November 4th-6th, 2024
From Ko Phangan, I took an hour and a half ferry to the
small island of Ko Tao which is renowned for its scuba diving. With mild currents and good visibility almost
all year round, it is a mecca for divers from all around the world.
Having done some research online while in Ko Phangan, I
found that there were many, many dive shops on Ko Tao. A number of dive operations recommended doing
a refresher course if you hadn’t gone diving withing the last 6 months and
didn’t have a ton of diving experience.
I have done about 50 dives, but that is spread out since I was certified
in 1997 in Canada. If you do the math, I
don’t really dive that often or with any semblance of regularity. My last dive was in Zanzibar, off the coast
of Tanzania back in January, but I did not feel comfortable on those two dives. I just couldn’t relax and get my breathing
under control. After the first dive, my
jaw felt dislocated from clenching so hard on the regulator and I could grind
my molars in the strangest way. So, I
decided that doing a refresher course would be a wise idea.
I zeroed in on Master Divers
as their website looked great, had good information and their reviews were
glowing. In the end, I was definitely happy
with my choice.
The entrance to the pier on Ko Phangan before getting on the ferry:
Arriving around midday on the island, I checked into my
accommodate at Ko Tao Heritage,
and later wandered around the narrow streets to get a lay for the land. Up one of the streets that headed away from
the beach, I saw a sign for “Served Chilled Roof Garden”, a rooftop bar that
should have a good view of the ocean as it was nearing sunset time. I was a bit surprised that the place was
empty and there weren’t really any tables, just a few foldup deck chairs
sitting on some torn up, cheap astroturf.
An English guy, who turned out to be the owner named Matt, welcomed me
and asked if I wanted a drink. There
were a few Thai ladies working there and one of them brought me a draught beer
as I enjoyed the sunset view and chatted with Matt, who used to be a divemaster
on Ko Tao for a number of years but now enjoys being a cocktail bar owner. Matt mentioned that it is still low season so
that’s why his establishment wasn’t in full swing yet.
The following morning at 9 am, I met my scuba instructor
Simon, who was originally from Denmark, at the Master-Divers shop. There was one other young Australian named
Sam who was also taking the refresher course.
Two dive masters in training, Katie from England and Pepino from the
Netherlands, would also be helping out. Sam
and I were given a short multiple-choice test to go through, to ensure we could
recall the basics of scuba diving theory.
Next, we walked across the road from their office to the equipment room
and figured out what gear fit us.
Reconvening at 11:30, we headed out in a small boat to the
dive ship, which would take us on a quick 10-minute ride out to our first dive
site called “Twins”. Simon gave us a
briefing on the dive. We would start
with doing some exercises, such as taking off your mask and putting it back on
and then clearing it by blowing air through your nose. The next exercise would be to remove your
regulator, throw it behind you and then retrieve it, as it could get kicked out
by another diver’s fin in a real dive. A
critical task we would do would be to simulate that we ran out of air. Sam and I took turns being the “hero” and as
I joked, “the guy on zero” (no air in the tank) and we would buddy breath with
the other person’s spare regulator and then swim slowly to the surface as we
were only 6 meters below the surface.
Next, we did some buoyancy exercises. We sank back down to the bottom and in a
prone pose with our fins on the surface, we tried to keep our fins touching the
bottom while breathing in, with our bodies slowly rising from the extra air in
our lungs, and then exhale and sink down again.
Both Sam and I did well with this.
Then we assumed a “Buddha pose”, legs crossed in a seated position and
tried to hover about half a meter above the bottom. Again, we both rocked it…at least according
to instructor Simon.
Having completed the exercises, we began our fun dive for
the rest of our 50-minute dive. I had
heard that Ko Tao was a mecca for diving and attracts people from all around
the world, but I have to admit that I thought it was decent, but nothing
epic. It didn’t help that it was an
overcast day as the sun helps to make the colours pop, especially the coral. It was still a fun dive, and I felt
rejuvenated with my scuba career. Prior
to the dive I had asked Simon about breathing techniques, so that I wasn’t an
“air slut”, as I had been once jokingly called many years ago. He responded, “Just breathe normally”. I was astounded how well that worked. In previous dives when I’d try to slow my
breathing down, I would focus on extended my exhale for a few cycles, but then
all of a sudden, my body craved oxygen so I would have a few quick and deep
inhales which didn’t help get a smooth rhythm.
I was very happy after the first dive as we relaxed on the
boat for close to an hour and the captain repositioned us to our next dive site
called White Rock. This time there would
be no exercises, just a fun dive. It was
a good dive but strangely I felt a little more comfortable on the first dive
than this one, but still so much better than my dives in Zanzibar. Part of the reason was that I couldn’t equalize
my right ear at the start of the dive. We
were using a mooring line to descend and I had to ascend a few meters, try to
clear my ear, descend again only to find the problem was still there. I signalled to Simon that they should
continue without me as I didn’t want to hold Sam up but he conveyed back that
it was okay and after another 3-4 minutes, I seemed to be good to go. I’m happy that Simon had the patience that he
did as it allowed me to participate in the second dive.
It was interesting to find out that the captain of the dive
boat, his wife, and a deckhand live on the boat. Simon explained that they actually found it
tough to walk on land and they only occasionally ventured on the island to
purchase groceries and supplies. The
living quarters on the boat were very basic.
