After class at 8am, held outside while we eat breakfast, we grab our equipment and pile into one of the rickety, loud longboats with all the other Open Water students. Fully suited up, we're in the water around lunchtime, at the Japanese Garden, a giant lagoon encircled with rock cliffs, with intermittent strips of white sand beaches, small bridges, and homes designed with Japanese-style architecture. The water is still very warm and we're in short-sleeved wet suits kneeled down on the ocean floor.
We spend the afternoon following the Germanator's strict orders, while palm trees and topless women sway on the shores not too far away. Skills include losing one's regulator, giving air to a buddy, managing one's buoyancy, taking off one's BC, removing water from one's mask. Serge, the tall, golden-locked Arayan with Fabio good looks has a broken cylinder and spends most of the lesson sinking and moving uncontrollably. Serves him right for getting blessed so much from God and having the body hair of a naked moleskin rat.
We eat dinner at Big Blue's restaurant while the sun goes down. Following a post-dive banana-pineapple-coconut shake, dinner is a whole red snapper, grilled over charcoal in front of me, while Michael Franti plays. The fish tastes like it was caught that morning, incredibly tender and fresh. Behind me, at the neighboring bar, a beer pong tournament progresses. I don't have much interest in playing, but I am amused to watch one of the competitors, an attractive European girl who has a fanny pack over her sexy sundress. Her motto must be "Have class, will ruin". But maybe she's just being practical and using it to store extra ping pong balls.
While I eat, Big Blue's resident dogs linger nearby, many of which are trying to get remnants of my snapper. Foolish move on their part. All of them have been awarded unique names by the dive school staff, including Sausage and No Name. One of the dogs, ''Ugly," who has clearly been in one too many fights, decides that my dinnertime entertainment of a perfect sunset and ruined summer outfits must not be enough for me, so he proceeds to sit right in from of me, investigating and enjoying his rear end for a solid hour. I guess they ran out of snapper.
Between the flippers and the mosquitoes, my feet are covered in about three dozen bug bites plus coral scars and broken nails. But it's better than Hannah, who has a gumball-sized purple blister resembling the Hayden Planetarium on her right foot. But given the low-key, diving-trumps-all-else philosophy on Koh Tao, it could be a good backpacker ice breaker.
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