Day 150! It’s pretty crazy that big eventful days keep falling on these kind of “milestone” days. Today was absolutely unreal. Probably one of my craziest since motorbiking Vietnam/Laos or hitchhiking from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. Today I finally took the dive into a whole new world… scuba diving!

I usually don’t have to wake up very early for my volunteering job at Taco Shack. But since I signed up for my open water scuba diving certification, I had to wake up at 8am!

Today’s day started with a 9am class, so I woke up, went over to the hostel lobby, grabbed a muesli bowl, and played a little pool before class begun.

Our instructor ended up being late (a little mixup in the schedule), but David did such an amazing job explaining everything that we read visually to us.

Over the next hour and a half he eased any nerves I had and ingrained all the information needed into my head. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a classroom setting, but he really did a great job and made sure we understood what we were needing to do and the safety concerns of doing it.

One of the reasons I was looking forward to diving was my group. Well… I had two classmates this morning, one was a woman from England who was doing a refresher course (since it had been a while since her last dive). So she wasn’t actually in my group… the other was Marte, from Belgium, who was the only other person doing their open water starting today.

At first I was disappointed that I didn’t have a bigger group. But I quickly realized, this was going to be the best thing that could’ve happened!

Not only was Marte a wonderful person that I ended up enjoying being around… we also were about to receive one on one guidance throughout our dives. Also we’d be each other’s dive buddies the entire course!

Over the past couple of weeks since coming to Taco Shack, I’ve watched the divers eat their “free” meal and then head out diving. Leaving me all alone at the lobby waiting for other travelers to arrive.

But today, I finally got to partake in this activity!

The main dish was pork, so the staff kindly made me a tofu dish. I’m not exactly sure what the dish was, but it was tasty and a solid meal before an afternoon full of intense exercise.

After we ate, we sat around for a while waiting for the morning dive to get back. We have a taxi at Taco Shack that takes the divers to and from the pier, but we only have one. Since they were late it was delaying us a little bit. But the reason they were late was because the waves apparently were very large today, and lots of people were getting seasick…

But eventually they came back safe and sound and we loaded onto the taxi to start our journey into the world of scuba diving!

The pier is a quick drive away from the hostel and we hopped off with gear in hand. The Taco Shack boat is a distinct yellow boat, so if you’re ever in Koh Tao, you won’t miss it.

We passed our bags onto the boat and then hoisted ourselves off the pier and onto the boat for an exciting afternoon and evening.

While we went on our hour boat ride, we discussed what the dive plan was today, went over how to properly set up our equipment, and got ourselves mentally ready for the journey to come.

Our first dive was going to be at Mango Bay, which I was pretty pumped about because I’ve never been to this beach (it’s a dangerous one to get to without a semi auto or manual bike). But since we had a boat, it was just fine!

Now there was no time to relax on the beach because we were strapping up and immediately diving into the ocean!

But first, Franko needed assurance we could both swim. So Marte and I jumped into the choppy ocean and swam around the boat for a few minutes.

Once he was satisfied, we got back in the boat before jumping right back in fully equipped. We started out by inflating our buoyancy devices and “snorkeling” at the top of the water to get used to how breathing with the air mask and regulator felt. But this was just to make it to the shallow water and where the fun began!

We deflated our buoyancy devices, exhaled, and sank down to the sand, about 5m below the ocean surface. Here is where we practiced our skills we learned in the classroom! Taking the air mask on and off, how to purge the water out of it, how to clear our goggles (yeah we had to purposely put water in them), sharing oxygen, etc.

This is where having only two of us was one of the best things that could’ve happened! Because my friend Lydia, a dive master in training (DMT), came along, Marte and I had one on one instruction on how to do these skills. We both smashed them in about 12 minutes, which meant we could go straight into some fun and dive around the bay.

The only thing I was really struggling with at this point was buoyancy (Marte was absolutely killing it). But my instructors just strapped a couple extra weights to me and it helped a ton. We then dove around for another almost 45 minutes making a total dive of 55min for our first ever dive.

