Swimming With The Fishes

To be honest, I've never really been interested in scuba diving. But everywhere, where there is water, you can’t walk 100 meters without passing a dive shop. Taking an open water scuba diving course is one of those things you just have to do. Or at least that’s what everyone who has taken the course says.

In Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the must dive places. But since doing anything in Australia is expensive, I didn't even go near the that area. When I was in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia, I was talked into taking a dive course, because the price in SE Asia is lower than any other region in the world. However, I had issues with the ATM machine and could not pay for the course.

In Malaysia, I hoped to take the course when I visited the Perhentian Islands, but again, there were money issues. I was then determined to take the course on the island, Ko Tao, Thailand. But I never made it to Ko Tao, and in Phuket, they wanted $500. I was not willing to pay more than $300. So at that point, I decided that I will not bother with diving.

Fast forward a few months. I'm in Nha Trang, Vietnam, debating if I should pay some guy $275 to take me on his motorbike for a 5-day ride thru the mountains, and I pass by a dive shop and see the $300 special. The 3-day open water course plus a 4th day of fun dives for $300. Suddenly this was what I wanted to do. I managed to get the price down to $285 and signed up.

I went back to my hotel to start reading the text book, when I developed a pain in my ear. Actually it was a pain in my jaw and it extended into my ear. This was not good. You can not go diving with an earache, but I had already paid. I read the first two and a half chapters before going to bed. The pain was still there when I awoke the next morning.

The morning session of the first day of the course was spent watching a video. The narration of the videos was almost word for word from the text book. So by lunch time, I knew the contents of all 5 chapter of the book. Also, by this time, the pain in my ear was mostly gone.

In the afternoon, we went to the public pool to do our confined water dives. But before we could start, we had to demonstrate that we could swim 200 meters. Two laps in the pool, anyway you can, no time limit. They should have had me do this before taking my money. I am not a swimmer. I don't know how long it took for me to doggy paddle 200 meters, but the instructor was almost ready to pack it up. The Korean guy who was taking the course with me, could not even tread water.

But he let us continue anyway. Once you put on flippers, swimming is easy. Things went pretty well in the pool. I was relieved that I had no problems with my ear. I was able to equalize with no problems. I had one run-away ascent - good thing it was only a few meters. I got scared later when I thought about it. On the way back from the pool, the instructor said he was really surprised at how well we did, considering that we were "weak" swimmers.

On the second day of the course, we headed out to sea for our first two open water dives. Except for two small problems - being stuck at the surface when I needed to descend, and being stuck at the bottom, because I was scared I might have a run away ascent if I added more air to my BCD - things went really well. But I still felt really badly about my swimming test. So I asked the instructor if I could retake the swim test. He said I could, on the next day, swim around the dive boat two and a half times, which would be approximately 200 meters.

Day three went even better. I was able to solve my two little problems. I had another little problem that I need to work on. Breathing without my mask. It seems silly, but once the mask comes off, I have difficulty breathing thru my mouth. One of the skills we had to perform was taking off the mask at 6 m depth and putting it back on. I did it well enough, but I need to improve that skill.

For my swimming retake, there were three boats, not one, and I had to swim around them two times. By this time, whether or not I could swim was really not an issue, but I needed to prove myself anyway. I did struggle a bit towards the end, because I had to swim against the current, but I erased any doubts about my ability to swim. I was confident now, that I would not fail the course.

I passed the final exam with 99 out of 100, because of a very stupid error. I received a temporary card and sent off my course information to PADI, so they could enter me into the system and send my card. Now I could move on to fun dives without an instructor. Whee!

I had to buy a cheap alarm clock, so I could get up in the morning and not miss my fun dives. My cell phone, which I had been using as nothing more than a very expensive alarm clock, decided to stop working. I set the alarm on my new clock for 6:00, and it went off at 5:50. That's the kind of cheap clock it is. But I made it in time.

I suspected that during the course, they held back and didn't take us to the part of the dive site with all the coral - just in case we destroy it. The sites we went to for our first two open water dives were not so great. Not much to see, and the visibility was poor. But on day four, wow, what a difference. Amazing colorful coral, fish and other creatures that blur the line between plant and animal. It was really great. Unfortunately, I did not take a camera along, so I have no pictures. Next time.

The people were great also. Between dives we had fun jumping, diving and flipping off the boat into the water. I wish I could do this a lot more, but scuba diving is a relatively expensive activity, and I will be heading north for the winter and may not dive again for a long time. I should have taken the course in Indonesia, then I could have gone diving at least once in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But with certification under my belt, anytime I am in a warm place with water and the budget allows, I can go swimming with the fishes.