Deep Diving in Sunny Koh Phangan

After recovering from the Full Moon party, we started our PADI Advanced Open Water diving course with Buddha View Dive School. With an instructor who was a dead ringer for George Cloony (Beth was obviously still halluicinating from the Full Moon Party - Steve), the time on deck between dives was most aesthetically pleasing (for Beth anyway). Unfortunately day one of the course could not have the same said about the underwater sights with visibility at only two metres - our first ever 30 metre dive was a gloomy prospect. Beth cheered up proceedings however when she suffered slightly with nitrogen narcosis in the deep, unable to complete simple mathematical subtractions she had done in seconds back on the boat. After pirouetting like a ballerina for a couple of minutes she started to ascend with 'George' and Steve in tow laughing into their regulators. Despite the poor visibility we could tell that Sail Rock, one of the premier dive sites on the east coast of Thailand, would be indeed beautiful with clear conditions. The second day was better off Koh Ma island and Mae Haad beach and after a stunning hour long dive through coral gardens and amongst tropically coloured fish (including the 'cleaner' fish who kept licking Steve's wounded little tow with his anti-bacterial tongue), we passed the course to become advanced divers ready for our first deep fun-dive in Vietnam.

Our last night at Haad Grauud resort with the lovely James and Natasha involved much hilarity with charades and other party games that can only be done properly after at least two bottles of the extremely strong Chang beer (6.4%). The Thai staff once again took Beth under their wing and plastered the crushed cumion all over her face much to Steve's disgust as she had to wear it all night. The only downer on the evening was of course our pending goodbye to Natasha and James but also an extremely drunk 50-year old English man who was disrespectful to the women in the restaurant, horrible to his wife, aggressive to the men and very, very rude to the Thai staff - one of the only times on our travels we have actually been embarrassed to be British.

The following morning we said a sad goodbye to the staff who had fed us every kind of coloured Thai curry, taught us a bit of their language and, on departure, insisted on pressing copious amounts of cumin root into Beth's rapidly yellowing hands (she was beginning to get seriously paranoid about the state of her skin by now). Karp-Koon-Kar (thanks) to them all!

Taking the ferry to the mainland via Koh Samui we were all nervous for fear of a repeat of the day before when the same ferry had spotted one of the bodies from the full moon boat disaster. Death has tainted both sides of Thailand's beautiful coasts and to dive or sail now carries the chance of discovering the poor missing people now assumed dead. On arrival at Surat Thani we said farewell to Natasha and James who were heading south and after vowing to keep in touch, boarded our night bus to Bangkok.