We swam around coral, saw schools of fish, even a trigger fish which went after our instructor. We also unfortunately had a boat go way to close to us but our instructors were on top of it and made sure we were both out of harms way. Throughout the dive we went from around 5m to 8m… which is not common on a first dive but it went swimmingly and I’m not going to tattle on him for making it a bit more fun and challenging.

I was still struggling with keeping proper buoyancy (I am definitely more positively buoyant), but it was insane. To be under water for that long was incredible. On top of that our instructors were so animated and excited for us that it made the whole experience incredible.

We got to the surface and Marte and I were ecstatic! We gave each other the biggest high fives and Franko and Lydia were proud of us too! They said we absolutely destroyed the skills and they really didn’t have many comments for us (later Franko and I chatted about what I needed to do to figure out my buoyancy and it made what came next, in the evening, a lot easier).

We then practiced a few safety procedures in case our dive buddy wasn’t able to swim themselves back to the boat… I think this might’ve been a scheme because our instructors didn’t want to swim back themselves, but it was a challenge against the choppy waves at the surface.

We made it safe and sound to the boat with big smiles on our face! Now what I didn’t realize was… we had another dive today. But this one was truly throwing us in the deep end… we would be going down to almost 12 meters on this dive! Almost double what we just learned in.

We swapped tanks and setup our equipment again and then headed to the top deck to sit, chat about our experience so far, and hear what was coming next.

Our second dive was called the Japanese Garden. This dive was actually right next to one of Koh Tao’s islands (off the island) Nang Yuan Island.

We jumped into the water and descended down slowly into the depths by a rope which was tethered to the bottom of the ocean. Every half to full meter we would equalize and then continue. Our instructor was hyping us up the whole way and making sure we were okay before continuing.

Once we were at the bottom, it was to time. We flipped ourselves horizontal and started to weightlessly swim through some impressive coral structures. There were a few times during the dive where I accidentally floated a little higher, but I was starting to figure out how to properly balance out my buoyancy with what Franko told me on the boat.

Eventually, he came up behind me and took off one of my weights! He also took one off before that dive so I was down to 5 instead of 7! Major progress from the start. We ended up diving for 42 minutes, it truly felt like 10 minutes! The marine life was really cool, we saw some beautiful parrot fish, some really big fish that I have no clue what they were, and Franko even spotted a spotted sting ray, but it slithered away before Marte and I could get a good glimpse of it.

To go from no knowledge of scuba diving to diving at 11.2 meters was insane! But at the same time, I felt so prepared and all my nerves or any fears were completely eliminated. We resurfaced after an unreal experience and Marte and I again just immediately had the biggest smiles on our faces and we all exchanged fist bumps.

We got back in the boat and packed up all our gear for the boat ride home. We went back to the top of the boat to chat and hang out. Franko also told us that we basically were at a point already that they hope day 3 open water divers would be at… a nice compliment to hear having no experience diving!

The ride back was relaxing as we bounced through the rough waters around Koh Tao.

I was insanely hungry after an intense afternoon and evening of diving. So I quickly took a shower and made my way back to Taco Shack for a big, filling, and tasty burrito!

While I was eating, there were two people playing monopoly deal, Laura and Elise! So before starting my night shift I joined them and another traveler, Max, for a game! They were all from England and the two originally playing had met at the airport in Bangkok a couple weeks ago and have been traveling together ever since!

After the game was over I went around and chatted with the travelers hanging out in our lobby gearing up for another jungle party! Even though I had diving, I decided to still go for a little (because it was a free ticket) and enjoy some live DJs.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the DJs weren’t that great this time around. But that meant an “early” night back home for me. So after a long and nice walk from the venue to the sandwich/Roti stands. I got a chicken sandwich and called it a night!

Today was actually just hands down incredible. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from scuba diving, since I’ve never really had the desire to do it… but now I totally understand! This sport is incredible and I’m so excited to see what the next couple of days have in store for me!

– Elie