Diving on Koh Chang

The weather wasn’t the perfect, unbearably hot & sunny kind on Koh Chang but the water was a pleasant temperature that even I could occasionally dip in without turning blue. We were only there for a week and diving was on our list of things to do on the island. So we bought 2 dives with the Scandinavian diving school and they picked us up promptly at 8:20am the next day.

We took a small motor boat to a bigger one, where we met our diving instructor Stephen, a big Finnish guy who’s been living on the island for the past five years and loved it. His name wasn’t really Stephen but I am very bad at names, so let’s just call him that for the purpose of this story.

It was windy and the waves were hitting the boat forcefully, so when Stephen offered me a pill against seasickness I took it, even though I felt completely fine then and I thought there was no way I’d get sick. I was just getting a bit too cold from the wind, but I told myself (and Peter) that we’d be fine once we’re in the water. Stephen was really professional, he asked to see our certificates on the way to the dive spot and we signed some paperwork, so I felt we were in good hands. He told us all the best practices to use on the boat, where to find what and went through the basic hand signals that the divers use, unlike the last place where we attampted to go diving in Jordan.

We got to the dive spot after about an hour on the boat and I was starting to feel a bit seasick and quite cold. But what the heck, I thought, we’ll be fine in the water, right? We’d been looking forward to diving again so much, I wasn’t going to miss it. So we put on our wet suits, tested the equipment and jumped into the water after Stephen. The waves were throwing us around, I kept trying to stay close to Peter and Stephen but I was getting carried away by the force of the waves. I pedalled hard to get close to them, and that’s when Stephen signalled to start going under. I was cold, feeling seasick and panicking, but I started letting the air out of my BCD anyway and my head was suddenly under the water. I started panicking even more, thinking I could loose both of them easily, the wate was so murky and wavy I could hardly keep myself from floating away. So that’s when I thought ‘that’s it, I just give up!’ and I went back up. Stephen came after me but I couldn’t see Peter. I said to Stephen: I can’t do it, I’m sorry I am panicking, I can’t do it.’ I kept repeating this like a mantra. He tried to calm me down and said ‘Ok, let’s just try one more time and if it doesn’t work we’ll go back up’. I said ok and felt really silly for acting like this.

This time he kept closer to me while wre going down, and finally I spotted Peter too so that helped me to hold myself together. We were finally submerging. Slowly we got to the bottom, which was only about 12 meters deep. There were corals and fish all around us, but I was still feeling too seasick to be able to enjoy it and take any of it in. I also started shaking uncontrollably from the cold. I knew Stephen would ask us how much air we had left 20 minutes into the dive and I wanted to last at least until then. The initial dive time was supposed to be an hour but I knew I wouldn’t last that long. I managed 33 minutes before tapping Stephen on the shoulder and showing him the sign for being cold. He asked if I wanted to go up, I, relieved, held up my thumb for up.

The five minute safety stop at 5 meters felt like forever. But when we finally came up, I climbed the stairs of the boat, put tank and the BCD down and tore the wet suit off myself. Peter came up after me and I could see that he was cold too. The boat was swaying in the wind from side to side. I located my towel and started drying myself frantically, Peter doing the same.

Stephen offered me another seasickness pill which I took gratefully. It seemed to help after a while but I did not dare move so I stayed sitting in one place staring at the horizon the whole way back, with Peter sitting with me the whole time, trying to keep me warm with his hugs. We were supposed to do another dive at a different location but there was no way for me to go into the water again, I felt lucky to be alive at all. Peter didn't want to leave me there so he didn't go for the next dive either. We couldn’t go back yet because there was another girl with us and she, unlike me, was not freezing cold and wanted to complete her other dive. So we went to the next dive spot and waited for her to finish.

Something positive has come out of this day too of course. We have learnt a lesson next time not to go diving when it’s less than 30 degrees outside and windy.