Go Scuba Diving

2016: This was one of the craziest things I've done. Not because I tried scuba diving--there's nothing crazy about that. What's crazy was that I didn't even know how to swim, and yet I told my instructor that I did. I had only had my first swimming lesson a few weeks prior and was still not getting the hang of it. From struggling to stay afloat in the shallow end of the swimming pool to trying to scuba dive in the deep blue sea is quite a giant leap, if you ask me.

But I wanted to do it anyway, because I was on Koh Tao, the diving capital of Thailand. You could find a diving school every few meters on the island. My mission was to do the one-day Discover Scuba Diving program. After comparing prices, I found one school that offered a cheaper price than most. It was only 2000 baht, when most of the other schools charged 3000B. So I went and filled up the application form, answering all the mandatory questions about my health and medical history. And when there was a question asking me if I could swim, I ticked 'Yes'.

On the day of the dive, I was asked to come at 10 a.m. for a wetsuit fitting. Girls, if you have to go to a wetsuit fitting, please wear a bikini under your clothes, because you're going to have to strip to your underwear with all the other people in the same room. I had on an ugly pair of bra and panties. Lucky for me, nobody was looking. We were then told to go grab something to eat, while they prepared our gear. The class was to start at 11. I got myself busy with some bikini hunting.

When we got back to the school, I was introduced to my team members. There were three of them. We were briefed on the basics of scuba diving: the equipment and how to operate them, the underwater sign language, and what to do in emergency situations. Then off to the sea we went. The boat took us to another island. We strapped on our BCD (buoyancy control device), fins, and the air tank. The tank felt like a very heavy backpack.

Because the boat was a big one, it couldn't get close to the shore, so we had to swim the rest of the way. But first, we had to jump into the water. I made quite a scene because I was too scared to jump. The boat was at least a few feet high. The heavy tank really worried me. Wouldn't it make me sink to the bottom of the sea? It took the instructor some time to assure me it would be fine.

No sooner had I got into the water than another problem arose. We had to swim on our backs. I hadn't learnt that in my swimming lesson. And now I also had to figure out how the crap I was supposed to swim with those silly fins on. I kicked and kicked but only managed to move several inches. So I pretended I was just taking my time to enjoy the scenery. The instructor had to come back and pull me.

We swam until it was shallow enough for our feet to touch the ground. There, we practiced what we had just learnt in class. I had trouble breathing through the regulator at first. Instead of breathing normally, I was desperately gasping and gulping in air, and that made me gag a few times. But the mouthpiece was designed in such a way that if you vomited, the vomit would flow out into the water instead of remaining inside your mouth. So I guess vomiting when diving is not so uncommon after all.

Done with that, we swam back to the deeper water and started our dive. Our one-day DCD program allowed us to go to a depth of 12 meters, but I couldn't go any further than 1 because my ear hurt. I tried equalizing the pressure but it didn't work, so the instructor told me to stay near the surface. He told me not to worry, that this thing happened sometimes. So I was basically snorkeling but with scuba gear. 😂

The tank was really heavy

After that, we went back on the boat, and they took us to another spot where we could go for a second dive at an additional fee if we wanted to. A few people stayed behind including myself, and an Israeli guy who admitted that he didn't think scuba-diving was fun--an opinion that I totally agreed with but didn't want to say out loud.

The fish and the corals all looked the same to me, and I really didn't wish to see any other creatures apart from small fish. Stingrays? Whales? Sharks? Octopuses? No, thanks. Maybe I'm one of those people who say they love animals, but in reality only love animals that are cute and cuddly. I don't find marine life fascinating at all. They just kinda scare me. 

So what we did instead was finish off the food on the boat (they had cookies and tea).