12th January: The first day of the course began very early (7am) at the Koh Rong Dive Centre where the group ate a simple breakfast of Croissants and Bananas along with a cup of tea. We were quickly herded onto the shuttle bus to the port and then on the boat that would take us across to the island. The boat journey was smooth and I slept for most of the two hours as i’d had a bit of a heavy night!
Once on the island we checked in to our rooms in The Rising Sun Guesthouse: it is basic, but lovely, with a very comfy mattress and neat, crisp linen along with a pretty vase of fabric sunflowers in the corner of the room. Once we’d all dumped our bags we went over to the dive center for our day of theory lessons. We met our lovely instructor, Ste, and then got down to business.
There were dvd’s to watch and quizzes to take so that our knowledge could be checked. I didn’t do too badly with these quizzes, but some of the questions about pressure (so the science side of things) I found a bit challenging! As there is so much to learn we did spend the whole day working on the theory, but I didn’t really mind that.
After we’d finished for the day, I went to eat at Monkey Island. I chilled and played cards and then went to bed quite early!
13th January: After being woken up by chickens and cockerels I got dressed and made my way to the Dive Center to don equipment and complete the first of my confined water dives. These first dives have the instructor teaching you to do things like how to deal with a flooded mask, what to do if you lose your mask etc…the way that they teach you these things are by having you partially flood your mask and then showing you how to get rid of the water inside, then fully flooding your mask and getting rid of the water etc. I was a little worried about this as I really don’t like not being able to see, but it wasn’t actually that bad! I am very proud to say that I had no panics at all: only one minor water-up-nose shock. Once we’d learnt the mask skills we learnt other skills like buoyancy and what do if you run out of air.
We worked on these skills diligently all day and then took a swim around the nearby coral. It was epic! I really thought that it would be darker or scarier, but it really wasn’t. The sea was green-ish and there was so much light coming down that it makes your hands look a funny orange color. We saw lots of small fish and interesting corals as well as a large orange horned starfish…eek…
We got out and shed ourselves of the skuba gear and wetsuits only to be told that we needed to swim 200m and float for 10 minutes!
14th January: Today we had our first open water dive, it began with us setting up our gear on the boat and then chilling out for 40 minutes whilst we waited for the day trippers to come over from the mainland on the big boat.
Once we were in ‘Oregan Bay’, which is on the other side of the island, we exited the boat using the giant stride method…which basically means that you take a massive step off of the back of the boat! So we were in the water and we followed Ste to the front of the boat and down the anchor line to the bottom so that we could go for our first proper swim under the sea! I did quite feel like I should burst out with a few verses of the well known song ‘Under The Sea’ from ‘The Little Mermaid’… I found it quite a challenge to swim effectively wearing fins as I don’t think i’ve ever actually done it before…maybe once…it feels very strange to kick from the hip and not to swim breast stroke, which is the only stroke i usually swim.
It really was amazing. I saw hundreds of tiny fish, lots of corals and a funny looking worm-like thing which I am told is actually a coral.
In particular fish that I saw were; boxfish, clownfish (like Nemo), clownfish (a black version of Nemo) and damselfish.
It was really so much fun…much less scary than I thought, but I think this was mainly due to our instructor being very patient and lovely. This dive we went down to 7.1 meters and spent 49 minutes under the water! It really did not seem like we were down there that long. I thought that we were coming up to go back down again, but when Ste said that we had finished the first dive I was actually disappointed!
Our second dive was still in the same area, but we swam out in a different direction. We went a little deeper this time, down to 8.3 meters and it was just as amazing as the first dive. The visibility was a little better this time around and we ended up seeing the strangest looking slug thing (varicose wart slug) and lots of tiny fish in a school that swam around us a few times.
This time we saw; sea slug, bannerfish, trevally, beaked coralfish, varicose wart slug, blotched Porcupinefish, and an eastern skunk anemonefish.
Once back on shore we all decided to take our Final Exam (we could take it any point) and we all passed!
15th January: Our second day was much like the first in that we got on the boat, set up our gear and chilled for a little while before going out to the dive site. Today we used a smaller boat and it was just the people taking their ‘Open Water Diving’ course and some fun divers.
Our first dive was at ‘ Corner Bar ‘ over on Koh Rong Samlong and we were dropped off to go down and let the current take us along. When we came up to the surface I could see that we had come a long way and Ste had to put up his orange safety sausage (yes it is really called that) to let the boat know where we are so that it could come and pick us up!
An orange safety sausage rolls up in the divers pocket when not in use. When you are going to come to the surface you use your alternate air source to inflate it with the oxygen from the cylinder on your back. It inflates and you hold on to the piece of string as it goes to the surface to warn boats and jet skiers that there is a diver below that is coming up from under the water.
Our second dive of the day was at ‘Small Island’, an eight minute boat trip from the main Koh Rong island. We jumped in amongst two dead floating jellyfish, so I was a little on edge! They didn’t look very pretty: one was a huge pink lump with a large hole in its head where it had obviously been eaten! The other looked like only the tentacles of a jellyfish, so it could have just been the rest of the one that we had seen earlier…not pleasant.
We went in anyway and did the last of our skills on the surface of the water and then went down for our fourth and final dive. As in the previous dives we saw a wide range of interesting marine life and coral. I think that I maybe enjoyed this dive the least, as my mask kept steaming up so I was a little bit annoyed for most of the swim…I had to keep focusing on getting my mask defogged rather than concentrating on the actual dive. Boo hoo.
Once we were back in the classroom on the island, I filled in my logbook and recorded the diving that I had done with Ste and the ‘Koh Rong Dive Centre’. Ste stamped and signed all of the pages and checked everything that had to be sent off to PADI…and then we were finished and actually qualified PADI open water divers!
The whole experience was really fun and amazing. I never thought in a million years that I would do something like this…really! I am so proud of myself for actually getting out there and doing something that I have always fancied doing.
The professionalism of the Koh Rong Dive Centre divers and instructors and their friendly and patient way of teaching has meant that I sailed throughout the course and am extremely happy with it 🙂
I thought that I might have a panic at some point, but the whole experience was amazing. I would recommend them to anyone.
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