Not the 5.30am start!!! Woohoo! Our dive meeting time was 10.30am. we arrived early and told there was 1 more person on our course. We had to complete some classroom work before heading on the taxi to the pier. The classroom work consisted of the plan for the next 5 dives. The other guy on our course turns up 25mins late and didn’t apologise for being late…..Becky didn’t take too kindly to this. Part of the course is being able to navigate a square using your compass. I started to worry cause I couldn’t even do a straight line correct never mind a square. Our DI explained it to us and we practiced on the grass outside. I still didn’t understand it and probably never will! (On land anyway).
Our first dive was to do perform this and to work on our buoyancy. Nick our useless buddy on the course was struggling to even get down to the depth to start the course work! Going to be a long two days if he keeps this up. Anyway I was first up on the compass square. Becky holding onto my shoulder I had to navigate her in a square with 5 kicks each time before turning. As we started I initially lost count on the kicks (que the jokes for not being able to count to 5) I was too busy concentrating on my compass. Everything then seemed to click. I knew what I was doing. Completed it no bother whatsoever. Becky was impressed! I was impressed how could I do it underwater and not on land?? Next up was Becky, I held onto her shoulder this time and off we went. 5 kicks in and Becky stops. I’m thinking she must just be working out the way to go. Nope I was wrong. She freaks out and panics. Her brain went dead and she couldn’t work out what to do. I tried to keep her calm and communicate to find out what bearing he had given her but that didn’t work. She continued to panic but luckily the DI came across and brought us back to starting point. This time he went along with her rather than me. She completed it first time but I think he was turning her when she had to turn.
Next objective was the buoyancy control. Our task was to be able to control how much we raise and drop in the water by controlling our breathing. We had to basically face plant the bottom and stop ourselves by breathing. Keeping as close to the sand as possible. I did not fancy smashing my face into the sand so I kept a fair distance and controlled it from there. We then we’re shown the technique of how to swim in a circle and swim backwards using fins only. Sound easy? Try swimming backwards next time your in the pool using your legs only to do a back to front breast stroke kick…what a laugh! Finally we were taken to an area which had 2 metal rings in the sand and we had to swim through them without touching the edges. Both of us aced it.
The second dive consisted of another navigation task. Our job was to navigate round a dive site using visual objects plus our compass. There was lots more fish to see on the dive and we could actually enjoy it a bit more without feeling the pressure. During our navigation our instructor paused us to show us the highlight of the entire trip. A TURTLE!!!! The one thing I’ve been waiting to see. It was amazing, I wanted to stay longer with the turtle but we had to get back to navigating. As we got towards the end of the dive site we lost our way a little bit and had to be help by the instructor. That was us done for diving today we start back again tomorrow morning 6am 😒.
Exciting night ahead we both had. I was off to do a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class and Becky was due to do a yoga class. Both of us were in for a shock as our fitness has well and truly gone!!! I came back drenched in sweat and very sore as I hadn’t done that type of exercise for weeks! Becky came back worse than me!!! 🤣 Her yoga class ended up being 2 hours long!
Once we finally got ourselves together we headed out for some dinner. I seen a nice busy place on the way back from jiu jitsu so we decided to go there. Local Thai restaurant, cheap and was busy so what could go wrong! We both opted for the vegetarian Thai red curry. I was sadly disappointed with the meal it wasn’t quite up to standards! Becky enjoyed hers so we paid up and left. As we were walking along there was a buzz around a bar. There was a fire show on so it was worth grabbing a beer and enjoying the show! We were sitting down the front next to the action when one of the performers threw the flaming ball in the air but let go too late and it flew over past where people were sitting and dropped into the lap of an unsuspecting person enjoying a beer in the bar nextdoor. At that point Becky left our seat on the beach to a more sheltered seat inside…(taking no chances)😂 the show went on of course as there’s no such thing as health and safety here. During the show a young boy who must have been around 7/8 began to twirl the fire too. They must start them early here as he was actually pretty good.
South East Asia 2019 