The Bro Trip

We're right now on Koh Tao, chilling in our hotelroom. It's been a really slow day. Woke up about 1 o'clock, had breakfast, but we're now back to bed. Had a late night yesterday with some celebrations, here is why:

After Koh Phangan we decided to go to the island that was just north of where we were, Koh Tao. The reason? To learn how to dive and get our diving certificates. Koh Tao is said to be the cheapest place in Thailand, maybe even in the world, to do this. It's a small island, way smaller than Koh Phangan, but on this island, there are no less than 43 dive schools! So that's one of the reasons it's so cheap here. We booked everything before we left Koh Phangan, paid 9800 baht (ca 2400kr) for 4 days of diving course with free accomodation. We came to Koh Tao on tuesday, had a quiet day and began the course on wednesday.


Sunset at Crystal Dive Resort.

On the first day, all we did was watching movies and answering questions in our book that realated to the movies. Learned the basics of diving and all of the biological and physical things you really need to know when you dive. The second day, the theoretical stuff continued. We took our final exam and of course, we passed it. With that, everything in the classroom was taken care of. Now it was time for the practical part of the course - the diving. Later on the same day, we wetsuited up, learned how to asseble and disasseble scuba gear and went to the pool here on the resort. We were in the pool for 5 hours, learning "basics" such as mask removal, mask cleaning, boyancy, switching regulator (the breathing thing) and taking all of the gear of - everything under water. Pretty cool. The next day, it was time for our first open water dive. The depth was set to 12m and we descended holding a rope, since it was or first time. We did two dives that day, the first was a fun dive, which means that you're just swimming around looking at everyhting around you - fish, corals and other weird stuff under the surface. It was really nice! But our best moment during the day happened on our second dive. that dive was more of a skill dive, repeating most of the things we learned in the pool. But during a skill briefing, while we were all on our knees on the bottom, a school of hundreds of barracudas came swimming next to us. At first it looked like they were just passing by, but insted they started to swim around us and at one point, wherever you looked, there was like a wall of barracudas. It was awesome!


Wetsuited up!


Ready to descend!

Our second day started 7 am (too early). You are not in the mood for diving when you're tired, cold and hungry. But as soon as we got on the boat and we felt the warmth of the sun, we got psyked and excited! The two planned dives we did that day was also being shot by a cameraman following us around deep below the surface! Not only were we now expected to do our skills underwater flawless, we also had to perform well in front of the camera. We found no problem doing this however, seeing as we are supercool. Everything went well, and as soon as we had ascended, we were certified divers!!


The diving crew! 

Later that night we all met up at the dive resort bar for some drinks, watching the newly edited movie (We all got to pick the music for the soundtrack)! It was great fun watching, and we all had a good laugh! After that we took a taxi to Sai Ree Beach just north of the dive resort and had a few beers, watched some soccer and chatted through the night.

Feels good being a diver! Of course, more dives and more training is required to be a GOOD diver, but that's a later issue ;). What's important is that we now can begin to explore the underwater world!

Tomorrow our trip continues to Kho Samui, south of Ko Tao And Kho Pa Ngan to check out the beaches there, in search for the sun.

/C & M