Live and let dive

I made a promise to myself. My company offers a finders fee of sorts if you suggest someone that eventually becomes an employee. The finders fee is roughly equivalent to what an Advanced Open Water Diver course will cost, so I promised myself that if the guy (a former colleague) I suggested were to get hired, I'd treat myself to an AOWD course while in Thailand. Well, he did, and so I am.
I started with three specialty adventure dives: Peak performance bouyancy, Underwater navigation and Search & recovery. Especially the Peak performance bouyancy dive was incredibly helpful, as I learnt to improve my bouyancy control much better than before, which would be proven useful on my liveaboard trip the following days.
Ah yes. Liveaboard. There were eight passengers, evenly spread amongst Germans and Americans (and one Swiss and one Swede) along with two divemasters. Cosy enough. We set sail for Koh Bon for our first dive, then continued to Similan Islands for the following dives (including, but not limited to, an awesome night dive).
The sheer awesomeness of these dives is too huge to put down in words, but a limited list of watery wildlife include: Barracudas, tunas, corals, heaps and heaps of trevalys, snappers and groupas, morays of every possible colour and pattern, corals, lobster, shrimps, sea cucumbers, corals, trigger fish, angelfish, corals, turtles, clams, nudie snails, eels, starfish and a manta ray.
The group was kind of excellent as well, with divemaster Roger balancing humourous briefings with a right degree of seriousness, delivered in a cartoonish German accent.
I evolved greatly as a diver during these dives, with aforementioned skills in bouyancy control, a much more efficient breathing technique and an ability to remain neutral at shallow depths even after having breathed most of my air, with much less added weight than before.
Every dive was, as is necessary, interspersed with sufficient surface time. The in-between-time was spent eating, relaxing, reading up on advanced diving, eating, snorkelling and eating. There was also time to visit some of the Similan Islands, trekking through the jungle, swimming and just chilling on the alabaster white, soft sandy beaches.
The time went by quicker than one would hope, and soon M/V Nanguan steered off eastwards, and solid ground was once again underneath my feet. A final goodbye to my co-divers, and off I trotted to eat the spiciest Pad Thai yet.
As morning came, I walked the twenty steps from my hostel to Sea Dragon dive centre and got ready for my final two dives of AOWD course: Deep dive and wreck dive. Without much effort I finished my deep dive (I have logged several dives deeper than the stipulated 22 metres I did on this day), and swam around the wreck of a former Dutch, then Greek mining vessel, noting the various hazards a wreck can present. Those would include sharp edges, ropes, aquatic life (nope, not the giant octopus guarding the treasure chest full of rubies, emeralds and gold dubloons, but rather poisonous lion- and stonefish), overhangs and suchlike. And when resurfacing, I was a certified Advanced Open Water Diver!
Back in Khao Lak, I finished the paperwork, got my stuff together, and stood by the roadside for 30 minutes before flagging down a bus that eventually brought me and my backpacks to Phuket town. After some delicious Thais style kebabs at the night market I treated myself to a well-needed, bonecrushing and muscle tenderizing massage.