The captain and his wife could sleep on the bridge, which was barely big
enough to accommodate two people sleeping, but at least it was a closed
room. The poor deckhand didn’t have an
actual room, and he slept under a partially enclosed area near the back, centre
part of the boat where he would unlikely get rained upon, but it was still
somewhat exposed to the elements.
As we surfaced from our second dive, the heavens opened
up. It was raining hard…and didn’t stop
for hours. Returning to shore, we rinsed
our equipment and put it away in the storage area. After a debrief about the dives, which Simon
stated went swimmingly well (no pun intended), I didn’t want to walk back to my
room in this torrential downpour.
Instead, I ran across the street to have a beer at a bar. Simon joined me, and while we were imbibing a
few drinks, the power went out. He
mentioned that this was normal with heavy rainfall as the electrical wiring was
not exactly up to code compared to Western standards.
Later he gave me a ride back to my guesthouse on his
motorbike, along streets with 2-3 inches of water. Somewhere along that ride, my reading glasses
must have fallen out of my pocket. Later
that evening, when I went out for dinner at a restaurant, I couldn’t find them
and hence I couldn’t read the menu. I
looked around and saw a group of tourists who looked about 7-8 years older than me and I spotted one man who
had reading glasses on his head. He was
gracious enough to let me borrow them so I could figure out what to order.
The following evening, Master-Divers had a night dive
scheduled. I’d never done one before and
was definitely interested. However, I
woke up in the morning a bit congested and could not clear my right ear, the problem
ear from the second dive yesterday. I
was pretty sure that I had a bit of a cold, however the A/C that was running
during the night could also have been a factor.
Add to that, I had a bit of “Thai tummy”, so I was not sure if I would
be fit for the dive. By two in the
afternoon, things cleared up (at both ends of my body), and I sent a message to
the dive shop that I would like to join the dive.
At 5:30 pm, I met up with Stephan, a dive instructor from
Germany and the assistant dive master Manan, whom I’d briefly met the day before. Another diver who was working on his Advanced
certification and who was on the same boat as me and Sam yesterday also
appeared. His name was Martin, and he
was from the Netherlands. The last diver
in the group was Amer, originally from Bosnia, he now lives in Brunei. It wasn’t until after the dive that I found out
that it was the first night dive for all three of us.
Stephan briefed us on a few things that are different with
night diving compared to diving in the daytime.
Some hand signalling was different, such as communicating how many bars of
oxygen you had left, as your right had was busy with a flashlight so holding up
8 fingers with two hands to state that you had 80 bars left was not possible.
He also told us that it was not cool to just shine a light
straight at a fish as they have no eyelids and you could easily temporarily
blind them, making them easy prey for bigger fish looking for a meal. We should not be playing God in the ocean… Even pointing the light at coral for an
extended period of time could be detrimental to it. So keep your flashlight moving was the moral
of the story.
We would also do a brief navigational task of swimming 10
kicks out in a specified direction, and then using our wrist-mounted compasses,
swim back to where we started. This
would help us to officially get our night diving rating.
Even though it was a shallow dive, ranging from 6-9 meters
in depth, it was super cool descending into the water with our torches lighting
up only a small portion of the water around us.
The day before over a few beers, Simon had told me that he often felt like
an astronaut exploring a foreign world with the beams of light from each diver
piercing the darkness along with the feeling of weightlessness in the water.
The navigation task went well for all three of us, although
I forgot to count the number of fin kicks I had done, but it turns out that my
guess was pretty good. We then began our
exploration of the area at this dive site known as Pottery Gardens.
In this one area, away from any rocks or coral, there were a
lot of yellow and black striped fish, probably angelfish, who were on the hunt
for smaller silver fish with a translucent blue stripe on the side of their
body. It was pretty obvious that when we
shined a flashlight on the prey, even if briefly, it gave an advantage to the
predator…so I tried not to highlight the little guys.
In single file with Stephan at the front and Manan at the
back, we swam between some sets of rocks with fan-like coral on them that felt
like a narrow canyon, and I really felt like we were on another planet. It was super cool. Shortly after that, Stephan had all of us kneel
down on the sandy surface as he shone his flashlight straight down from about
four feet above the sea floor. After a
few minutes we could see plankton swimming about, and then I saw the smallest
jellyfish I’ve ever seen. It was
colourless and see-through and was maybe half a centimetre in diameter…super
cool.
I also saw an eel hiding amongst some coral. I got Stephan’s attention but since I don’t
dive often, the hand signal I gave was for a sea snake, not and eel. However, the eel had pulled back into his
hiding spot and was no longer visible. Stephan
told me on the boat afterwards that he was excited to see a sea snake…but I
guess I was the “little boy who signaled eel”! (sorry, a bit of a reach to the “boy
who cried wolf”)…
Right near the end of the dive, Amer, Martin and I all saw a
3’ long grouper fish, super close up, which was amazing. When we got on the boat, Martin asked Stephan
what the big green fish was and showed with his hands how big it was. Now maybe it’s because Martin’s a big dude,
but he made the fish look like it was well over 4’ long! The old fisherman’s tale…
The night dive was an amazing experience and I’m very happy that I did it…and will do it again in the future!
cool cool buds be well and be safe
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