After the full moon debacle, I had to return to Koh Tao to finish my Open Water certification. I left Koh Pangan the morning after the party with all of the paint successfully being washed off of my skin but with my dress still splattered in it. Thanks to my restful evening, I had high hopes for finishing my course.
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| Terry has a lamp growing out of his head and I have ears. |
When I got back to Ban’s that afternoon, I learned that I would definitely have to pay for my room while I finished the course. There was no way to schmooze my way out of it and I grumbled to myself as I was brought to my new room. It was the lowest grade room they had there and I was bummed when I saw the busted screens on the windows and the school of ants that had congregated in the corner. I said a quick prayer that I would be able to finish my dives so this return to Koh Tao wouldn’t be in vain.
The next morning, I met my new instructor, May, and my only other classmate, Ben. Because of the Full Moon Party, many people had opted to wait to get certified until afterwards, so Ben had had the luck of getting 1 on 1 instruction from May for the past 2 days.
She had been told all about my issues by Mario, so as I packed my equipment into a bag, she and I discussed how we would descend slowly and that we would be sure to get me through the necessary 3 dives so I could leave with a certification.
Once we were on the boat, it was actually really nice to go back over all of the things I had learned a few days before with Mario. This time around, I was completely comfortable with everything that we were doing so I could concentrate entirely on getting to the necessary depth while equalizing my ears.
After May and Ben did Dive #1, the one that I had already done prior in the week, I got all of my equipment on to join them for Dive #2. We entered the water and I took a deep breath and told myself to stay relaxed and to not get frustrated if it took me a while to get down. May had Ben wait at the surface for a few minutes while she and I descended slowly. I would go down 4 meters and would have to come up 2 to equalize again, and would try 4 more meters down again. This continued until miraculously we reached 15 meters and I was okay!
42 minutes later, we came up and I had successfully demonstrated all of my skills under water. My nose was bleeding which apparently wasn’t a big deal, but it freaked me out a little. My ears were blocked a bit, but I was incredibly happy that I’d actually done the dive, so I tried not to focus on that.
We ended for the day and I promised May I would get some ear drops and decongestant that she’d recommended I buy and had a lazy evening. I upgraded to a better room so I wouldn’t have to share a room with 1,600 ants again and took what I felt was a much deserved nap. Luckily that night, Terry was still around at Ban’s for one last night, so we had dinner and went to a bar for one drink before I crawled in bed at 11pm.
The next morning, May checked on how I was feeling and I lied by saying that I felt fine. In reality, my ears were messed up and slightly blocked but I stubbornly wanted to finish the damn course. Only two more dives left...
I had convinced May on the way over to the main boat that we should do the rest of all of the required skills on Dive #3. This way, if I had an issue getting down for Dive #4, I would have already done my skills to get the certification. We entered the water, I took forever to equalize again, managed to get down, and finished the dive with May and Ben after 50 minutes. Again my nose was bleeding when I surfaced and I got a reverse block, something that May had never seen happen to a student. Basically it meant that on the way up, I got the same stabbing pain that I had gotten before when going down. At that point I didn’t care: I had one more dive left.
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| Coming back on land after my last dive!! |
Dive #4: my ears were super blocked. I don’t know how I got down, but I did, and we didn’t have any skills to do except basic navigation and we did it at much less depth to accommodate my ears. We surfaced, I spit my regulator out, and screamed a big “YAY!!!” Pretty much everyone on the boat at that point had known about my ear issues, so I was welcomed back onto the boat by applause. Okay, I felt a little lame that I was getting claps for doing a dive, but I was so psyched -- I did it (and hadn’t busted my eardrums!)
When we got back on land, May filled out all of the necessary paperwork to give me so I would be a certified scuba diver up to 18 meters. She shook my hand and with paperwork in hand, I went off to email everyone who had been keeping tabs on my progress.
Now the question was, when and where would I get my Advanced Open Water certification??
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