While Jen and I had 2 days off, we needed to catching up on simple chores that we didn’t have time to do… such as washing, shopping, sleeping!!!

Jen started 1 of her students on the advanced course yesterday, and I tagged along for the ride just for the pleasure of diving without having anyone to be responsible for. It was a welcome change. We were also joined by Johannes, a divemaster who hails from Holland. I mention Johannes because it was the 1st anniversary of his father’s death and he was quite pensive understandably. But what a great way to have a peaceful, reflective day by doing a couple of chilled dives.

1st dive was Aow Leuk, a bay on the South East of the island. Surprising good visibilty and the student accomplished the Navigation dive fine.

2nd dive was Tanote Bay, a little bit North of the previous site. While visibilty was not so good, the student completed her Peak Performance Buoyancy skills, and then we went for a little bubble… and found 3 beautiful flatworms.. like these:

Then, time to head back to the port, where we hung around until it was time for night diving… I tagged along yet again so that I could try out a UV torch that I brought from the UK… it was AMAZING… like being at a full moon party but underwater… All the corals and rocks become glow-in-the-dark…! What a funky way to dive… and now everyone wants to borrow our torches!!
To bed for an early night after a quick bite to eat… cos Jenny is up for early deep dives….

The last few days have been pretty exhausting.   Having a month off and then coming back and doing a 6 person OW course, has just about finished us off ;-D   
This is the first time that we both had panicked divers, both on the surface and at depth.  One of my students had a problem with a broken mask on dive 2 down at 10 mtrs which was pretty hairy and one who’d worked themselves up so much about mask clearance that she just balled her eye’s out and was convinced she couldn’t do it, so with a little practice just below the surface and trying different techniques, she finally felt comfortable to come down and give it a go. 
My goodness, I felt so proud of her when she cleared her mask first time  ..Si, pretty much had the same issues as well as a guy who had the attention span of a flea.
In the end, they passed… 

After the open water video we got picked up in a taxi and taken to Lung Pae, a lovely restaurant in the hills to join Nathans leaving meal as he’s off to Oz on the 24^thToday, we’ve the day off!! Simon is catching up with UK stuff, and I am going over the Eco documentation to try and get my head round it…

After leaving the UK on the 14^th to Bangkok and spending a couple of days there shopping, we’re now finally settled in to our new place on Koh Tao. It’s pretty much the same as our old place but with a slightly different layout.  As the say here ‘Same same but different’. We’ll post some photo’s soon as at the moment, it looks as though a bombs hit it 😀
It’s only today that we’ve started back to work, teaching a 12 person Open Water course which we’ll split in half when it comes to the actual dives.   
The morning session went pretty well. We’d finished all the academics complete, equipment set ups were going well when we were told to give up some of our students equipment/tanks as the afternoon boat was short  …Brilliant!!  NOT!     
So  a day that started off well, progressively got worse.   So not being able to complete set ups, we broke for lunch and met an hour later. Equipment wise, we were still no further ahead, so we walked down to the Regal pool and got our students to do their float and swim test.
Sometime later we eventually got in the pool and started confined.  The students did really well.  Si and I were really concerned about a couple of the girls who’d previously tried to do their OW and couldn’t get past the mask skills but with a little encouragement and a lot of patience they surprised themselves and us, to be honest and did a marvellous job.   
As a few of the guys had bad headaches, were cold and nearly out of air, we decided to call it a day with 90% of the confined skill complete.  We’ll reconvene tomorrow at 8.30am to finish off.
Sun burnt and exhausted, it’s definitely going to be an early night

x

Jenny