🇹🇭 Koh Tao - Scuba Diving and Freediving

Lonely in paradise

Koh Tao is a weird one. I came here to learn to scuba and freedive, and was aware that it gets high praise from countless travellers. It’s a small island, and everything is easily accessible on foot and by motorbike. It’s also got some amazing beaches and hikes up to various viewpoints. Saying all this, it feels devoid of Thai culture. All of the locals work in service roles, with most people you bump into being Western 20 and 30-somethings. The evenings also felt like being at freshers again, except now people are talking about their pension contributions while being bandaged up from crashing their illegally rented mopeds.

I had a hard time connecting with the other travellers here, aside from the ones I met while hiking and scuba diving. Most of my evenings were spent watching the sunset or reading on the beach alone, usually soundtracked by United in Flames. I just about managed to make it work, and the sunsets were gorgeous.

Scuba diving

Koh Tao is famous for being the world’s diving capital, and also for being one of the cheapest places to dive globally. That might ring some alarm bells, but they mostly get away with the lower prices due to the sheer volumes of diving that happens on the island - every diving boat tends to be full, and the dive sites are easily accessible. The diving is also really good, offering clear, highly biodiverse waters. Saying this, the standard of the diving centres varies a lot.

I wanted to try diving and decided to learn with Roctopus, based on a friend’s recommendation (thanks, Jack!) and glowing online reviews. I couldn’t be happier with my choice - all the staff were super friendly, and my instructor, Katie, was a fantastic teacher and really easy to get along with. I later found that Roctopus teaches courses as prescribed by RAID. This is a less popular diving agency than the likes of PADI or SSI, but they have higher standards. I feel like I got a higher standard of tuition than most divers

I decided to get stuck straight in and get certified to dive up to 20 metres deep (i.e., to do an open water course), with no prior experience of diving. In retrospect, having never dived before, this was a pretty big commitment for 3.5 days. Luckily, I ended up loving it.

Open water

Before we got in the water, there was a good bit of theory to learn. Once we did that, we practised diving in the pool before graduating to the sea. There was a lot to cover in the first few days, and I was thinking a lot, but eventually a lot of it became muscle memory.

Diving in the sea felt a little scary at first, but having practised the response to various emergency situations, I got very comfortable in the water. I could have had my gas run out, mask flood, or breathing equipment fail, and be able to recover.

I’ve not thought about scuba diving much before trying it, and as silly as it sounds, I wasn’t ready for there being this whole new world underwater. It feels great to see all these animals you’ve only ever seen in photos up close, staring at you.

Saying all this, my knowledge of marine life sucks. I think I’ve at least quadrupled the number of fish I can name after diving in Koh Tao. My favourite ones I’ve spotted were barracudas, groupers, and box fish. I also had a trevalley use me as camouflage one time, which I only found out about after the dive. A girl from the group got a recording, though (I’m the second person on the screen):

After my open water certification, I wanted to keep diving. I decided to take on another course (called Explorer 30 in RAID, and Advanced Open Water in PADI), which certifies me to dive up to 30 metres. This wasn’t initially in my plans, but I really enjoyed diving, the teacher was great, and I met some really nice people while diving. I also really liked having a daily routine imposed on me, having not really had one for 3 months now. Having to plan your everyday gets tiring, even when you’re having fun.

Explorer 30

The Explorer 30 course mostly involved diving in new situations, which was really cool. We dived down to 30 metres, did a night dive, navigated underwater, and had some sessions just focusing on form and moving underwater. In many ways, this is exactly what I needed and made me feel much more competent in the water.

The night dive was a highlight. We could see different animals (including stingrays!), and exploring with a flashlight gave diving a different dimension. You never quite knew what would come out of the dark waters.

After many days of diving, I could have easily stayed and dived more. Becoming a little tired of the island, though, I wanted to try freediving a go before leaving (diving without scuba gear).

Freediving

I’ve been curious about freediving for a while, having met a few people who are fanatical about it. While the idea of holding my breath for a long time didn’t excite me too much, I was curious about the commonalities between freediving and meditation. I signed up for a short course (AIDA 1, I believe) at a well-reviewed freediving centre on Koh Tao.

We did an equalisation workshop, followed by some sessions in the pool on the next day, covering the basics. Then, we got on the boat and dived down into the sea while following a rope. Equalisation felt different from scuba diving, and you get to get a bit more efficient with it. One guy in my group really struggled with it beyond a few metres, so it feels like natural aptitude might determine how easy you’d find freediving.

Honestly, I didn’t like freediving. Holding your breath for as long as possible underwater didn’t appeal to me at all. This also wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t find my instructor to be the friendliest, and he could get arsey. I also got a sense that there’s constant competition with the more experienced freedivers, with them constantly pushing themselves to beat PBs. As someone who’s really not competitive, it didn’t feel like this was for me.

Anyway, I’m glad I gave it a go. It’s good to figure out what you don’t like.

Hiking

There are a few viewpoints you can hike up to in Koh Tao. I usually summited them in the evenings to catch the sunset, and to beat the daytime heat.

First, I went up Fraggle Rock with an American guy, Nick, who suggested it on Nomadtable. We were the only people there, and it felt great to have some quiet on an otherwise pretty busy island. The viewpoint also had a bar further down, where we spent the evening overlooking the island. Nick is a clown who’s worked for a travelling circus in Japan for the last year, and I loved talking to someone who’s lived such a different life to me.

I met up with Nick again on another day to hike up to the John-Suwan viewpoint. This is the most popular viewpoint on the island, and the peak was rammed full of people when we got there. Lovely view, though.

I’m not sure how to close this post off, other than that I’m aware of it kinda reading like the babblings of a partypooper. I still had a good time on Koh Tao, but I’m not massively motivated to explore other Thai islands after having been here. I need to get back to where there is no English on the restaurant menus and where the locals record TikToks with me.