19 Feb 2011

.Out. Koh Tao – second time. Part I.

We took the government bus, pretty comfortable with no other western looking people in it and moved towards the place, that I will now proudly with no competition be calling `My Paradise`. It wasn’t my first time in that island, but the time, spent there this time was magnificent. Anyways, our bus came earlier than expected, so we waited for the pickup for maybe an hour, then got to the train station, got to another pickup and waited for some more. Then got to the pier, waited for the morning to come, got to the boat and finally came to the island. My promised pickup wasn’t there [turned out our boat was late, so they didn’t wait for so long for me], so we took another pickup and got to the diving school `New Way Diving`, since I wanted to get my Open Water Certificate right there.

I met there this guy, who had British accent, I have a thing for, named Jimbo. Jimbo was a very sweet instructor, he gave me all practical information and very promising sounding schedule and I promised to get back in the afternoon for some DVDs review and the official start of my Open Water Certificate. This meant that we had the afternoon free, so we went for late breakfast, got our room, took showers and went for the beach. Koh Tao seems to be a rain-friendly island, so it greeted us with some clouds and light rain, while we were in the beach. But water was so clean, clear and even warm, that most of the time we spent in. After the beach time and some beer/coke we headed back, where I left Sascha to sleep/write/read/whatever and went for my first lectures. Here we met Dave, or Big Dave, who was our instructor, also Chelsey, my diving buddy and a sweet young Swedish couple, who were taking the course with us. Dave left us with DVDs and told us we should not fast forward it, but watch it all and answer all the questions at the end of every chapter. So we did. It was a bit boring from time to time, but all of the information provided was useful to know so you don’t end up dying under water.

All this lecture took longer than expected and I got back into the room and found Sascha asleep. He waited for me so we could go for dinner together, so I woke him up and we headed out. He was half asleep, so I was in charge of picking the spot. I was, of course, lucky enough to find a place that was almost closing, but we still managed to get some Indian looking food and a beer. It was the closing day, that day. First we were asked to leave the restaurant we ate, since guys wanted to close, then we chose quieter beach bar for later beers and stayed there till closing. Although at least in that place guys were nice enough [I think it’s always Sascha’s half-japanese factor, that helps] so they took our last order for beer and let us stay after closing.

It was a very nice evening. We talked a lot, touching sensitive topics, opened up to each other, watched the stars, where I even saw one falling star [and missed those nights with my girls, when we used to watch them during the summer]. We got back to the room pretty late and we still kept on talking and getting to know each other better and better. It wasn’t easy, but finally we went to sleep, since Sascha only had, if I recall correctly, two hours of sleep before he had to get up and go to do some dives.

He went out early in the morning [dives start 6 a.m], left me sleeping, since my lectures were supposed to start a bit later. I woke up, went to my lectures, where Jimbo explained us most of the stuff that we have seen on DVDs, but in much easier to remember way than those movies provided. After the lecture we had some time for lunch, so we grabbed a quick meal and then I once again left Sascha for beach time/sleeping/writing/reading and went for my first under-water experience in the pool.

No comments: