10. Bans diving resort - 3 of 3. Advanced open water

When I had set off travelling it had been a goal of mine to learn to scuba dive, and I had finally achieved becoming a certified diver! I was celebrating this in "the fish bowl" along with the other few new graduates of bans diving resort. Alcohol flowed freely and at some stage I even drunkenly persuaded a girl to show me her apartment.

Our diving group celebrated our victory. I can be seen here miming the size of a fish I saw

After the visit I decided to make my way home, and staggered back to my apartment (still pretty drunk). When I got back I blearily discovered that I didn't have my key. The apartment was one large room containing 3 beds and accessed by a large french window, where I was stood, locked out. Inside I could see that the light was on, and Tony was sleeping, so I banged on the french windows, hoping to wake him.

"TONY!" I shouted.

Nothing.

I tried again, and again until about five minutes had passed with me hammering and shouting trying to rouse the slumbering lump. Eventually there was movement from an unexpected part of the apartment when the bathroom door swung open and out hopped Rob completely naked. He scurried over, clutching his tackle, unlocked the door, and scuttled back into the bathroom. I thought nothing about this, and passed out in my bed.

The next day I learned that Rob had in fact been with a lady in the bathroom, and had to stop half way through to come and let me in. Not only that but he told me the next day that they had moved things back into our room shortly after! I remembered none of this.

On my day off, very hungover, I met up with my dive buddy Jack. We jumped on his quad bike to go to a place that did mini golf. Or was it crazy golf? What is the difference? Anyway we nursed our heads and spent a few hours playing some size or sanity of golf. On the way back Jack thought it would be a laugh to see how fast the quad bike would go. The answer is very. Luckily quad bikes are quite loud, so most of my terrified screams were drowned out by the engine.

The following day heralded the start of the two day advanced diving course. I was happy to learn that the advanced course was more focused on the practical side of things and doing dives, so no more classroom boredom.

These dives were a blast. This was partly because we went to some interesting places, but also in no small part down to the fact that I was now a bit more competent underwater so felt less like I might drown at any moment. The course was highlighted by....

Wreck dive: This was a dive around a decommissioned battleship that had been scuppered near to Ko Tao fairly recently - solely for the benefit of visitors to dive around. It was fascinating to explore nonetheless.

Orientation dive: Up until this point we had always been accompanied Steve the dive master, however for this dive we were on our own. Each buddy pair made a map of the underwater terrain, then were free to randomly roam out across the reef at our leisure. Rob and I did fine, apart from when we thought we would try crossing from one reef to another, and ended up just swimming off into the open ocean where there we could see nothing but infinite blue ahead and featureless sand below. We started to get a little worried, realising that it seemed like we'd gone astray - so retraced our steps.

Night dive: This had to be my favourite of all the dives I did at Ko Tao. A group of about 4 set off at sunset with our normal gear and 2 torches. By the time we got to the dive site it was pitch black. Going down was creepy and amazing at the same time. When diving I find you  have a certain sense of weightlessness, and as it was night it was pitch black in all directions. As such it was easy for me to imagine that I was drifting in space, pulling myself along an invisible rope. After a minute or two torches started being switched on ahead, so was able to stick with the group, gradually descending until the reef eventually materialised ahead of us. It was interesting to observe the different marine life that emerged at night. It was also fun to occasionally look away from the reef and look into the complete blackness of the ocean, which gave me a very real feeling that I was floating in a void of nothingness. It only took a few second before I would feel a twinge of panic and quickly have to look back to the patches of light ahead, and realise that the world was still there.

So I would thoroughly recommend Ko Tao if you are thinking of travelling to Thailand, it might not feature as much diversity or marine life or coral as a few other places, but that is not to say that there isn't still plenty you can see. It is also relaxing to dive on an island where the diving is so common that the process has been refined to hassle free perfection. Alas my visit here came to an end, and I was to continue my island hopping trip to include Ko Samui.

9. Bans diving resort - 2 of 3

Our motorboat arrived at a giant wooden brick that was apparently the main diving vessel. We clambered aboard, and with a shiver it chugged in to life before heading out to deeper waters. In diving you always have to dive with a buddy, in case you panic or anything - they can give you a slap and tell you to pull yourself together.

That day I buddied up with an English guy called Jack, we checked our equipment over, had a final group talk and all too soon the boat arrived at the first dive site. I donned my fins and with a great deal of trepidation clumsily flapped over to the rear of the boat, and launched myself into the water.

My first dive in the sea! We weren't going deep: only 9 meters, but it felt a lot to me as I caught sight of the the dim ocean floor looming way below. As your body gets under pressure you being to feel a 'sqeeze', where the little pockets of air inside you get pressurised - especially in your ears. You have to equalise this pressure, by blowing on your nose, swallowing or wiggling your jaw about. And so that is how I descended: inching down the buoy rope frantically swallowing, waggling my jaw about and blowing on my nose. I took so long that Steve the instructor, and all the dive master helpers swam over to check that I was ok. We eventually all made it to the bottom, and practiced all of the techniques we had learned in the pool. I didn't really get a chance to look about too much - focused as I was on not messing up.
Tony seemed to be coping fine, despite the fear he had told us about yesterday. However that evening he did confess he'd found it hard, and that he wasn't sure he could finish the course. I attempted to persuade him to stick with it to the end, being that it was only 3 days, and he had already done one of them.

