Samantha in Saigon: Under the Sea

One night, as I sat watching the BBC documentary Life with my housemates, I got it in my head that I wanted to learn to scuba dive. Seeing footage of all the crazy fish and weird coral that live down in the water made me realize: I MUST see it for myself.

So I booked a very last minute trip to Thailand with my coworker Hannah and set off to swim with the fishes. Twenty four hours and a xe om, plane, taxi, subway, sky train, night train, bus, and ferry later, we arrived in beautiful Koh Tao.

Hannah rides the rails

Night train fun

Finally! Koh Tao!

We stayed at Crystal Dive Resort on Koh Tao, and I signed up for the PADI Open Water Diver course. After checking in to the bungalow and eating lunch, I started my course that afternoon. The first day was less than thrilling, just watching videos and taking quizzes, but the promise of underwater adventure was just below the surface (see what I did there?).

Crystal Dive Resort

Path to our bungalow

Pretty nice classroom, if you ask me

Another day of videos, quizzes, an exam (perfect score, whaaaat??), and practicing the basics in the swimming pool, and we were ready to dive to the bottom of the big blue sea. I had worked myself into quite a little nervous wreck the night before, imagining myself getting tangled in seaweed, having my leg chopped off by the boat propellor, and slowing drowning due to a regulator malfunction. But the morning of the first open water dives, I woke up early, all my death dreams pushed aside, ready to see some sharks and giant squid.

Setting sail for the dive site

Even though I had aced the written exam, I struggled a bit with the practical side of diving. I couldn’t really remember all the steps of checking your equipment before getting in the water, and I mostly relied on my partner to make sure everything was in working order. Luckily there were seven people on the course, which put me the odd man out, so I was paired with one of the Dive Master trainers, Daniel. I felt confident he wouldn’t let me jump in the water without all the gauges and other doodads operating properly.

And once I was in the water and it was time to descend to the depths, I quickly discovered that filling in the correct circles on a test doesn’t actually mean you’ll be a great diver. Right away my ears felt like they were going to explode from the sides of my head, and I strained to make them pop and equalize. I rarely have trouble when flying, so I assumed it would be the same for diving: just swallow a few times and move on. But no. I had to be privately coached on how to do that thing where you plug your nose and blow to pop your ears, with the added graceful element of shaking your head from side to side to force the air bubbles out of your ear canal. But the dive instructor Brandon was very patient, even when he had to drag me down to the bottom by the weight belt because I was too focused on blowing my ears to remember to actually descend below the surface.

Anyways, now for the good parts.

DIVING IS AWESOME. You breathe under the water. Like a fish. No holding your breath. No going up to the surface for air. Just swimming around, free as a fish.

Over the course of two days, we did four open water dives for our certification. We saw tons of cool fish and swam over some beautiful coral. I’ve just spent about twenty minutes here at my computer trying to figure out how to best describe the experience, but no words can do the trick. The only thing that comes close to doing it justice is this video taken by the resort on the last day of our dive certification course.

My debut as choreographer comes in minute ten :)

That night we celebrated our new qualifications by drinking too many beers and playing with geckos.

Books and beers: the perfect studying combo

So tame

Maybe too tame

Before heading back to reality, we squeezed two more dives in on the morning before the ferry. The second dive took us around a ship wreck, which was equally spectacular and creepy.

Buddy check complete!

Sitting on the upper deck of the ferry boat speeding away from Koh Tao and towards Chumphon (Chumporn? Chumpaloompah?), I reached up and discovered that I’d lost an earring somewhere in the depths of the Gulf of Thailand. A small price to pay for one of the most remarkable experiences of my life (so far)!