Day 176 - 24 January 2010: a qualified open water diver and then…do I want to dive with sharks?

Today is graduation day after two more dives. The diving gets easier and more fun as I start to relax a lot more.

Today we have a videographer following us on the dive, and we do a few stunts and showing off for the cameraman who has come with us to film our penultimate dive of the course. At one point, we all take off our masks and pass around a pair of sunglasses and dance for the camera at the sea bed.

We finish our course at 3ish and agree to meet up at the bar later for drinks and dinner for our ‘graduation’ party.

Some people are going to do the Advanced Open Water Diver course, which enables you to dive to 30m, as opposed to 18m, and I decide to as well as I am enjoying being away from the rest of the UK to Oz group for a while and I can’t imagine it being cheaper anywhere else I might dive. Also, for 30m dives, the boat will go to the ‘Chumpon Pinnacle’, where there are sharks swimming near the reef. It is strange how many fish seem to have a home base from which they do not stray very far.

At 9pm, Aaron the videographer shows up at the party to show us the movie. By this time, a lot of us are quite drunk, including me, and the video goes down very well. I especially like the soundtrack. Aaron says he has spent more time on this video than any other, and that it is longer at 36 minutes than any he has done before because there were so many good shots. He is trying to sell us the video of course, but he does seem very sincere. I agree to buy one at 1750B (£35), so not cheap. I am not even featured that much in it…..well, not my best moves, except for maybe when I was ‘grinding’ with ‘The Instructress’ Becky when we did an underwater with sunglasses dance.

Day 175 - 23 January 2010: My first dives….

It’s an early start to go on our first dive. We meet at 7:30 to collect our kit and get a speedboat out to the diving boat moored about ½ km off the shore. We do two dives today, one at ‘White Rock’ and one at ‘Twin Peaks’, a pair of small mountain islands with a sandy beach linking the two.

The first dive at White Rock goes swimmingly for the first half hour or so, and the visibility is good. At the bottom, at about 16m depth, we do some exercises such as taking the air supply out, finding it with a sweeping of the arm, and replacing it. There are a lot of colourful fish on the coral reef the type of which I would only have seen before in aquariums. Not that I can tell you what they are called mind.

However, I have trouble with my mask, which keeps filling with water, and I have trouble equalizing (clearing air spaces, e.g. holding the nose while breathing out). After about a half hour, I start to breathe water through my nose and start to rise. Poli tries to sort me out and hold me down, but I start to panic and eventually surface while he goes back down to the group standing at the bottom. Not a good end to my first dive then.

However, for the second dive I use another mask, which works better. Cookie had said that on the first dive, you don’t really see very much as you are concentrating on yourself so much, but it gets easier as you gain confidence and you look around more. I am a lot more confident on this dive, and do look around more. It’s weird down there. I emerge on the surface feeling somewhat redeemed from my first dive.

I am discovering a new kind of wilderness. I feel like diving is the most dangerous thing I have ever done, but at the same time there is a deceptive tranquility about it which could become addictive.

the instructress

Day 174 - 22 January 2010: Ko Tao and a stroppy twin in the pool

I don’t have a very good night’s sleep as my room is right on the walkway to the main entrance to Ban’s and there are lots of drunken Brits being loud and crude into the night.

Before all the students gather at the pool, we get kitted out in wetsuits, flippers, masks, weight belts, BCDs (Buoyancy Control jacket) and, once at the pool, our air tanks. Today we learn the basic skills needed to start diving, e.g. putting on the kit, testing it, controlling buoyancy under water, clearing the mask under water, clearing your internal air spaces, what to do if you run out of air, etc. We also do swimming tests just to make sure we are all competent.

Two of the Brits, twin sisters of about 24, are having some troubles and are instructed individually for some exercises. In fact, it is really the one sister, Harriet, who seems to be having problems, and the other sister decided to become incompetent with her in sympathy. The former sister, when we start doing the swim test, says ‘I don’t do exercise!’. She’s a skinny but very pretty girl, who she seems to be a bit on the precious side. The twins are not identical, so there is no trouble differentiating them, but the other one, Georgie, seems a lot more up for it.

After the end of the day’s training, I join Jimmy, a North London Fireman, for a beer or three at the bar. There we see Poli and he tells us the girls have said they are quitting the course, but he is going to their room to convince them otherwise. He comes back about 15 minutes later saying that he only saw Harriet, and her response was to say that ‘maybe’ they will come tomorrow. Of course they won’t, which seems a shame and a waste of money, considering tomorrow is when we actually do our first open water dive.

Ko Tao is a beautiful piece of paradise that hasn’t been too spoilt by the party hard brigade, although there is plenty of that about if you want it. The seas look crystal blue as in southern Turkey and I am really looking forward to getting out there into the water.

Day 173 - 21 January 2010: Ko Tao and day one of PADI diving course

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.

