Day 13 ... my first diving experience!

Today i decided to do the first of my holiday goals ...... try scuba diving! I had provisionally booked it 2 days ago ... but it was all weather dependant! Thankfully though ... the weather was fabulous today ... so off i headed down to the PADI certified dive center in Haad Yao where i met my instructor Daniel (German).

I was doing what is called a DSD ... a 1/2 day @Discover Scuba Diving@ course on the beach .. where you get taught the basic skills and then taken for 1 dive out on a coral reef just off the beach. There were 2 other people doing the dive with me but both had dived before ... Peter (Swiss) was on his 11th dive and was just refreshing himself, and Urs (Swiss) was on his 52nd dive ... and he too was just refreshing himself ... before doing more dives on his holiday!

Visibility for the few days before had not been great and had only been about 1 meter, but yesterday . .. it had got a lot better and was about 4-5 meters so we were hopeful that we would see some of the reef itself and not loose each other either.

Well .. i spent my first hour or so going through the basics of diving ... bouyancy, the issues with being uinder water ... the hand signals to communicate .... and then an introduction to the 3 skills that I had to do as a beginner diver!

1. Removing the regulator (breathing mechanism) from my mouth
2. Throwing the regulator away as if it got knocked away ... and finding it and putting it back in your mouth
3. Clearing my goggles of water
4. Using another divers emergency regulator when you are out of air (this was a slightly more advanced skill that was for the other 2 divers but I done it too for practice!)

I passed all these . .. and thankfully it was only in about 1.5m of water so if you really wanted you could stand up out of the water. After this ... it was off to the reef ... so we swam out to the start of the reef .. and began to dive ....

It took me a while to get my bearings under water and to remember to equalise again ... and stuff like that but after a few minutes i had mastered the basics ... and then it started to amaze me .. it really is a national geographic film type feeling ... there are fish swimming around you .. doing their normal thing .. and the coral .. that was amazing ..... its fabulous to see Anenome's, living coral, fish living among the coral, scallops and clams embedded in the coral ... it really is hard to describe .... untill you see it yourself! The underwater reef video footage from the discovery chanel though is a good indication . .. :)

Well we arrived back on the beach after 48 minutes under water ..... and it was the best 48 minuites of the holiday so far ... its like entering another world ..... now all i have to do is try it again and see even more. The only thing to do after this ... is get into space!!

Headed home after the dive ... tired and hungry .. but extremely happy .... roll on my next chance to go diving!!

I spent the evening just relaxing at the hostel .... getting ready for our last full day in Koh Phangan

Until tomorrow  ..... be good!