Koh Tao, Thailand TERRIFYING NIGHT DIVING| PADI Certification at Sairee Cottage

We spent the last two days getting our advanced scuba certification.

They sent the real cards to Tennessee.

We won't have those for a while.

It's not going to be very helpful.

We had signed up just to do six fun dives this week, but they talked us into doing the advanced certification because it's the cheapest place in the world to get certified.

So glad we did. It was a fantastic experience. Wonderful. They explained it to me, like, getting your open water certification, which is what we had before, basically teaches you how not to die in the water. And your advanced certification actually teaches you how to be a good diver. And I feel like that was pretty spot on.

It really was. And it's going to open a lot of doors for a lot cooler dives.

So we used to be able to go down to, like, 60ft, and now with our advanced certification, we can go down to 100ft. I'll give you our excuses for not vlogging. The past two days. We made an attempt. I just have a feeling it's not going to be very good. First, we were getting certified, so there were, like, a lot of skills we had to practice, like buoyancy and navigation, and you really needed both hands to be able to do that kind of stuff. Also.

We had the GoPro session, and I think it's only supposed to go down to, like, 20ft and still be waterproof.

Where's that terrible case? I bought this case thing off ebay, and we tried it out before we went and.

Leaked. So we could have risked bringing it down in the water and hoped that the case was gonna keep it dry. I didn't trust it. And the visibility, honestly, was not very good, which is another reason I'm glad we were doing the certification and not just the fun dives. So it just wasn't worth it. There was one dive that was super, like, thousands of fish. We saw a grouper that was like a hundred pounds.

Can't even wrap your hands.

100 pounds. That was really cool, and I wish we would have had it for that. But besides that, you didn't miss much. So we're gonna do something a little different this time. We're gonna explain the five dives that we did do. And then Kara's gonna do her best to put together all the video that we had to kind of show you what happened.

Bear with us. So there were two dives that we had to do for this certification that we get a choice. The first one was a navigation dive. So basically everyone got these little compasses. We went down in the water. We had to navigate the dive site and figure out how to get back to the boat all by ourselves. It was pretty easy. We just kind of went north, and then we went south, and then we were back to the boat. So the next challenge at the bottom was we had to get with the buddy, and we had to do what was called a square. So we had to count 10 kick cycles and turn left and make a square and get back to where we started. The visibility was terrible. I think our guide told us it was 5 meters, 4 meters. So 10 kick cycles, that's like 20 kicks. So you get pretty far away. We finished our square, and Nate and I didn't see anyone. We were in the middle of the ocean, on the ocean floor by ourselves. So protocol is you search for a minute, and then you have to surface. We weren't ready to surface yet, so we just sat there, trying not to panic. And then our guide found us. We were right next to him the whole time.

No, it's not telling the story right. It turns out they had followed us, and we'd gotten back to the right spot. They were just behind us, and we didn't know it the whole time. Oh, we weren't that bad.

Yeah, we did good.

Yeah.

Okay.

Dive number two is buoyancy. Peak. Peak performance.

Buoyancy.

Peak performance. Buoyancy. So we went down, and the first thing we did was we got our buoyancy right by inflating our BCDS buoyancy control devices.

We inflated our vest things, and you try to get to neutral buoyancy. So as you breathe in, you float up a little bit, and as you breathe out, you float down a little bit. So we did some tests. You played chicken, and you swam at your partner, and as you were about to hit each other, one of you blew out, and one of you breathed in. So you just floated right under and over each other. Next, we played a game where you had to touch your regulator, the thing that you breathe out of to these slates on the ground without using your hands. You had to go up by breathing in and down by breathing out. Oh. We also learned efficient fin kicking. Two kicks, float. Two kicks, float. And the frog kick thing.

The next three dives that we had to do, we chose as a group. My worst nightmare came true when our group voted on a night dive. The one thing that I've been saying all week that I would never do, Somehow they talked me into it. I have no idea how. It just happened. I committed, and all day I had trouble breathing because I Just kept thinking about getting into the ocean at night. Turns out.

It was one of my favorite dives. They told me it would be. I didn't believe them, but they were right. It was awesome.

My turn.

Dive number four. This was a required dive, and it was a deep dive, which means that we had to go down to 30 meters and perform tests on our brains, because nitrogen narcosis can set in, and you start to feel like you're drunk underwater. And when that happens, bad things can happen. You start to think everything's really funny. You start to think you have great ideas when you don't. So it can be dangerous. So we all got tested. We played this game of 11's where the Divemaster holds up a certain amount of fingers, and then you have to say, how many more add up to 11? We drank ginger ale underwater, which was crazy. He literally brought down an entire can of ginger ale, cracked it open, put a straw in it, and then pass it around, and you could drink out of it and somehow drink ginger ale underwater. He also brought down a red bag of chips, and when he pulled it out, it was completely, like, crushed. And it was also purple. Colors change underneath the water, so the red bag of chips was purple. It was awesome. After that, we just swam around. This was by far the best dive site. It was super clear. There were thousands of fish. We saw a massive grouper. All kinds of cool stuff. By far the best dive.

Dive number five. Our last dive before we were certified, this dive was the wreck. It's something our whole group wanted to do. It was a World War II rescue boat or landing landing boat. Yeah, the wreck was a World War II landing, which. What was I gonna say?

