day 173, Kata Noi

I think I’m flirting with becoming a morning person out here, to naturally wake up before the alarm beeps mechanically, to sit outside and read my book or fill in yesterday’s events in my blog and look forward to the day I have ahead of me. What a day it was going to be.

On the walk up to kata and Rumblefish, the company we are doing our scuba dive with, me and matt stopped off in a fancy café for a plate of stir fried veg and an iced green tea frappe. Another blisteringly hot day, there was a good vibe at Rumblefish, very relaxed and informal, while a Vietnamese bloke called Tien was our instructor who ran us through what to expect, the techniques and the safety briefings, before getting the gear fitted and piled along with ourselves into the pick up truck down to the beach. We got geared up and walked down into the insanely warm sea. There we learned the general beginner skills of scuba diving, from how to breathe underwater to equalising the pressure and clearing your mask from water. I found breathing under water a lot more comfortable then I thought I would, and did the drills with clearing my mask and loosing my regulator and putting it back in my mouth no problem at all. We then went deeper and to my surprise we were down there for 40minutes, swimming around and seeing fish and coral while going down to a depth of up to 6 metres.

I loved diving, though I struggled with my ears a bit, plus my mask strap came off and didn’t realise it so spent almost 10 minutes continuously blowing water out of it. It was also the first time I wore flippers which I wasn’t a natural at. Having done it and had an amazing time I haven’t got the bug, I don’t like being deep underwater though I am keen to snorkel. Matt also had a blast though struggled with getting depth.

High on adreline and knackered from the effort of concentrating on breathing and not being a ’airzilla’ we returned to the fancy café to treat ourselves to more fancy drinks, then to another café for a bite to eat, walking past the turn off to go to the jungle sauna as we couldn’t be arsed and it was hot enough, back to the apartment, backed up some photo’s and headed to the beach for sunset. At that direct moment I was just plain happy, I was sat on a quiet beautiful beach, a cold beer in my hand watching the sun go down. Unfortunately cloud stole the sunset from us though we just went for  a swim till it got dark and watched Chinese lanterns be released, got some dinner and back at the apartment now finishing off my book.