Day 119 - 129 Koh Tao

After packing my apartment and all my belongs on Sunday morning I made my way into Bangkok to catch an overnight bus down to Koh Tao, an island that is a 7 -8 hour bus ride Southwest of Bangkok on the gulf side and a 2 hour ferry ride (about 2 hour ferry ride North of Koh Samui) to spend 8 days getting my scuba diving certification. Koh Tao is the third best and most busy place in the world to get certified, because the conditions are great for open water divers! My Glesne cousins have been urging my sister, my brother and I to get certified for some time and we have been a little slow. It seemed to me getting certified on a beautiful island was much better than a quarry in Chicago or a lake in Minnesota.

Well I fell in love... with the sport. On Monday we just got to relax around the resort and dive center, then Tuesday morning the 7 people in my open water group, started our classroom work and were in the pool with full equipment in the afternoon. Wednesday afternoon we were on the boat and in the water doing some of the exercises that you have to complete to become certified, and I dove for the first time on Thursday afternoon. By Friday afternoon I had completed 4 dives and had my open water certification where the deepest depth you go is 18m. I had intended to spend the next three days relaxing and enjoying the island before heading back to Bangkok, but I liked diving so much I decided to get my advanced certification as well. This consisted of 5 more dives over the next three days, including one night dive (I think my favorite dive of all of them) and one dive down to 30 m. We saw tons of fish including barracudas, sting rays, eels, little Nemos, and so many more. A couple of the sites we dove at had spotted whale sharks and turtles a couple days before we were there, but unfortunately I did not see them. It was just a great experience for me and I understand how a lot of backpackers get stuck there for a couple months to complete their diver master program. It is a beautiful setting with a lot of great people from all around the world. Unfortunately again you don't really feel like you are in Thailand because there are mostly foreigners around.

When we were not diving we were enjoying the beaches, snorkeling with the sharks (literally swimming 3 m below me), and hanging out around the resort. I can see why all my cousins have tried to get us certified for so long. Now we have to plan a family vacation to all go together. They have also started a scuba apparel business in CA that you can check out at http://www.neutraldivegear.blogspot.com/. Check it out :)