Day 172 – 20 January 2010: Bridge over River Kwai and then to the islands

In the morning I visit the bridge itself, which runs tourist trains over it, although I walk across. There are no hand rails and the wood is often rotten or broken away, so I walk down the middle of the bridge where there are metal plates. The trains are slow, so are easy to get out of the way of. It is early, so I am just about the only person walking on the bridge. I am glad of this, because if I had to step around people, the bridge could still be somewhat deadly.

I stop outside of the Jeath War Museum, which has not opened yet. By the entrance is a rusting steam locomotive that was used by the Japanese to carry materials for the construction.

I now have to conquer the vagaries of the Thai transport system, as I am moving on ahead of the group to start a diving course on Ko Tao. I am aiming to catch the train to Chumpon, from where I can get a ferry. However, I have misread the timetable, and discover when I get to the train station that it is Ratchaburi and not Kanchanaburi from where the train to Chumpon goes. Having walked a mile or so to the station with my rucksack on my back and my backpack on my front, I have to embarrassingly say hello again to the truckies and go with them to Hua Hin to catch a train from there.

I sit in the cab with JC on the journey south, but I am tired and don’t talk much and at Hua Hin I go immediately to the train station. The five o’clock train I now plan to get won’t arrive at Chumpon until 9pm, so I book a room at Suda’s Guesthouse listed in the Lonely Planet, and they offer to collect me from the train station too.

However, at the train station, I am told that the five o’clock train is full and that the next train at eight won’t get to Chumpon until after midnight, even if it is on time. The man at the ticket office recommends that I go to the bus station which he says is two km down the road. Being loaded with my baggage, I am now at the mercy of the tuk-tuk drivers. I speak to two, who refuse to budge from 150 Baht, telling me that the bus station is actually seven km away. With no choice, I acquiesce, but it only takes five or ten minutes to get to the station in what seems like a very round about manner. My smallest bill is a 500 Baht note and the tuk-tuk driver claims to have no change, but the bus ticket office provides me with some to pay him.

At the bus ticket office, I am then told that I can’t buy a ticket for the five o’clock bus until five o’clock, which makes me a little anxious. It is now 4pm, so I go to a restaurant across the road, where I am served beer by a muscular ‘waitress’ with a five o’clock shadow. ‘Have I adjusted my phone clock correctly?’ I think to myself.

At five o’clock, I am told that I still can’t buy a ticket because the bus is half an hour late, which makes me a little more anxious. However, five minutes later I am called to the desk to buy the ticket, and then another half hour later I am led by a man to the road where the bus stops without pulling into the station. In the bus, I am told to take a seat next to a sleeping woman who is taking up half of my seat. I try nudging her with my hips, but she doesn’t react. She slightly makes up for it later by tucking me under her blanket, which select passengers have been given, as with the AC going the bus is quite cool.

Eventually, I am dropped at Chumpon at about 10pm. I say Chumpon, but in fact I am still eight km from the centre of town at a non-descript road junction. I am greeted by three motorbike (moto) taxi drivers, but I tell them I need to phone my guesthouse. Perhaps not guessing that it might cost them a fare, one of them lends me his phone. I even get him to explain to Suda where I am so that she can arrange my collection. However, she tells me that I am too far out to get collected, so I will have to get one of the moto-taxis, telling me it should cost between 60 to 100 Baht. Of course the fee I am asked for is 100, but as the driver has lent me his phone I don’t barter. The ride isn’t very comforting with my rucksack weighing down my back as I hang on to the driver in front of me.

At the guesthouse, Suda turns out to be very helpful and she speaks good English. She pays the moto-taxi as I don’t have the change (billing me in the morning), and she sells me the ferry ticket I need at the same price I would have paid if I bought it directly, and her ticket includes my ride to ferry in the morning, which turns out to be several km away.

The guesthouse is cheap at 250 Baht and it’s clean, although there is a slight hospital ward feel about my room, with windows into the hallway. There is even soap and toilet paper in the shared bathroom, which I have learned not to expect at this price.

Day 171 – 19 January 2010: Kanchanaburi Death Bridge

Today we drive to Kanchanaburi, the site of the ‘Bridge over River Kwai’, otherwise known as the ‘Death Bridge’. I visit the Death Bridge War Museum next to the Allied forces cemetery, where many of the victims of the bridge project lie. Confusingly there is also a ‘Jeath War Museum’ near the bridge, which I had initially assumed was a mis-spelt translation.

The Death Bridge museum tells the story of the war time construction of the bridge, the Japanese using POWs as slave labour. The most affected were the British troops, with almost seven thousand of the thirty thousand British prisoners dying as a result of over work, beatings, malnutrition and unhygienic conditions. However, of the Burmese people who worked on the bridge, half of them lost their lives.

In the evening, I spend the evening relaxing at the hotel, joining a few others in the lounge area drinking beer. The rooms we have here are rustic bamboo huts that are elevated over the side of the river and marshes.

a relative?