PADI, diving and Instructor Development (IDC) around Thailand: PADI Specialty Instructor Training April 2015 in Khao Lak, Thailand

It's been two weeks since we completed the PADI Specialty Instructor Training April 2015 in Khao Lak, Thailand but it's not been forgotten! All participants of the April 2015 PADI IDC in Khao Lak, Thailand in conjunction with PADI 5* IDC Center ' Sea Dragon' took part in the Enriched Air Instructor specialty and a few participated in a variety of PADI Instructor level specialty training.

We started out with a trip to the Similan islands with Chloe, Jack and Kerstin for a day of Deep diving. On the fantastic MV Naam Sai, the day trip vessel of Sea Dragon, we had a comfortable ride over to the Similan island number five and seven.

We started out with the deeper dive of the specialty at island number five, going down to almost 40 meters and circling a sunken, small tuna fishing trawler at depth, before comfortably ascending and doing our safety stops at 12, 9, 6 and 5 meters. A very enjoyable dive indeed, followed by a second deep dive at island number seven at the site referred to as 'West of Eden'.

Here we did a few tasks, required for the specialty training, including pressure related, timed and navigational tasks as well as observing color changes at depth.

Two great dives in great conditions with nice visibility, where we also met the 'Green Monster', a thermo cline (temperature and visibility drop) accompanied by a strong current at depth during the second dive.

During day two, with Kerstin and Jack, we went over the Boonsung wreck for the Digital underwater photography instructor specialty. This dive site is what the divers in Khao Lak refer to as a local dive site, it's about half an hour by car and 45 minutes to an hour by long tail away.

It's a great dive site and as one of the pictures above shows, it's like swimming or rather diving in fish soup at times, among big schools of jack fish and trevallies.

This dive site is also known for being able to spot lots of other fish, like honey comb eels and a wide variety of nudibranches. Just to name a few.

Last but not least we conducted a Gas Blender Instructor course with an almost completely different set of participants. Chloe, Ann, Andi, Nicha and Joerg participated in this course and we completed the tank fills with a state of the art Draeger compressor at PADI Dive Center Wetzone. Thanks Micha for allowing us to use the compressor!

Good dives and fun was had over a couple of days and we have a handful of new PADI Specialty Instructors on the block!

You can also participate in PADI Specialty Instructor training around the up and coming PADI IDC programs I have scheduled, starting with 5th May on Koh Samui, Thailand, followed by 18th May in Moalboal in the Philippines, followed in turn by 10th June on Koh Samui, Thailand and this is followed by 9th July in Puerto Galera, Philippines.