> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://vaughan.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Pool-sides and SCUBA Dives - URL: https://vaughan.ai/blog/pool-sides-and-scuba-dives/ - Published: 2000-10-16T21:47:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-07T23:19:09.000Z - Author: Vaughan Fergusson - Tags: Thailand, #medium-import If you will recall I left you all at Patong Beach. A week later and I am only 20 minutes down the road at a beach called Kata. Boy we get around quick don’t we? Compared to Patong Kata is much nicer. Less people and better surf. We hopped in a taxi from our hotel in Patong to here and arrived at a guest house we picked out of the Lonely Planet, Dome Bungalow. We had a hot water shower which I think sold it for me. Kata is a town with hills on one side and a big 15 foot high wall on the other. The guest house is right by the beach but you wouldn’t think it due to this wall. On the other side of the wall?? Well that’s Club Med. Mel and I went for a wander to the beach and had to decide whether to follow the wall left or right to the beach. We picked wrong and turned left. After a kilometer or so we decided we had taken the bad option as we could see the f@#$n club med wall stretch towards the horizon in front of us. Eventually we found a break between club med and another hotel and planted ourselves onto the beach for the day. Body surfing, sun tanning and drinking coke was on the menu for the day (Coke tastes much nicer out of a glass bottle if you can remember them). We sat down on a sun chair under an umbrella and after we had been there for about 20 minutes we were approached by someone wanting 100 baht (that’s like $6NZ) for the two chairs. We said okay and would pay later cause we didn’t bring any money with us. So off I went back down the wall from hell to the guest house and back again with some money. It was a nice afternoon once we relaxed and did some crosswords in the sun. On the way back to our guest house we checked out a nicer guest house with a pool and found it was exactly the same price as what we were paying 1k further down the wall of death and this guest house was really right across the road from the beach. We even got it cheaper after some negotiation. So we had to spend a night in the first place and we considered moving that night but as we walked back into the guest house we decided to check out the meals area for any other farang (foreigners) and spotted a couple and as we walked closer I said to Mel “Isn’t that Shane and Beatrice?”, and it was. 800km away from Hua Hin where we first met them, there they were staying in our guest house. So we caught up with them and had dinner and drinks. Small world huh? Well as I like to say, the director of this play is running low on extras. The next day we moved. The Pool side place had a TV in the rooms and a fridge so we went shopping for supplies and 1000 baht later came back with some coco pops, milk, Milo, fish, bread, crackers, cheese and a bottle of Vodka (oh and some Sprite). Our idea was to buy supplies so we didn’t have to eat out all the time. But after we had consumed most of it in the first 24 hours we decided against doing our own shopping. The next day I enrolled in a dive course at a dive place next door. Bubble Makers. It is run by these German guys so doing all the theory stuff was immensely humorous as I had to use extreme lateral thinking to understand what the hell they were talking about. It’s one thing going to Thailand and trying to understand bad Thai English but bad German English kinda throws you off a little. Luckily I had the PADI dive book and it was in English so I blitzed the exam. We did some pool dives in a small pool so were tripping over each other at the bottom of the deep end. Not many fish in the pool to look at but next was some real open water dives in the real ocean. We cruised out to some islands1and 1/2 hours off the coast of Phuket and swam with the fish and corals. It was real nice. Although it wasn’t all fun as I had to lots of really cool exercises for my Open Water Diver certification like have my air turned off and lose my mask. No worries tho. But after we finished all the exercises for the day we did some swimming and came up against a Trigger fish and apparently they bite and can take a chunk out of you so my Dive Instructor very quickly got my attention and we swum the other way. Imagine if one of these fish came along for a snack while I had no air and no mask! ![](https://vaughan.ai/content/images/2026/11/49999f81ee21.jpeg) The next and last day of my dive course Mel came along for a refresher and a dive and we had a great time. It is going to be so great to have a dive buddy and I can’t think of a better one than Melly. However we saw another Trigger fish on that dive too. Well my Instructor and I saw it so he quickly pulled out his knife and we swam away. Ohhh real excitement. I swam up to Mel and I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. Mel hadn’t seen the fish and though it was a huge shark we were swimming away from and couldn’t understand why we weren’t surfacing. I tell you if it was a shark I would have put my emergency ascent into real practice! Well we haven’t done much else really. We are heading off to the Phi Phi islands tomorrow and both Mel and I are glad to be moving on. In our little room with a TV and a pool outside it’s just too comfortable. No excitement really. Sounds crazy I know but you can sit by a pool anywhere. Phi Phi sounds nice though. Its the Island that filmed “The Beach” on. Beautiful waters and sand sand sand. However I hope there aren’t dope crops and Thai men with guns there (like the movie you know). We have 5 weeks left in Thailand and I am starting to feel like this is not long enough. It is a really beautiful country and the people are just wonderful. At first you are convinced everyone is out to con you and rip you off but once you realise they are trying to con you and rip you off, but in a nice way, its okay. Mel and I have just bought some snorkels today and I am itching to try mine out in the surf. There is some nice coral around here somewhere. Well some coral at least. I would say keep those replies coming but as you aren’t sending any then I won’t bother. But feel free to drop me a line anytime. Lah Khon (goodbye) V This e-mail was written with the use of a Mel-Checker.