Day 71- Call Me Jacques Cousteau...Or Whatever The Opposite Of That Is.

With our thoroughly rested minds, Colleen and I made our way back to school the dive shop for our last installment of "in class" work which was followed up with our final exam.  Despite my lack of recent scholastic endeavors and the fact that I dozed off during class a few times (sorry Amber!), I still managed to get 92% to Colleen's 86%.  Not that anyone is keeping score.  Yeah, just kidding I was keeping score, SUCK IT COLLEEN!!!  Regardless of who scored higher (IT WAS ME!!!) we both achieved a high enough score that we were officially out of the classroom and ready to embark on some dives in the super terrifying ocean.



Big-ups to the Beaufort Delta. Repping hard like a white boy with my shirt!

After mowing down a huge lunch (not the best idea when you have to go swimming) we headed down to the pier and loaded up our gear with the other divers for the afternoon session.  We were going to be diving at two sites known as Japanese Gardens and Twins, which I realize means absolutely nothing to anybody unless you have been to Koh Tao, so I shall leave it at that.  We were both super gung-ho to experience our first taste of non-pool diving, but before we were allowed to go all Jacques Cousteau, Colleen and I were told we had to swim two laps around the boat and complete a doggie paddle for what seemed like an eternity.  I actually thought I was going to drown right then and there and that I was going to be the first scuba student to die before they actually did any real dives. 



Colleen getting ready to submerge herself.  Never thought I would see this day.



Did I mention she got her hair done in prison!?

Alas, my giggly belly and weak heart survived to pathetic fitness test and the next thing I knew we were swimming amongst the fishes like long time professionals with our scuba gear intact.  Well, at least that's what I would like you to believe.  In actuality I was struggling with my buoyancy quite a bit, and I was kind of floating around everywhere (think Sandra Bullock in "Gravity").  I can only assume it was due to all the jelly in my stomach I had amassed in the previous few weeks thanks to the cheap Thai beer.  My favorite part of the dives was watching Colleen as she did her best to stay far away from any fishes that attempted to get close to her.  Thank God we weren't diving with spiders or she would have been really fucked!  Our instructor Amber also had open cuts on her legs that the cleaner wrasses (think algae eaters for all you aquarium aficionados [if that's a thing]) took a shining too and were constantly trying to attack.   While I am not overly afraid of small fishes, I definitely don't like them sucking the life out of me, but Amber seemed quite content with donating her skin to the local sea life.  Due to my heavy breathing, I was constantly running out of air faster than the other divers, which kind of sucked as I felt responsible for shortening up other people's dives as we would have to surface for my sake.  Aside from my breathing issues and Colleen's fear of minnow-sized fish, we could officially say we had dived in something other than a pool!  Swimming under the water was actually not as strenuous as I had imagined, although the boat captain more than made up for this when we parked the boat on what seemed like the other side of Thailand in relation to the dive sites.  It may not have taken a ton of exertion to swim under the water, but Captain Ahab more than made up for it by making my non-athletic ass swim for ten minutes at the surface to get back to the vessel.    



"Don't worry Colleen... I'll tell your mother you love her!!!"



That evening we again took it easy as we were pretty wiped out from diving and would have to be up again bright and early the next morning for our final dives and (hopefully!) receive  our Open Water Certification.

~Brentski~

Day 70- I'm A Bigger Baby Than Colleen. There, I Admitted It.

As a general rule of thumb, I generally do not enjoy waking up early on vacation (or ever for that matter!).  I would have to make an adjustment to my usual practice of sleeping in until lunch time for the next few days, as Colleen and I were officially scuba students.  With that being said we packed up our homework and marched on over to Roctopus to begin our in-classroom training with our instructor Amber.  As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Colleen and I were the only students in our class as the Full Moon Party on the adjacent island of Koh Phangan had left Koh Tao in a rather quiet state for a couple of days.  The morning was spent with the two of us learning the basics in the classroom by watching videos and napping getting educated like the super students we are.  With the morning classroom work out of the way, we received our homework assignments for that evening and were given time to grab some lunch.  Yup, now all I needed was my parents' minivan and a bunch of my friends and it would feel like the year 2000 and high school lunches all over again.



Colleen is apparently not a fan of homework.



