Under water world

On Thursday we went diving!!!! We were going to do our open water Padi course but as we’ve over spent and its been a while since we dived last in Egypt we were unsure if we would use the Padi in the future so we booked to do a morning dive around Phi Phi made up of 2 fun dives. It was fantastic!! So much so that we are defiantly going to do our Padi at some point, as we both will defiantly use it on holidays in the future.

We were up early ready to meet at the dive centre at 7:15 where we were given an hour or so of theory. Our trainer, Cas from Brazil, was an excellent coach. We got on the boat at 8am and set out to the first dive spot. Getting kitted up made me start getting nervous, even though I’ve dived before it feels like ages ago and I couldn’t remember what it’s like. When I had the weights and tank on I could hardly walk. Jumping from the side of the boat into the water was daunting but Cas was dead supportive. When we first got in the water we spent a little while getting used to breathing through the mouth piece just on the surface, breathing through your mouth and not your nose constantly is weird, try it without using your nose for any of it, it’s weird right??!

We then went down, we were told to kneel on the ocean floor so we could do 2 basic skills but unknown to Cas I was getting bitten by 2 fish that wouldn’t leave the backs of my legs alone, I was shuffling around like crazy! We both did the 2 skills required; taking the mouth piece out of our mouths and then back in again, emptying the water out with a kind of suction pump on the mouth piece and emptying our masks of some water. This is the beginning stage of the Padi so when we do it we will have some money off because we’ve already achieved step one! I was chuffed for mister Al, I’d been nervous but mister Al had really wanted to do it but wasn’t sure. He ended up doing fab and loved it J.

Finally we could move away from the biting fish and could explore the under water world. As we are unqualified the deepest we could go down was 12 metres but this was good enough still. We did 2 dives; on the first we enjoyed swimming round the coral getting used to being under the water, we saw lots of fish and right at the end an octopus coming out of a big hole in a rock. We saw it change colour to the background it was against, which was cool. The second dive we felt much more at ease and as we were swimming around I realised why I liked it so much; it’s so peaceful, floating around down there and also it’s really calming that all I could hear was myself breathing, it was cool being able to see the other people I was diving with but not having to talk to them or think of anything to say! On this second dive we saw 2 turtles!!! And a big eel like thing like one of Ursula’s badie helpers in the Little Mermaid! The only bad thing was when I was so preoccupied in seeing one of the turtles I accidently dragged my leg on some coral which was a bit painful for a little while!

When we went to pick up our certificates last night to say we’d completed the first stage of the Padi Cas told us about the dive centre he works at during the summer in Majorca and said that if we don’t get round to doing our Padi while we are away now or if we do it and want a holiday in the future to contact him and he’d sort out some cheap accommodation and some dives for us. We talked about this last night and think we will defiantly be taking him up on that offer for a holiday when we’re home. Its joined a list of loads of other things we want to do when we’re home, which is exciting!!!

We have 2 more days after today in Thailand and then it’s on to Bali. Think we’re going to spend it on the beach, going out tonight and maybe treat ourselves to one last foot massage (we’ve been running loads recently and my legs ache!!!)

I want to go diving again already!!!!!

As always miss everyone lots, lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxx