Diving Thai Style
The sea around Koh Tao has a temperature of 31°C and the visibility is 10-15m at the moment. Not the worst conditions for diving although the visibility could be a bit better. Compared to the reef in Cairns the dive spots here have one big advantage. The scenery when you get out of the water is simply stunning.
The advanced open water course requires me to do five so called ‘adventure dives’. The navigation dive and the deep dive are mandatory and the remaining three can be picked from roughly a dozen options. My choices were night dive, underwater photography and peak performance buoyancy.
On Sunday we started with the buoyancy dive which basically focuses on how to get properly weighted and how to use the lungs instead of the BCD to change the buoyancy. Improving ones skills in this field makes diving much easier and easy always means less air consumption and thus longer dive times. Good hovering skills are also very helpful for underwater photography.
Second dive for the day was the navigation dive which deepens the knowledge about compass usage, distance estimation and using natural navigation aids.
After that dive we had a couple of hours break and I picked up Hiro from the ferry. She took the bus from Chiang Mai and basically travelled straight through since Saturday evening.
For the night we had another dive on the schedule. Night diving is quite a unique experience because the ocean is pitch black and the only light comes from a torch. Even familiar sites look different under these conditions and one can see some fish that only come out at night.
More diving coming soon.
Impian Divers, small dive shop with friendly and easy-going staff. Way more flexible than the bigger ones.