With our bellies amply full, it was now time for us to take the proverbial "plunge" and start actually practicing what we had been dreaming about for years a couple of days.  Normally the school we are with does all of their training right in the ocean, but because their boat was in the shop for the day, Amber would be teaching Colleen and I the basic skills in a swimming pool.  This was actually probably a blessing in disguise as Colleen and I are both wimps and  this minimized the risk of one of us quitting on the first day.  So, we got suited up and Amber spent the better part of her afternoon being overly patient with Colleen and I as she taught us some of the basics, such as breathing under water (fairly key I imagine!), mask retrieval and cleaning, regulator retrieval, etc.  The feeling of breathing under water was unlike anything I have ever experienced and I'd be lying if I didn't say that I had a couple of minor panic attacks on my first couple of attempts (this would be a sign of things to come in the days ahead).  Thankfully, I was only in a resort pool, so the odds of me drowning were greatly minimized.  We ended up making it through our first afternoon and ironically it was Colleen, the one who was SOOOO hesitant (see: scared) to try scuba diving who was actually the one who appeared more comfortable under the water.  The one downside of doing our training in the pool was the fact that the only wildlife we saw all afternoon was some baby wearing nothing but his birthday suit who kept bobbing in and out of the pool.  Look a baby sea snake!  Nope, definitely not a infantile sea snake.


This random dog won't judge me for being a pussy.

 Our evening was pretty uneventful as we were both wiped out from the first day of schooling either of us had been privy too in quite a few years.  We spent the night doing our homework and grabbing some dinner at one of the many local restaurants.  Tomorrow awaited, with our final classroom tests and some diving in the Gulf of Thailand!

~Brentski~

Day 69- Journey To Koh Tao. Home Of Fantastic Diving And The World's Most Aggressive Cabbies.

With four straight days of what seemed like nothing but eating, drinking, and sweating, it was time for us to leave Koh Samui.  For the first time in the history of the great kingdom of Thailand, a cab actually showed up early.  We had become so used to waiting for everything, that we were actually caught off guard when someone showed up at the time they said they would.  Thankfully, the hotel also did not charge us for the room card that the guy working the previous night said we would have to pay for.  This was a good thing for the lady working, because I am sure if she had attempted to charge us Colleen would have ripped her face off (or at the very least given her a mean titty-twister)!

With our luggage in tow, we headed down to the pier and loaded up onto the super packed ferry.  Because the Full Moon Party was forthcoming, there were thousands of people making their way to Koh Phangan.  Colleen and I on the other hand were headed to the diving Mecca of Koh Tao (the third island in the chain that makes up the big three in the Gulf of Thailand), which was just a wee bit further by boat. 



Geography lesson. Free of charge.



 

Thankfully, our ferry ride was not as violent as some of the ones we had been subjected to in the recent past and we were able to make it to Koh Tao with all of our digested food staying digested.  While Koh Tao is billed as the quietest and smallest of the three islands, the same cannot be said for its fleet of taxi drivers.  The second we got off the ferry the two of us, and everyone else onboard for that matter, were swarmed by hundreds of cab drivers.  All of them were shouting and screaming and trying to get your attention, all in the name of a car ride!  We were told the previous day by our diving school (Roctopus Dive) that they would pick us up, so we headed to the designated waiting spot.  And waited. And waited. And waited some more.  Eventually we gave up and had to catch a ride from one of the overly zealous cab drivers who scooted us across the island to the Roctopus Dive Shop. 

Colleen psyching herself up for the ferry ride.

There are literally dozens of dive operators and shops on Koh Tao all offering very similar packages and pricing when it comes to learning how to dive. Colleen and I had done a bit of research the previous day and after scouring Trip Advisor reviews, we decided on Roctopus.  They were one of the top-ranked (if not the top-ranked shop) on the island and many of the reviews raved about the small class sizes and personable instructors.  Shortly after we arrived the guy who was supposed to meet us at the pier arrived and apologized for the mix-up in picking us up.  Mix-ups aside, after filling out some paperwork, meeting our instructor Amber, and getting our homework assignment(!) we were informed that due to the Full Moon Party (many people go there before coming diving) on the next island over, we would be the only two people in our class commencing the next day! This made Colleen especially happy, as she was nervous about diving and felt that having a small class would make her feel more comfortable.  Little did we know it would end up being me who just about died.  But more on that later!

The Thailand you don't read about in the guidebooks.

With everything sorted at the dive shop for our course beginning the next day, we were driven over to our bungalow accommodations that were being included as part of the all-inclusive price with our diving certification course.  We had no TV and had to pay some guy to come deliver us a code for internet access (not sketchy at all), but hey we were here to learn to dive.   That evening we went out for dinner and explored the island a bit before heading back to our room to do our homework which was due the following morning.  I must say that Colleen was much more expedient at finding answers in her books than I was.  Must have something to do with my old age.  It was clear who was going to be the teacher's pet in class.

The real fun starts the next day...scuba here we come!

~Brentski~