The only hard dates that I had for this trip was 9-23 Dec I had a massage course in Chiang Mai. I had almost three weeks from when I left Bangkok until the start of the course so my original plan was to spend a few days in Phnom Penh, another few days in Siem Reap (near Angkor) then the rest of the time in Laos. It always seems like there is so much time when you write plans down.
After spending a depressing few days in Phnom Penh and realizing that I had no beach plans until Christmas, I decided to pull out my scuba referral from last winter and finally get my open water certification. A dive shop in Sihanoukville, Scuba Nation, had an overnight trip that worked perfectly with my schedule and they were very accomodating of my last minute plan to get certified. So, Saturday morning I hopped on a bus and a few hours later I was in a pool. A few hours at the dive shop doing drills, written work, and talking to the instructor and I was cleared to go on the boat the next morning.
The boat ride out was a little rough but I was fine at first. Almost everyone else was feeling a little sick so they skipped breakfast, leaving only a few of us to eat it. I should have remembered how pineapple makes me sick. It is one of my favorite foods but it makes me sick every time I eat it. So, after eating at least two thirds of a pineapple in pretty rough water, I decided I needed to lay down. Of course, I had been applying sunscreen but every place to lay down on the boat was sunny so I laid with my back to the sun. I think you can figure out how this story ends. I hadn’t been sick my entire trip but the combination of pineapple, rough sea, and sunburn proved more than my stomach could handle.
Soon we arrived at the dive site. One other diver was also doing his open water dives so we were paired up. Actually being in the ocean was so different from being in the pool. The water was warm and we had over 20m visibility. We did a few drills at the beginning of each dive, then floated along for the next 45 minutes or so, doing two dives each day.
Aside from the burn (which seemed to bother everyone else more than me at the time) the trip was exactly what I needed: time to sit in the sun, float around in the water, and let my brain be overwhelmed by something crazy, such as breathing underwater.