Hello and welcome to one of our final blogs as we enter the home stretch of this trip.
This week we came out of student directed travel through the wild city of Saigon and entered the most more relaxed tourist hotspot of Nha Trong. Surrounded by sandy beaches and full of shirtless Russians, Nha Trong reminds you more of a florida beach resort than a Vietnamese city. Here we got to obtain certification for open water diving with a group called Rainbow Divers. We started with a very long day of filling out paperwork and then watching videos on safety and what to expect when we entered the water. Filling out tests and finally taking a final exam we all passed with flying colors in our out-of-the-water test.
The next day we finally donned the scuba gear and mask as we entered a vietnamese navy swimming pool to practice the basics of diving. Here we learned how to empty our masks should they become full of water in addition to how to transfer our alternate air source to someone who if they should run low on air. Finally we headed into the deep end for a three meter deep dive in a swimming pool where we learned how to equalize the pressure so that we can go deeper and deeper comfortably and how to do an emergency ascent. We finished up this in preparation for our next two days of actual ocean diving. Waking up early the next morning we arrived around 7am to be bussed to the local dock to take an around forty-five minute bus ride to an area called Han Moon Island. Our first dive was at Davis Beach a beautiful reef about 12m deep slightly off the coast. Here was floated in the water over some beautiful coral appreciating our first breathes under the ocean. We took about thirty minutes down here checking out some cool lionfish and ractiving a little more drill under the water. Taking off for the next dive site called Rainbow Reef, we hopped back into the ultra-tight wet suits to practice our emergency dive ascents and to enjoy a little more underwater adventure before heading back into the port to take a much deserved rest back in the hostel.
The next day we had another early wake up for our second day of diving. Returning to the same locations we had the ability to do more of a fun dive exploring a bit more and trying to enjoy our last day in the water. We saw some amazing jellyfish with tentacles that extended a few meters down and some cool tropical feet. Heading down to the depth of almost 20 meters we experienced a pretty deep open water dive. Finally we headed out of the water to head back to dry land, now certified open water divers. We ended the day with a nice meal at the local restaurant and are preparing this morning for a flight to Hanoi and the final activity a trek through Northern Vietnam.
-Luke