Breathing Underwater

View from Koppee, the New Heaven Dive School coffee house, Chalok Bay

I’m nervous. The most nervous I’ve been since leaving London. And I feel I’ve done a few fairly nerve-racking things this last month. At least by my standards. But today is the day that I begin my SCUBA diving certification course.

I left a very stormy India on Saturday evening and arrived on the sunny island paradise of Koh Samui on Sunday morning. I’d taken a night flight via Singapore and was pretty grumpy when I arrived in Changi for a three hour layover, but cheered myself up with a new pair of Converse to replace the plimsolls I’d trashed in the mud and marshes at Our Land. I was mortified when I’d had to take them off to go through security at Cochin. And also when the security official went through my hand luggage with a fine tooth comb. Turns out she was especially curious about my iPad pen and made me open a drawing programme to show her how it worked. She even had a little scribble herself.

Anyway, after a lovely night ‘By Beach’ and another fresh coconut, I took a high speed catamaran the two and a half hours to Koh Tao arriving at Mae Haad Pier on Monday afternoon. Yup, another island paradise. I spent the rest of that first day and yesterday getting my bearings and exploring a little, meeting the crew at the New Heaven Dive School and doing my homework. I also had videos to watch about risk awareness and forms to fill in to sign away my rights should I become seriously injured or die. Talk about stirring up anxiety.

I had been excited but now I’m just full to over-flowing with unthinkable what ifs? Mostly I’m worried that my foggy brain won’t retain all the information and I’ll forget Boyle’s law, ascend too quickly, and explode. But I’m also worried that I’ll try to breathe in through my nose, my equipment will fail, or that I’ll kneel on a sea urchin. Really I suppose I’m worried that the whole idea of breathing underwater is complete and utter madness. I think I might be too old for this.

But I really want to do it. So I’m now off to get a sandwich from the sandwich lady (it’s her name) for lunch. We’re going to be out all day although my diving day will only consist of the morning. I believe this afternoon I’ll be free to snorkel and mooch whilst the others are doing their second dive. That’s if I haven’t exploded by then.

Later: Woohoo! Ha! I’m not even sure I can put it into words. But first off, I’m alive! And Pod, my diving instructor is my new favourite person in the whole of this world. In my pre-dive briefing he spoke about the importance of mutual trust and thank goodness. He was amazing.

After the briefing, we got my kit together and, along with another instructor and two German girls who were doing a diving taster day, pootled off around the bay in a huge (empty except for us and the Captain) diving boat to Aow Leuk. First off, I had to do a swimming test and was so happy to be in the sea, I thought maybe the worries would be washed away. But they weren’t. Pod helped me get kitted up and with the help of the Captain, I made the giant-step splash. A few minutes later I was kneeling on the ocean floor, as instructed, but by now, seriously beginning to freak out. Pod just looked me square in the eye, pointed to his head to remind me to think logically, and then continued the gentle rhythmical hand motions that told me to breathe in. And breathe out. I really had been ready to bail, but he looked at me like me trusted me, like he knew I could do this, and we sat together like that, kneeling and breathing and blowing bubbles for about 10 minutes.

I can’t pretend that I didn’t find the whole thing terrifying, especially to begin with, but it was completely exhilarating too. We were down for just shy of an hour and went through various drills of filling up my mask with water and clearing it, taking it off altogether and putting it back on, taking out my regulator mouthpiece and replacing it, manually blowing up my BCD, and swimming and playing with buoyancy. And I thought I had nailed the drills pretty well up until that point but my buoyancy control was bad. I floated up and down past Pod like a neoprene yo-yo, whilst he remained exactly where I’d left him, patiently instructing me all the while. It was funny. And apparently not altogether unsurprising for a first dive. He says tomorrow will be better and the day after that and all the days after that. I’m excited. And really very glad to be alive.