It was a World War II landing ship.

And after that, they, like, sold it to Thailand because they didn't want the boats anymore. And then Thailand used it for something else, and then for something else, and then they sank it. I don't know why.

They donated it to Koh Tao for a dive site. Really? Yeah.

Sometimes when people tell us stuff, I hear one thing, and Carrie hears something totally different.

So we went down to the wreck. It was also at about 27 meters. The visibility was so bad, you could hardly see the person next to you, which was kind of bad but kind of fun, because it made the ship super spooky, like you just couldn't see it unless you're right up next to it. And Nate was crawling in these windows and doors, looking inside. We saw another huge grouper, and there were cannons. I love cannons. I don't Know why I think they're so cool. It was a great dive.

And those were our five dives.

And now we're certified advanced.

Hopefully this GoPro footage makes a little sense. Enjoy. Thank you.

It is 9:30 and we are going to class.

This is the two hour educational portion of the advanced open Water certification. And the class is about to vote on which three dives that we do. One of them is a night dive.

I will not be getting certified today.

We've decided that we're dropping out of the class. If that is the vote, I can't do it. Just kidding. Taking the GoPro.

Our.

Instructor got a little worried after he heard we hadn't dove in two and a half years. But we held our own.

It was fine.

Kara, why are you walking so fast right now?

Well, I want to get food so we can go back and read our book.

Book?

So we can know how to night dive. And I can know all the dangers so I can be more nervous.

Kara's quit smiling as much in the last few minutes.

I'm freaking out.

It's maybe like 5 o' clock right now. And at 6 o' clock, we get on a boat, go on our first night dive.

Gosh, even when you say it, I. I just can't breathe.

Literally, my biggest fear in the world.

I can't breathe. I'm not gonna be able to breathe.

Kara's gonna suck up her entire oxygen tank in the first five minutes that we're in the water. I am.

Oh, man. I can't believe they talked me into this.

But for now, we're going to get a potato torn.

Hello, Carol.

Really good. Hey, what are you reading?

We're reading about night diving because we're going in 30 minutes.

How you feeling? Scared. I think this is the most important part of the chapter for us. Coping with stress.

Are you ready?

No.

Sam. All that stands between us and the dark ocean. This little bitty flashlight.

It's raining.

Cara Goth.

It was really fun. I just didn't look too far out in the distance. I didn't want to know what was there. Where's Huxpring?

GoPro. Oh, you do have. Come on. You can. You can take shot out of it. Make a cool photo. Yeah.

Thank you.

So cold.

So glad we have a warm shower.

Oh my gosh.

Seriously? Can't believe that happened.

It was fun though. It was good. I enjoyed myself.

I loved it.

I actually enjoyed myself. I knew that I'd be glad that I did it, but I had no clue that I'd actually enjoyed Myself. Yeah.

What made it good for me. So, like, when we walked to meet everybody to dive, I could hardly breathe. Like, I really was having trouble taking a deep breath just because I knew it was coming. And then we get on the boat, and the sun was still up. So, like, we got to watch the sunset from the boat, and it was still light outside. So that, like, really helped because it wasn't, like, pitch black. And I'm getting on a boat. It was like, I could see. I put my gear on, I jumped in the water. I could still see. But once we went under, like, it got dark very quickly. So I just stayed, like, right next to Nate and then right behind our instructor. So if anything, like, camera to eat us. Like, I was in the middle.

Good plan.

And, yeah, it was cool. The fish sleep.

They just, like, hang out on a rock, and they just are, like, sideways sleeping.

Then we turned. Everybody took their lights and put them against their chest so it's pitch black. Completely black. And then you moved your hands around in the water, and there was bioluminescence, not luminescence. What is it?

Bioluminescence.

There was that stuff sparkly, and it was awesome. Yeah. Like, everywhere you moved your hand, there was just a trail of, like, sparkly lights.

It was just like. I just did this for, like, five minutes. Like, it was like you couldn't stop. Yeah, it was just this addiction. Like, more sparkles, because if you stop, they went away. But it was really cool because eventually, like, when we first turned them off, you couldn't see anything. Like, there could have been a shark anywhere, and I just would have never seen it. But then eventually, you could kind of see people. Like, I saw Nate enough to give him a high five, and we were, like, going like this.

Sparkles were everywhere. That was the best part.

And then we surfaced, and it was raining, like, really hard, and we had no idea. If you would have told me before tonight, I will pay you a thousand dollars. I'm gonna take you out in the ocean. I'm gonna. It's gonna be raining. It's gonna be dark, and you have to jump off the this boat. I would not have done it for $1,000.

I wouldn't either.

Lesson from tonight. Sometimes peer pressure can be a good thing. Yeah. All right. We've worked up quite the appetite. Time for pancakes. Good night. Day two of our advanced certification. It's about 6:30 in the morning.

It's almost 7. Stayed up till, like, midnight last night doing our homework. I don't know. What time did you stay up until I fell asleep.

It was not that much longer. It felt like college.

And now we are going to do our deep dive and a wreck dive and we get to breathe nitrox for the first.

Going to 100ft. Then we're going to drink ginger.

Alex, it.

We're in sand divers, we're certified.