So, there I was, nearly 20 years ago, traveling around South-East Asia, Lonely Planet guidebook firmly in hand traveling what I thought was the great unknown and not realizing that by using the guidebook I was insuring the fact that I was going to be going to heavily traveled areas, when I stumbled upon diving completely by chance. It was a random stop in a random town in Thailand named Krabi that eventually ended up being my home for more than a decade.
I had already started a NAUI course in USA but due to inclement weather the course could not be completed (this was east coast USA, home of arguably the worst diving in the world.) So when I saw a sign near the guesthouses of Krabi advertising diving courses, I went in to have a look. I ended up meeting a fantastic group of people in ReefWatch Diving Academy and I am still friends with all of the people I met on that day. They introduced me to the Open Water course, which was a lot of fun – due mostly because of the incredible staff that worked there.
I was immediately enamored with their lives. We didn't speak about how much money they make, that wasn't important to me. I was just very intrigued about the fact that they wake up every day knowing that they are going to go and do something that I was now paying to do (but hadn't yet even seen.) We spend several days in the classroom and testing in a pool for safety purposes, but it is kept fun by the stellar staff working at ReefWatch (which, unfortunately, no longer exists as a company.) After a few days and completing my pool tests we were ready to load up the boat the following morning and get me out to sea on my first warm water ocean dives EVER!
I had never seen tropical diving and although I had done some snorkeling in the Caribbean, nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness that is tropical climate reef diving. I was immediately captivated despite diving in what I would later discover were not-so-great conditions. It didn't matter to me because I didn't know any better. To me, this was amazing.
It really is another world down there as they say and I was hooked from the first dive. I immediately signed up for the Advanced Course, completed it, and then it was time for my vacation to end because even though I was on what an American considers a crazy-long vacation (1 month,) it wasn't near as long as I wanted it to be.
I promised to keep in touch with the dive shop after leaving as we exchanged email addresses. Keep in mind this was long before just everyone had a laptop and a decade before the first smartphone was invented. However, from the moment my boots hit the ground back in USA I was already planning my next trip back. It took me a long while to make that happen though....