Reviews

Helena 19, UK

Last Monday I started my advanced open water. This was a lot of fun as we spent Monday morning doing some knowledge reviews and that was all the paperwork and theory done. Then in the afternoon we were straight out in the boat where we did our navigation dive and our buoyancy control dive.

Then that evening I went on a night dive, which was just brilliant. I thought I might get a bit freaked by it was I actually found it very calming. It was weird though when you looked out to your side and saw nothing but black obis... All the fish hung close to their rocks and when you shone our torch on them they kind of reacted like a rabbit caught in headlights... "If I don't move then you can't see me!" Then at the end of the dive we all stood in a circle and held our torches to our stomachs so that the light was completely blocked (you never turn your torch off on a night dive in case it doesn't turn back on) and were told to wave our free hand about. The coolest thing happened, loads of glowing specs appeared from nowhere. This is called phosphorus and it a type of plankton. It was awesome, we were there throwing in each other's faces and all sorts. Then when we came up there were fireworks as if to celebrate our night dive (they were actually just some resort letting them off).

I am now a fully open water advanced diver allowed down to 30m, which when you're under water is pretty deep (the limit for recreational diving is 40m).

That evening I returned to the dive centre to sign the paper work, log my dives and pick up my card. After that I decided I was going to stay on Koh Tao a couple more nights and enjoy island living a bit longer.