A whole new world under the sea

Disney-lovers will see what I did there.. "Life is much hotter under dee watah take it from me!"
Wow! We have just spent the last five days on Koh Tao getting our dive certification and words can't describe how amazing it was!!
We took the open water course, a four day academic and practical course at the end of which you get to complete four scuba dives and the ability to do guided dives all over the world!
We had no idea what to expect, but the experience was beyond what either of us had imagined. Even initially in the pool deep end doing out skills tests was wicked- sitting down at the bottom of the pool looking up to the surface and just breathing underwater- so so cool.
The next two days were even better because we got to check out some amazing reefs and fishies around Koh Tao. Hannah (our instructor) said that one of the dives site we went to was in her top five for the best visibility she'd seen it. Clear blue waters, and tons and tons of fish! It was so cool looking up toward the surface and having your view crowded by schools of hundreds of fish! My favorite part about the whole thing was the feeling of weightlessness, as I would imagine it would be in outer space! We had fun practicing hovering upside down a metre or two off the ocean floor and somersaulting around effortlessly. Everyone can be a gymnastics pro underwater!
The lifestyle of the instructors of Simple Life Diving resort was pretty tough to beat too: swimming with fish by day, hanging out over beers by night. They were a welcoming group and the six of us taking the course had fun partying with the crew on several occasions.
The only obstacle was that we figured Chris must have the biggest lungs ever because he was using up almost twice as much air as he rest of us in his tank. We couldn't figure it out, because the previous day it had been no problem. He kept trying to take deep slow breaths but he was burning through his air at record speeds! In any case the next day Chris and I decided to go and do two more dives (now as certified divers): one deep water dive ( getting down to 30m below the surface, whereas our certain only allows for 18m) and one wreck dive (think the beginning if the titanic movie, sunken treasure ships, woot woot!).

 We were both quite nervous about being that deep underwater and also about Chris using up air so quickly that he couldn't have a long enough dive to make it worthwhile.. All the nerves completely disappeared when as we sank down through  what seemed to be computer-generated blue waters to the most amazing coral reef. Wow, it was lile being in a freakin national geographic documentary! Not only that but the volume of fish was probably Bree times as much as our dives the previous day, and we thought there were lots then! Time seems to go by so fast down there and I dread seeing the guide tell us it's time to surface. Oh and the other great thin was that Chris used normal amounts of air this time (we think there was a problem with his equipment the previous day) so he got to really enjoy it too, and not have to worry about his breathing.. Loved it!!!!! We were both so pumped when we got to the surface, and it's funny because you try to recap everything that you both saw but couldn't talk about while underwater..

Unfortunately the wreck dive wasn't quite as astounding. Still cool just being down there, but it was described that as you descend, this ship just appears out of nowhere- sounds awesome, right? Well, we went down and down and I was watching.. No ship, no ship, no ship... then our guide Josh stopped and was feeling around. Huh, we'd arrived at the ship but the vis was so bad that we couldn't even see it coming! We had to buddy up super close and feel our way around.. Kinda sucked at first and was super freaky! By then it became a bit clearer and we got to do handstands on the guns and look into some of the ship's entrances to see schools of baby barracudas and other fish swimming through it. That was pretty sweet.

Basically, if you haven't sorted it out by now, we loved the diving experience and would absolutely recommend it in Koh Tao to anyone and everyone!!! We loved Simple Life (see Simple Life Divers) too, a laid-back super cohesive group of instructors that are chill most of the time but focused when you need to feel confident in the water beside them. Can't wait for some more diving experiences: I think we're hitting up Cambodia and we hear the diving in Egypt is good too...? We'll let ya know!
We're hitting up the full moon party next and then chilling on Koh Phangan for some beach time before we head to Bangkok to celebrate "Songkran" or Thai new year, which is basically a giant water fight! Time to go barter for a super-soaker! Sweet!
Lauren and Chris xo