The next day was rather boring and contained no dives. We were just sat in classroom, learning theory.

The day after that was the last of the course. We went on a few more dives, getting familiar with how the whole diving thing worked, and to demonstrate a couple of skills that weren't too simple. The first was that I had to take all off all of my equipment and put it on again. The second was a simulation of being out of air. Or to put it another way: drowning. To do this I had to take off my mask, and Steve the instructor turned off my air. Very suddenly I could not breathe at all. I frantically batted at him to let him know I was suffocating, and he let the air flow again. Thinking about it I'm not sure if that part was actually part of the course at all, and was in fact just Steve getting some twisted kick out of torturing us.


This was probably the hardest part of the course, and to make sure that Tony could do it Steve yet again deployed Daphne the pretty dive master to do the skill demonstration individually with him. He did so admirably, even somehow managing to puff out his chest a little at the same time.
At midday we were brought back to land. That was the end of the practical side of the course. In the afternoon we sat the exam. Although to say exam would be a bit of an exaggeration. There were questions to answer, sure, with multiple choice answers - except that Daphne the dive master was in the room with us, and as soon as we didn't know an answer we asked her and she just told us. Unsurprisingly everyone passed. Nobody was more happy about this than Tony.

Rob and I had already signed up to go on to complete the advanced course as well. Tony felt that this would be a little much so did not decide to join us on that venture. The only issue was that the advanced course was scheduled to start the day after the exam. There were a few people in the same boat (pardon the pun) and everybody agreed that it was a little "full on", to start the day after. With a little persuading we managed to get Steve the instructor to let us all have the day off. He agreed, and so that meant party times ahoy.

8. Bans diving resort - 1 of 3

So my mission to learn to become a diver has come to fruition - I had arrived at ko Tao.

We arrived as dawn was breaking, and despite it being so early that there was barely enough light in the sky to see by, me and my prospective diver companions (Rob and Tony) found several people there sleepily peddling the services of various dive schools as we disembarked. I smiled and nodded non-commitally as one rep waggled a leaflet under my nose.


Tony had heard about a place so we ignored all of them and instead stated to nobody in particular that we'd like a taxi. Dutifully a man materialised in possession of a four by four pickup. We hopped in the back and the driver pulled away.
The rep that had shown me the leaflet was having none of this. As soon as he saw that we were leaving he jumped onto his scooter fired up the engine and took chase. He clutched to the side as we trundled along, handing us leaflets into the back of the pickup - we learned that he represented a dive school called Bans diving resort. We were at first dismissive, but then started to get genuinely concerned that the guy was going to disappear under the wheels of the pickup unless we agreed to at least look at Bans. So we told him that we would take a look. With that he pulled forward to the driver window and shouted some instructions to him. The pickup slowed into a u-turn which almost send the Bans rep flying into a bush, and we sped off in the opposite direction.

Bans turned out be ideal as far as I was concerned. The  small complex sprawled away from a little beach where there was a cafe, bar, and a small staging area for Bans pupils could jump onto boats and head into open water. Further back were a couple of practice pools where you would normally find some newby divers (like I was about to become) bubbling away under the surface, and finally some apartments set against a picturesque forested backdrop. We haggled our way into a palatial little suite for the three of us, full diving course for a really good price.

view from the beach at bans. Couple of dive boats off in the distance there

The next day heralded the beginning of the course. We had all signed up to both open water and advanced courses, which means we'll be qualified to dive to 18 and then 30 metres. During sign in we are instructed to meet at a block of onsite classrooms. So first thing the next morning we all headed to it. We meet our classmates, a group of around 8 people. We met our instructor - an awesome dutch guy in his fifties wearing a permanent grin and preceding most of his sentences with "alright guysh! ... "; and we also met a couple of the dive masters - who would be helping us out: Tom and Daphne.
We had a little overview and then watched an incredibly patronising video voiced by an American (Apparently it is frowned upon to remove all of you equipment for no reason whilst under water? Who knew). After that we were herded to one of the practice pools to learn how to don our various bits and bobs before all clumsily waddling out into the shallows.
We spent the next while learning the tricks of the diving trade, like how to not immediately drown and that kind of thing. Tony was having a little trouble with some of the methods we had to learn. He had told me yesterday that he had a slight fear of the water - and doing his open water diving course was a way to conquer this. So Steve (the instructor) had a solution for this, which was to pair him off with Daphne. Now Daphne was pretty, young, curvy and had a soft Italian accent. Tony: who seemed to have a soft spot for her amd didn't dare to be seen to lose face - so Steve the instructor's plan worked perfectly. Tony was up to speed in no time.

There was another day of "confined water" skills (in other words swimming around in circles in a pool), where everyone was itching to go out in the ocean; and before we knew it another beautiful day dawned in Thailand. we headed down to the jetty to board a massive motorboat. I was shitting my pants a little bit at this point, as I picked out the right size wetsuit and assorted equipment. I dumped it into a big bag and clambered onto the motor boat. Where is my tank of air? I suddenly thought in a panic.

"Alright guysh!" Announced Steve the instructor "We're going to head out to a few dives sitesh now, We are meeting up with a bigger boat we'll be diving from which has our air tanks and you'll do your buddy checksh there."*

"Whew" I think I said out loud.

With that the engines roared into life and we sped off towards our first ever ocean scuba dive!

*You may have read this in the voice of Sean Connery, and you would be right to because he didn't sound dissimilar