Two new recruits to the Simple Life dive crew - Olivier De Brouker [France] and Debbie Carvey [UK] have been getting stuck into their entry level dive training over the past week. And whilst other parts of Thailand having been getting a heavy dousing of rain, we got to enjoy bright sunshine 
Hannah and Olly during the PADI Open Water course
First I ran Olly’s PADI Open Water course where we got to dive at Mango Bay, Green Rock and White Rock during his course. It’s nice to get feedback on first impressions of scuba diving, offering perspective as he develops over the coming months of his scuba diving internship.
His response was that he most enjoyed the sheer variety of aquatic life which we saw on open water dive 3 [White Rock] which included a pair of scribbled file-fish, a baby white eyed moray eel, several blue spotted rays (out in the open rather than hiding under rocks) as well as the usual mix of our ‘friends’ the resident titan triggers, butterfly fish, angel fish, wrasses etc.
Continuing on, Olly completed his PADI Advanced open water course yesterday along with Debbie, another of our PADI Divemaster internship candidates who will also be with us for two months. Olly completed a deep dive at green rock followed by a wreck dive at the HTMS Sattakut wreck near Hin Pee Wee. (We took a few moments out of our underwater tour of the wreck to pretend to shoot each other with the deck-guns, as well as re-enacting the famous bow scene from Titanic – a lot of underwater giggles). Olly also completed the underwater navigation dive, a fish identification dive and also fine-tuned his buoyancy and breathing control during the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive.
Ollie and Debbie will now be taught EFR and PADI Rescue Diver by Steve, [apparently the best scuba diving instructor in the world 
], before getting stuck into their PADI Divemaster internship mentored by Jon.
Here’s a couple of photos from our past few days diving in Koh Tao:
Some of the Thailand Divemaster internships gang - past and present | From left, Carmen who is now a certified PADI Divemaster with Anna, Debbie, Olly and Charles
Salty sea-dog Captain Nam Chai at the helm!
