There are a few things I really wanted to do throughout the course of my travels: the Elephant Nature Park and getting certified to scuba dive being the highest two on my list. Having already done the former and seeing as though it had met my expectations, I was now really really really psyched about diving.
Here’s the thing, I had no reason to think that I would love diving except for one thing that I have always found interesting: I often dream about breathing under water. In my mind, this meant only one thing -- I craved breathing under water. So what if I get scared by most non-mammals and refuse to touch the bottom of any non-pool swimming area when I’m in them...
When we pulled into Ban’s, the diving school I had picked out a week before, I set eyes on the beautiful complex that was to be my home for 4 days. It was such a sight for sore eyes (literally, as my eyes had started hurting a little bit, no doubt because of the fact that I was sick and slightly dehydrated.) Ban’s has an amazing complex with 2 beautiful pool, jungle-like walkways made up of big palm-trees and little bridges over waterways, a bar and restaurant, and a small village housing a mini-mart, pharmacy, and internet cafe.
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| A view of Ban's pool from my room. |
I checked in and found out that they had upgraded me to an air con room for free. Score!! My bags were brought to my room and I saw that it matched the rest of the complex: big king size bed, tv with movie channels, a desk and armoire, and nice big bathroom. Yay!!! If I was going to end up being alone, at least I had a nice room to myself!
I explored around Ban’s area for a while, took a dip in one of the pools, swallowed some more medicine, and had a nap before I had to show up for my first diving class that evening. When I got to the classroom, I met my instructors, Mario and Knut, along with my fellow classmates. Luckily, there were 9 of us in the class and we were all right around the same age.
Our first class wasn’t particularly exciting and basically was just an introduction to each other followed by watching videos for 2 hours. Afterwards a guy from class rallied people together for dinner. As we sat in Ban’s restaurant and I had a disappointing Thai curry, I was happy to get to know the people who would end up being my diving friends and family for the rest of the week: Sonjia, from The Netherlands, Lisa from Germany, and Terry from England. The other people in the class all had boyfriends or girlfriends who weren’t enrolled in our class, so they had gone to eat dinner with them.
After dinner, we went to bed early so our 7am wake up wouldn’t feel like murder the following morning. I retired to my amazing room, popped some more pills, and crossed my fingers that I’d feel even better in the morning.
Sadly, I woke up the next morning feeling worse. I was really bummed because I only had 2 more days of antibiotic pills left and I didn’t have any more to take a second course. I decided that I would will myself well, and luckily we were only going to be going in the pool today.
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| Terry and I realizing we have the same camera! |
After a quick breakfast, Mario and Knut sized us for all of our equipment before we walked up to one of Ban’s pools together. Once we got there, Mario explained how to properly set up our equipment before we did it ourselves. Then we got into the pool and prepared ourselves to experience underwater breathing for the first time.
That morning, we went through several examples and explanations about how our equipment worked and we worked on skills that we would later practice in open water. We shared an air source with our buddy, controlled our buoyancy simply with our breath, and towed each other around the pool before getting out for lunch. After we ate, we met in the classroom again for the rest of the mandatory videos. This time, the videos made more sense because we had actually used the equipment now, and we relaxed a little bit now knowing that anything we didn’t understand after watching would be clarified the next morning. We grabbed a quick dinner again and headed home to rest up as much as possible for our first real day of diving!
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| On the boat about to attempt our first dive! |
The next morning, I woke up at 6am, took a shower, and headed to the pharmacy to get some nose spray on Mario’s recommendation. I shot some of the spray into my nose and cleared it the best I could before meeting my new friends for breakfast. Over toast and eggs, we all chatted nervously about our first dive and I told everyone that not only were my sinuses clogged, but I also had no sense of taste. Any time I get moderately to seriously ill, this happens to me, so I was worried.
Mario met us at 7:30am and we went to grab all of our equipment together before getting on the boat. We transferred from a small boat to the large boat waiting off shore for us and hooked up our stuff to the tanks. Before jumping into the water, we all met on the top deck to discuss the planned dive. Mario basically gave us a pep talk because half of the group looked like they were going to throw up and explained that the first dive would only be fun and that we wouldn’t do any required skills.
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| Mario & Knut discussing the dive. |
A few minutes later, we were all down below putting on our BCD jackets, tanks, fins, and masks. We snapped a few photos before putting all of our stuff away and entering the water by stepping off the side of the boat.
Step 1: water entry: accomplished! So far, so good, I could still breathe.
Step 2: descent: it was painful, but I did it. Basically, for you readers who have never gone scuba diving before, when one descends the first 10m, the air pressure in our body doubles. If you have anything blocking your airways and sinuses, like, say, tons of mucous and snot, it can make for a painful and frankly not very smart descent. But, I got down and managed to equalize my ears before we swam around the reef for 40 minutes.
Step 3: ascent: it was really uncomfortable as I started to go up. My ears were popping incessantly and I just wanted to slam to the surface of the water, but I knew that was the wrong way to come up. But, I did it. I had successfully done my first of four required dives.
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