Our trip to Koh Tao started with a 5:00am taxi ride to the Lomprayah bus stop near Khao San Road where we took a 6 hour bus to Chumpon and a nearly two hour catamaran ferry to Koh Tao island. It was a long travel day and recent bad weather made the ferry ride particularly rough. Ferry staff started passing out plastic bags as soon as we sat down and many passengers around us put them to good use. Thankfully we did not succumb to seasickness but we were anxious to get of the boat when we arrived in Koh Tao. Getting a glimpse of the island made it all worth it!

We were picked up at the Mae Haad pier by Big Blue Diving, the dive school where we would earn our certifications and stay for the next 5 days. We booked beds in a 6 bunk dorm (for the first time on the trip so far!) and quickly realized the dorm life probably isn’t for us. It was great for meeting people – we quickly made friends with our dorm mate Jackie from Australia who introduced us to the group she’d been diving with for a few days (including a fellow Villanova grad)! We spent most of our time at Big Blue hanging out with these guys so we have our brief dorm experience to thank. However, we didn’t love the feeling of sneaking quietly into the dorm as to not bother nappers and having to wait for the bathroom during the post-dive rush. We also didn’t love when a drunk roommate stumbled in during the middle of the night, making all sorts of noise, cursing like a sailor, and eventually falling out of his top bunk. We decided to spend 200 bhat (or about $6USD) more per night and upgrade to the third floor private rooms. It was worth it. #ballinonabudget

With the housing situation all sorted out, we spent the rest of the week immersed in diving. We first got hooked on diving on our honeymoon in Jamaica where we earned our Scuba Diver certification, the lowest-level introductory qualification in the dive world. Our first course at Big Blue was to upgrade this to the Open Water certification which allows divers to dive to a depth of 18 meters. It took us one day with our trusty instructor, Stefano, to knock this out since we had a bit of a head start on the course. We had to spend the morning practicing skills in the pool and the afternoon doing two dives in the ocean. We also had to take a written exam at the end of the day, which we did at the beachfront restaurant with beers in hand. Not a bad way to go to school!

With our Open Water certifications under our belt, we moved on to the Advanced Adventurer course. We took this two-day course with Stefano again and had two more people in our class, a young pair of brothers from Hong Kong. The Advanced Adventurer course was s series of 5 dives over the course of two days.

On our first day, we started by learning navigation skills. We practiced using the compass on land first, navigating on the beach for several steps in the correct direction before returning to the same spot. It was pretty easy since we could see where we started but getting the hang of the compass was handy. We took these skills to the ocean in the afternoon, taking turns swimming in a straight line for 10 fin kicks and then turning around and aiming to return to the same spot. This was much harder as the visibility was low and you can’t just navigate by looking after 10 fin kicks. John was an expert navigator, getting it right when it was his turn to navigate and mine to count our fin kicks. He also strongly guided us through my navigation dive, pushing us in the right direction when I led us astray, to ensure success again.

Our second dive was called peak buoyancy which had us practicing our neutral buoyancy underwater. It felt like we were doing tricks – we floated upside down, sideways, and with weights in hand to practice not floating or sinking but remaining at the same depth when diving, a skill essential to conserving air and staying in control under water.

Our third dive was a night dive. We hopped into the water just after the sun set, tiny flashlights in hand. Lots of sea life comes out at night that typically stays hidden during the day, so this is a great chance to see new and different kinds of animals. We made our descent using a buoy rope and swam around in the pitch black ocean with our little flashlights for about 40 minutes. John loved this dive and cites it as his favorite during our time at Big Blue. We did see some cool stuff including a colorful banded sea snake. We also saw some bioluminescence, glowing organisms that light up when you agitate the water by waving your hand. We turned off our flashlights and waved our hands around, watching them glow in the dark which was very cool. However, this was definitely my least favorite dive. Diving in the pitch black is scary and I didn’t like knowing how close we were to coral where all kinds of poky creatures (like sea urchins) live, but not being able to see them despite how close we were. I was nervous about bumping into something unknowingly or having some creature sneak up on us in the dark and it was just overall a little too freaky for me. We survived and I was relieved to surface and swim back to the boat (under a sky filled with stars). It was quite a unique experience!

The next day we did two more daytime dives. The first was a deep dive to 30 meters (or about 100 feet), the deepest we’ve gone so far! The visibility wasn’t great, but we saw some huge schools of barracudas and some really colorful fish. I was nervous about this dive going into the course but found that it didn’t feel as deep as it sounds. It wasn’t remarkably different from diving to 18 meters, our deepest until that point.

Our fifth and final dive of the advanced course was a wreck dive. We were diving on Sattakut, a US Navy ship that was intentionally sunk to create artificial reef. There were tons of fish swimming through and on the reef and it was so neat to see the giant boat underwater. We weren’t able to dive through or into the boat as that takes additional specialty training, but just swimming outside the massive ship and peering into it’s windows was really cool. This was my favorite dive of the week!

We celebrated the end of dive school by attending Big Blue’s early Christmas Party and hanging out wth Stefano, his girlfriend, and the group of other divers we befriended from Big Blue. It was a fun celebration and a great cap off to our time diving.

Overall, we had a great experience at Big Blue Diving and would recommend for anyone headed to Koh Tao to learn to scuba dive. It’s one of the biggest dive schools on the island but they organize divers into small groups that feel close knit. Everything was really well organized and it had a great social atmosphere. We also really liked the on-site accommodations and had a great view of the beach from our room.

We spent one more day in the on-site accommodation at Big Blue before checking into a hotel on Koh Tao on Christmas Eve where we celebrated the holiday by hiking, beach hopping, and relaxing for a few days. It was bizarre to spend Christmas on a tropical island and we missed our family and friends, but we had a really unique experience and it is a Christmas we will never forget!

After Koh Tao we returned to Bangkok for one more night before catching a flight to Myanmar where we are spending 2 weeks. We had a great time in Thailand and hope we make it back again!