The dive shop sent a truck to pick us up this morning at 8:30 to take us to the classroom. We would be spending the morning watching videos and learning theory, and spend the afternoon in a pool with our instructor demonstrating skills for us to practice. Our instructor, Uwe, is a small German who basically lives to dive. He is experienced, with over 2,000 dives, and was very careful with the details. We felt that we got very good instruction to compliment the videos and reading. The afternoon pool session was long, but fun. The first time we went down in the water breathing from the tanks was amazing but at the same time no big deal. It just worked. I was clumsy trying to swim underwater with fins, and it all felt foreign, but nothing was too difficult. We both performed all the skills well. We were done around 4:30 and the truck took us back to the Laughing Gecko.

Sunset on Ao Nang Beach”

We walked down to the beach to watch the sunset, then came back for dinner. Before it was served, people were gathering, some talking and some playing instruments that are sitting around. The daughter of the owners, probably ten or so, picked up one of the guitars and started playing old Eagles tunes and other things. I picked up another guitar and clumsily plucked out a few chords with her, though I didn’t know all the ones she was playing. She was absolutely hilarious, trying to get us to sing along with her and trying to get me to play things I couldn’t. She then put the guitar behind her neck and played some of the same stuff just as well as she did with it in front of her. I was just laughing and laughing, she was really fun.

The meal was once again incredibly yummy (a Thai woman cooks the food) and we had great conversation again, this time with a guy from California, just coming to the end of some time traveling before he goes back to find a place to live and work for a while.