PADI Dive Master Trainee

After having had a few days of sunshine and relaxing on the beach, I realized that I couldn't spend my time like this. It had been nice with a few days off relaxing, but that was not the purpose of this trip I had to remind myself. Either I would find something to do or start traveling again to new unexplored places. I had been wanting to dive a little more, at was speculating about doing the dive master course here in Thailand. There were places offering the course as part of Similan liveaboards, others more modest with small dive shops utilizing shore diving. The price of course reflected this, so I decided to walk around and check out the local places in Patong. Actually diving was not the first thing I would associate Patong with, so I was a little surprised to find that many options available.

After having talked to a few shops, I kind of narrowed down the possible places to those fewer ones that also offered instructor development course. One never knows what is going to happen, so sometimes it is better to keep the possible options open and make it a little easier on oneself.
Met with a guy called Christophe Pace, who seemed to be a known and pretty well respected in the area. Good reviews on the Internet too in different forums. The dive shop he was working with was one of the most eye catching shops in Patong, having a pool very close to where people were partying at night. It was very exposed and people often stopped by to see what was going on in the pool and seemed very interested.  I decided this would be the place and went inside to talk to him again and sign the papers for me to begin the course. I was then introduced to a French woman, Vanessa, who was going to be my dive master instructor. She had me sign a lot of papers and then took me to the accounting department - this was going to cost me money and of course like everything else, more than expected. Well, not the game was on!

I expressed my interest in photography and said I had time enough and was thinking of doing a dive master internship of 2 months, giving me time enough to get plenty of dives in the area. Christophe had told me to forget about the photography specialty and instead go on the boat with the local photographer that was working for A4D. Sounded pretty sweet, as the course is more for people who might never had been holding a camera in their hands underwater before.
Next morning I arrived in the office at 9 o'clock for the first DM theory classes. I was introduced to Vlad, a Czech living in London my age, who was also here to do the DM course. There was a third DM trainee that came 15 minutes too late, Elias from Sweden, who had been doing his Advanced and Rescue course with A4D the few previous weeks. Young skinny dude with the baseball cap on a little bit sideways, "Oh man" I thought, what a character, this is going to be interesting.

The DM course is all about theory, tests and being able to teach, assist and be a good diver. Of course the diving was being saved for later and so we started with a week of watching PADI videos, reading books and making tests. In between there were skill practices in the pool which in fact turned out to be the coldest pool in all of Phuket. We would spent 7-8 hours in the pool, practicing how to do the different open water skills, then how to teach these skills to students learning to dive. Most of the time though we would spent watching instructors teaching skills to students, so just sitting there in the pool doing nothing.

Finally one day we were told to pack our bags, we were going on the boat. Nice! Next morning we met at the dive shop, helped load the pickup with all the customer's equipment and then got onto the minibuses that would take us to the boat. On the way to the boat the driver would pickup customers, so it took close to 45min to get there.
Once on the pier, small pink minibuses would take people out onto the end of the pier which was around 600 meters from shore. With everyone aboard, a briefing for the guests would be given and assigned dive masters. Breakfast would then be served and the boat would start the journey of 2-3 hours to the dive site for the day.
The instructors and DMs would go and prepare their own and customers equipment and then just hang out until the boat made it to the dive site. A lot of different nationalities on the boat, so it is a mix of many different languages being spoken, German, Swedish, Russian  French, Thai. Underwater all that doesn't matter, there it is communication with the hands - and fingers if needed, haha
We have our first open water student, an older guy from Corsica in France. He is not exactly like a dolphin in the water, we noticed that already during the pool sessions, but never the less he managed to fulfill the requirements for becoming an open water diver.
He was very happy and proud when having finished. Clearly he will need to do a lot more diving to become safe, but I guess a lot of people who get certified are still learning on the next few dives. But that is also the good thing about diving, there are so many people on different skill levels that there will always be someone you can dive with. No need to be an professional to enjoy the sport of diving.
Diving here is not exactly impressive like The Philippines or Mabul/Sipadan where I have been a few weeks earlier, but it is necessary to think differently and enjoy the diving here for what it is. Compared to many other places, this is great and I am not complaining at all.
The islands and the environment is super pretty and impressive. From a distance it just looks like some rock in the water with some green stuff on top. Coming up from a dive though and the rock wall just rises up 100 meters just in front of you, that is pretty cool.
On top of that we get the most beautiful sunsets around on the way back to Chalong. Really peaceful just sitting watching the setting sun, the only sound is the Thai flag in the wind - and then the boat's 2 big engines of course, haha
Yup, life here is not too bad, I think I am going to stick around for a while.