Sailing Away to a Deserted Island

 We are on Koh Tao Island, a diver's paradise.  That was our plan for our time here.  At $25-30 a dive including all equipment, it is one of the cheapest places we have visited.  But due to a series of errors and forgetting the dive computer we both had to take the refresher course with homework and everything.  Thank goodness for the Internet  because every question we were a bit unsure about I just googled. No digging through the book to find the answers when they were just a click away!  After a session with the instructor we had to complete 20 skills underwater.  This was the beginning of the end for me.  Having to sit there submerged, take off your mask and buddy breathe while trying to understand the underwater scuba lingo of the instructor was incredibly draining.   We already know my forte is not foreign languages and it apparently it gets worse if I'm in a claustrophobic situation.

With the refresher course completed, the boat changed locations and we were ready to do some diving.  The water was warm with great visibility. The first challenge for me was getting down. I have a miserable time equalizing my ears. I fight blinding headaches and pain in my ears.  I slowly work my way up and down the rope, hopefully going more down than up, trying to equalize the pressure.  I tried every trick I have been told - swallow, pinch your nose and blow, grind your jaw and lay horizontally.  I finally made it, but by that point I think I had swallowed a ton of air and continually found myself floating up. The first half of the dive was great. Lots of colorful fish, interesting coral and the best little cotton ball things in bright colors (Christmas tree worms)  When you passed over the coral they would pop down into their holes.  Pop, pop, pop.  Then slowly they would begin to sprout again.  The second half of the dive was miserable for me.  I became nauseated probably because of all the air I had swallowed.  I know you can puke into your regulator and still breathe fine, but who really wants to test this out while sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor?  Then suddenly the ocean started spinning.  I couldn't discern which way to swim.  At the same time I felt as though I was spinning in the opposite direction.  Fortunately this did not make me feel panicked, rather I kept breathing and tried to signal to Chad that "I'm dizzy" and "Please hold my hand" -two signals they did not teach us.  Chad of course having no clue what was going on thought I was trying to point out a cool fish.  The dizzying slowed and I found that if I focused on one person and didn't turn my eyes to look at anything I could swim without dizziness. 

Now that I am safely on land and have had a good night of sleep to evaluate the situation, I am not inclined to think I will ever go diving again. I gave it a good go and I feel no desire to put myself in that situation again.

Dinner was marvelous. We walked through the stalls of coffee shops, T-shirt stores, bars and restaurants and picked a beachside BBQ with fresh fish nestled in ice laying ready for the grill.  Roasted cashews and squid for an appetizer, girly drinks, waters, barracuda and red snapper prepared with Thai seasonings for the main with a sunset over the ocean to die for all for only 30 bucks.  

We hopped on our moped and enjoyed the night ride back to our hotel.