What! You want me to take my mask off under water?
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2010
1
2
11
Trip End
Feb 07, 2010
Where I stayed
Crystal's Dive Center
Ban Ko Tao, Chumphon, Thailand
Thursday, January 14, 2010
However, Crystal's Dive Center is a great place to take a scuba course if your going to do it. The people were very friendly and helpful and we had small diving groups -- 5 in our group.) They were well organized and took fantastic care of us. The last day they also took some video of the last two dives. We decided not to buy the video because it was mostly pictures of the us swimming around and the three young, very brawny, Swedish guys clowning around humping each other every time they got on video. They were having a great time.:-) There were some good pictures of the sea life we saw down there and they also got some video of the "water spout" (see below), but you know you watch those things once and then they go in a drawer and you don't look at them again for years. We didn't want to spend the $75 to store a DVD in our drawer. It was a good experience overall. I learned a lot of good skills I can use when snorkeling even if we never do another dive. Also, Crystal's just opened up a brand new hotel so we got a pretty nice room with air conditioning, a balcony and lots of room to spread out. It also had a nice big swimming pool though we never had time to use it. We got it at a discount for being in the dive class so it only cost us about $45 a night.
We were so busy with the course the 5 days we were here that we didn't have a chance to explore the island, we did visit a number of the restaurants in the main town where Crystal's is located. There is a great variety of foods in this town besides Thai food, Italian, Mexican, French, but they all have that Thai twist to them. I'm having a little breakfast deja vue because just like my trip to India, I can't find much else to eat for breakfast than fried eggs, toast and bacon. To be fair, there are other things to eat but, they all have dairy products in them so I'm limited to fried eggs or fruit.
Yesterday morning, while we were having breakfast a nice little water spout "twister" cloud formation developed right in front of us just off shore. Unfortunately, since we were going diving neither one of us had a camera with us. So, we didn't get any pictures. That was my first honest to goodness twister. Needless to say, Dave was really excited!
Oh yeah, also the first couple of days that we were in Ko Tao, my legs, ankles and feet kept swelling up so much that I could hardly bend my ankles to walk. I think it had to do with all the extended sitting we did between the flight over to Thailand and then the night bus trip to Ko Tao. Anyway, the swelling has stopped and I'm fine now.
Tomorrow we head to Ko Phangan for 2 days.
Comments
How do you get your mask back on your face without water in it when you're underwater? I can't picture it and being certified to 12 meters is pretty deep, I'd say. If you want to go deeper, get a submarine, hohoho. Your Crystal's hotel looked great.
P.S. LA, did you get new glasses? I like them.
I've had these glasses for about a year now. You have to take off the mask and let it fill with water. Then blow the water out and fill the mask with air by using air out of your nose. That is the part I get panicky with because my first dive I managed to get water up my nose and my mask filled with water, which caused me to choke and I got scared. So, I started hyper-ventilating which meant I wasn't getting enough air and I couldn't clear my mask. It took me some time to calm down and relax my breathing before I could clear it. After that, my next dive I couldn't make myself go through that again. I think that if I practiced it enough I could get over that fear, but it was too soon for me to try it again.
Okay, one last comment. Diving, I couldn't do it. Terrified of drowning. You are a brave woman!!!