Koh Tao (10m club)

Is the place to get your scuba on. I’d never done it before, and it was CHEAP! The island was pretty chilled out with everybody there for the same reason. To get 18m underwater! My first dive was in nangyuan in about 2m of water (http://www.flickr.com/photos/confusedvision/3341067290/). There were 6 of us sat in a circle going through the hand signals, and every now and again a school of fish would come and park up in the middle of the circle, have a look around and shoot off again. Beats learning in a swimming pool any day.

Fish are mental. I managed to use up my whole bloody camera in about 10 minutes and the pictures were all shit.

The day before my last two dives, our instructor G reminded us of the 3 rules.

1. keep breathing
2. don’t drink and dive
3. NO SPEEDOS!!

Unfortunately the lure of fire throwers and buckets of sangsom whisky and redbull kept me out way too late the night before my last dive. I must have said “this is my last bucket” about 5 times. Next thing I know I’m getting woken up by a knock on my door at 6:30am! My doors open, I’m sleeping in trunks and I can’t find my wallet, door key anything. Before I know it I’m getting zipped up into my wetsuit and we’re about to dive to 18m, the deepest I’ve ever been! In retrospect, it was a bloody class idea. Instead of spending all my time checking my air, watching for my buddy, looking at the instructor, I was eyeing up fish thinking ‘I could take you down – let’s race!’. I was swimming SO close to the coral I could almost smell it. It was awesome.

Every now and again I would check the instructor to make sure I wasn’t lost. Suddenly he started doing these jerky hand movements and it took me a while to realise he was…doing the underwater robot! Cue a massive zero gravity breakdancing sesh which involved me spinning on my head, underwater worm etc. it was class! And if that wasn’t enough we had a matrix style fight to finish off. Beats learning to scuba in a swimming pool any day!

I’ve been banging on to anyone who’ll listen about this awesome bird I met snowboarding in fernie a couple months ago. You know the Icelandic zoologist goddess? Well it’s at this point I get a cheeky little message saying “Dan? What the hell are you doing in Thailand? I want to go to Thailand!” next thing she’s got her tickets booked and is on her way across the pacific – fucking get in!! Hang on Mon - I’ll meet you in koh phi phi! Spent my last day in koh tao on a beach bar crawl, which got so bad I could only tell what time it was by the price of my beer. Less than 100 baht? its happy hour and MUST be before 7!! Someone poured me onto the overnight boat at half 11 and I’m koh phi phi bound!

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=80767&id=500561148&l=f3f3751a69)