barracudas. It was crazy being under when it was so dark and at a point we stopped in the sand, put our lights to our chests and ran our fingers around to see the bioluminescence that was described in the beach. You'd move your fingers and everything would glow green past them. It was beautiful and for the rest od the dive I was constantly doing it to the dark side of me. When we sat in the sand though I saw joey get about 2 inches away from kneeling on a sea urchin. Thankfully ami pulled him hard to safety, but after that I was painfully wary of stopping anywhere, and began floating slightly too high over the group to avoid touching the stuff that you could see when you were only inches away. by the very end of the dive, as we were heading up, I lost control of my bc, started panicking, and ended up popping up at the top. Atleast it was when we were going for a safety stop, and petras group was right there, dealing with zach's bleeding nose, but it was still scary and product of the low visiobilty and lack of an idea of how far I was actually going above everyone. 

After we got back on the boat I was in and out of sleep for a while and then hung out with jake before waking up for the 630am morning dives.

The first one, to chumpon was where we were hoping we'd see a whale shark, but no success. Regardless we got down to 29.2 meters and played around with an edmpty waterbottle, now hilariously crushed by the pressure. She refilled it with her breath, and showed how buoyant it would be before stahsing it away. Next toy was a can of coke, which seemed to have lost all of its red colouring at the bottom. She said she used to play a trick by also bringing coke zero, which was black, but due to getting narced (ill explain) she messed up the trick too often. We all took sips from the coke which tasted amazing and hilariously sweet. Then, the narc test. 

So there's this thing called nitrogen narcosis, which one can get from absorbing too much nitrogen [which happens as you go lower.... err read wikipedia or ask me. this isn't a science class], and at some level of absorption, one can experience 'narcotic effects.' Ami told us that she gets narc'd at 26 meters, but she's used to it so it should be all good when we get lower and play around. 

For the narc test she went to each of us and held up some amount of fingers [not usually in order, like a pointer and pinky or whatnot] and we had to show the appropriate amount of fingers that would make it add to 11. She was funny about it, and hysterical. I thought I was all good, and safe from the potential narcing, but when she came over, even though my answers were all good, I lost my shit. Giggly to the point of a completely filled mask, with no fixing it. narced.

We wandered a wee bit more and then surfaced.

The second dive of that day was to a ship wreck which was kind of artificial since it was a world war 2 ship that was purposely wrecked there. Apparently the thai government wanted to drill for oil in the gulf, and koh tao freaked out because if anything went wrong, koh tao would be dunions. they bribed them with a ship wreck, and then it was left there.. but not after first being sunk in the wrong place, right under the trail for a major ferry company.

It was really crazy to see and quite cool, and we followed it with a navagation task to the next site, but to be honest, none of us really knew what we were doing as we swam through the massive open water. We made it, and upon surfacing, we are now all certified advanced adventurers!

We were back at noonish and after showering I met jake for our final lunch before heading off to phuket. We went to an australian restaurant and had some beer and I had a massive aussie burger. It was mean. I then got some shopping done and he booked some flights. We parted ways after a wee bit, planning to meet up again later for final drinks before my trip began at 8pm. 

At 6 we were back at bb1, I was fully checked out with balance paid, so Jake and I ran to the 711, picked up reasonably priced beers, and came back to drink. we ended up sitting with a bunch of people from the advanced course and then finally said our goodbyes. off to Phuket!