I get up at 5:30 for the taxi to the port for the Catamaran ferry to Ko Tao. The ferry is busy with rucksacks piled up at the front both inside and outside. It’s calm sea today and it takes just 1½ hours.
I have paid a deposit on an Open Water Diver course with Ban’s, which is the biggest dive resort in Ko Tao, of 2000B (£40). The total is 9800B (£190) plus 200B per night for accommodation. Actually, it can be bought cheaper through an agent (9500B, no fee for accommodation) or one of the people on the course got it for 9800B, free accommodation and free transport from Bangkok, but really we are talking about £10 to £20 here or there. I don’t think learning to dive can be cheaper anywhere else in the world where many people would actually want to dive.
At the hotel, the room is fairly standard and the bathroom has moldy grouting, but it is comfortable enough. I have a short nap after my early start for the day and later kill some time with a few beers at the hotel bar on the beach before the course starts with some videos at 5pm.
In the class there are 10 people and there are 3 dive instructors. The nationalities mix, with 4 students being British, one Norwegian, two Dutch, one South African and 2 Canadians. Of the instructors, the main one, Poli (pronounced as Paulie would be), is Israeli, Becky is British, and ‘Cookie’ is an older American from Ohio.
With PADI being an American based organisation, the video is quite cheesy (fact: ‘divers have more fun!’) and I don’t remember much of it now, except for some basics of diving. After it finishes, I go back to the bar and have a few more beers, although I have to be careful as being hung-over is definitely not recommended for diving, especially for the first time. Having said this, we are only doing some work in the pool tomorrow.
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