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So I finished my Advanced Open Water and Nitrox certifications. Had a blast for a week diving, and learning. Now I'm feeling pretty worn out so am taking a day or two off from diving.
It's quite an amazing experience being underwater for an hour. I was a little dissapointed that there weren't more fish, more corals, more color... My fantasies about the unknown can get very wild :) On the other hand, seeing and being in the real environment is amazing, and different each day. I have been to a few dive sites more than once and they seem very different each time. Because the visibility, currents, animals, etc are different every day.
So far I've seen some pretty cool stuff: Some 2.5m reef sharks up close, A giant (actually wasn't technically a giant, but was quite large) turtle, box fish, 1.5m groupers, moray eels, rays, tiny neon blue jelly fish, foot ball sized jelly fish, schools of baracuda, a sea snake, my buddy even got attacked by a couple of trigger fish on our first solo excursion... Then lots of small fish that hang around the reefs.
One of the Dive Masters In Training graduated a couple of days ago, and as a consequence, he had to complete a snorkel test last night. It was quite funny, they put a dive mask and fins on him then put a snorkel in his mouth. The snorkel is rigged up to a big bucket into which is poured a nasty concoction of hard liquer and beer... He drank the whole lot! and managed to stay standing for a few hours!
Even though its gorgeous here, I haven't been in a photo taking mood, so I grabbed a bunch of photos from my dive buddy, Gray, and I'll post a gallery in the next few days.
Lots of Love to you all!
-- Bindu
Several people have emailed and asked if I'm OK, since it has been a while since my last update. I'm in Thailand on Koh Tao, doing great. I spent my first week here in Bangkok with a nasty cold... which gave me lots of opportunity to watch movies and shop, but did get old after a while. I flew to Koh Samui and then took a boat over to Koh Tao. I just finished all my dives for my open water certification and have to go take the written test in about 10 minutes. I'm planning on going straight into the Advanced course so that I can try some different skills, like deeper dives and nitrox ;) I'm having a really good time, learning a lot. I haven't had much time other than school, eat sleep for the last 4 days and expect the next 2 or 3 to be the same. Then I hope to be able to catch up with folks a little more.
Hope you are all doing very well!
Blessings,
-- Bindu