Ryan Matthew in Thailand

I went in the pool today and assisted the open water class. My ear was fine and I will go with the same class on their first 2 dives in the ocean tomorrow. They will both be pretty shallow and slow dives so it will be a good way to check out how my ear will do.

Other than that I have not had a ton of motivation today. There was a big party at one of the bars near my bungalow and the music was quite loud all night. I did not get a very good quality of sleep. I am going to get my bungalow on top of the mountain tomorrow. So I will not have to deal with the noise from the beach parties anymore. Where I am now there is at least one if not two of these parties every week that have loud music blasting all night long. Not that I have a problem with blasting music until the sun comes up, but I would rather not hear it when I am trying to sleep. I am pretty excited about moving up there. Now I just need to go pack everything up to move up on the mountain tomorrow.

I didn’t do a whole lot today. Neil (my instructor) suggested that I wait till tomorrow to try and get in the water. He has an open water class that will be in the pool tomorrow. So I will go in there and give my ear a try tomorrow and see what it does. So I pretty much just sat at the school reading chapters and doing the study guide questions on the chapters. Good news is that I am over half way through the chapters and should finish up the reading and questions tomorrow. So I am hoping to do my exam on saturday or sunday. That way I will have all the bookwork done for the dive master course.

Tonight I went with my french friends to a little roadside bar that their friend from france owns. The owners wife is Thai and she cooked us all dinner…it was very good!!!! I have no idea what it was. One dish was beef and the other was chicken. They were both delicious. Everyone there was french and speaking french. My friends and a few other people there did talk to me in english. It was a really cool experience. I have a feeling I will end up there again at some point. I am off to my bungalow to read another chapter and maybe do the questions.

Today was a super good day. I headed down to the south end of the island to Freedom beach. It was a nice change of scenery. I forgot my camera so I don’t have any pictures, but I am sure I will go back so I will get pictures next time. I sat at a little bar that over looks the beach and had possibly the coldest coke ever. I did some bookwork while I was there and a super nice little cat curled up on my lap and took a nap. Adding all of this together made for a great environment to do some homework.

Last night like every night the guy at AC was putting on a fire show. In fact I am pretty sure he is over there right now doing the same thing. Anyway, I took some long exposure pictures of it and I think they turned out pretty cool.

So Koh Tao seems to have a way of making you lose track of what day it is. I guess part of that is because the dive school is open everyday and there is no difference between a Saturday and a Wednesday. I am not complaining….but really I have to stop and think for a little bit before I can figure out what day it is and even then I might get it wrong.

So anyway, today was cool. I sat in on more open water classes and went out on the boat with the class to help them in and out of the water. I also did the first of my swim tests for my dive master course. It consisted of 15 minutes of treading water…does not sound too hard right? Well there is a twist to it….the last two minutes your elbows have to be out of the water…yeah I did it just fine…but I was REALLY glad it was not two and a half minutes!! Thankfully in saltwater you can pretty much just lay there for the first 13 minutes and stay above water with pretty much no effort.

This evening I went for dinner with 3 of my friends from here at the school. It was hands down the best food I have had here on Koh Tao. I have no idea what it was called but its just a little place along the side of the road. It is there mostly for the Thai people on the Island. It was much better than all the food that the “resorts” have. The resorts tend to cater to the western taste. No thanks…I came here for proper Thai food!

Here are some pictures from Mango Bay where the class was divining today.

Today was a pretty chill day. I sat in on an open water class (beginner divers). After that I have just been hanging out for the afternoon and evening.

My ear is back to 100% so I am going to wait 2 more days and then try diving again on Thursday. I have a ton of book work to do for the dive master course and will get started on that tomorrow.

There was another amazing sunset tonight. I posted pics again below.

I tried posting this last night…but of course the internet was not cooperating with me last night…so here is the post from yesterday.

I got up this morning and my ear still felt like it had water in it so I headed down to see the doctor. I found out that there is an issue with my inner ear. I am going to have to take at the very least a few more days off diving. At least I didn’t keep diving yesterday or today and do more damage to it. My ear is feeling much better tonight I think it will feel normal by tomorrow.

Good news for the day is that I finally got a bike so I am not so trapped on one spot on the Island anymore. I got a little honda 125 that is like half scooter half dirt bike. Looks a little funny but it rides nice. Now I just need to remember to drive on the left side of the road….actually its not as hard as you would think.

Another good point of the day is that I reserved a much nicer bungalow than I have now. I should be able to move to it on the 1st. It is about a mile or so from the school way up on top of the mountain and the view up there is pretty awesome. I will be posting pictures after I get moved in. Oh yeah, it over looks the west side of the Island so I should have amazing sunset views!! Speaking of sunsets there was a great one tonight I posted a couple pics of it below.

Got up this morning and took my test for rescue diving and was supposed to go out and finish up my final scenario on the afternoon dive. But my right ear is giving me a bit of trouble feeling clogged up so I didn’t go out on the dive today. I am going to skip diving tomorrow also just to make sure it is feeling better. There is no pain it just feels sorta clogged up. It is actually feeling much better now and I am sure it will feel fine in the morning.

had another full day of the rescue class…more towing people back to the boat and helping with issues like lost masks, lost masks and general freak outs. There was another portion of having to find a downed diver underwater and bring him to the surface and of course tow him back to the boat.

Tonight I have just been hanging out with friends and making new friends here at the AC bar (its basically part of the school seeing its only like 40 feet away). I need to call it a night soon and head back to my room so I can finish my homework for the class tomorrow.

Yesterday was nonstop. Once I started my rescue class in the morning I didn’t stop running till the end of the day. I ended up doing 3 dives yesterday and ended the day super tired. Two of the dives were rescue training so it involved swimming out and towing people back to the boat. It was tiring to say the least. After those dives I had about 20 minutes to relax a little bit and then we headed out for a night dive. The night dive was fun and different. Well I still need to finish homework for the rescue class so I need to get started on that.

It rained pretty much the whole day off and on. But it was ok because I was in the class room all day today anyway. I got my CPR/EFR certification today and started on my rescue course.

We had a DMT (Dive Master Training) class tonight that lasted the last couple hours. I am going to grab some dinner then head back to my room to read a couple chapters and do some homework for the rescue course that I have in the morning.