Following up from my previous post, I arrived at Cebu in The Philippines. I arrived at the airport late at night and decided not to waste the day travelling to Moalboal. Instead, I booked a private driver to collect me for 3,000 PHP. In all honesty, I was so exhausted that I slept throughout the entire journey. There were thunderstorms and the torrential rain but even they didn’t disturb me.
Introduction
In this blog post, I’ll fill you in on my experience undertaking a PADI open-water diving course at Neptune Diving Resort in Moalboal. One of my friends had completed the course only two months beforehand with Yaya and had rave reviews.
I had never done scuba diving before but on a previous trip to The Philippines in 2017 is when I truly discovered how much there is to discover of the world underwater. You’ll probably notice that I don’t have too many pictures in this post as I was a bit more focused on getting my certification and learning how to dive properly.
The Booking and Costs
I contacted Neptune Diving Resort via their Instagram a few days before my arrival. That said, I would recommend you contact them earlier if possible because they are very popular.
The PADI Open Water diving course takes three to four days to complete. It costs 19950 PHP and that includes all the training and dives. They also have unlimited tea, coffee and water available as well.
If you want to stay on site, they offer a package for 24,075 PHP. You can complete your open water diving course along with three nights and four days accommodation. As I came in the middle of the night, I ended up needing to book an extra night. For this, I went to a dorm at West Coast Beach House which is a short walk from the dive shop.
Their rooms are private with a double bed, a fan and air conditioning. In addition, please note that their packages are based on double occupancy. For single occupants there is an additional charge of 1,125 PHP per night. The view from the top is really nice as well! Some parts of Panagsama Beach are very lively but it’s relatively quiet for the most part.
The Course
As previously mentioned, the course takes three to four days to complete. You can watch your videos in advance of arriving if you want to save time. They will send these to you once you have paid your deposit.
To start, I met my instructor, Yohann at 11am on the first morning and I watched the first videos in the restaurant upstairs. Also, I completed the knowledge review as I was watching them. When I met with the instructor again at 2pm, we reviewed my answers in the classroom. He also answered any clarifying any questions which I had.
Once this was done, he went through the equipment with me and I learned how to put it together and dismantle it. It might seem repetitive, but it’s very necessary! I will also admit that it is something which I found very challenging. I think beforehand I kept thinking being underwater and the actual diving would be tough. But for me, it was definitely the equipment.
In all honesty, it took me a few days to get used to this. This was partially due to a lack of proper sleep over the first two nights. However, it was also due to me overthinking it all too much.
After that, we went out into the water for 15 minutes of snorkelling where I completed and another 15 minutes of treading water. I also had to dive underwater, hold my breath, look up and raise my hand.
This is all part of the water skills assessment. It was a fun experience because I even saw sardines and turtles during these exercises. Many people come to the area to do this while snorkelling so it was nice to have it included. It was definitely a taste of what was to come. That night I completed the rest of the videos and we reviewed these again the next day in the classroom.
Each day started at 8am and included a break between dives (your surface interval time). We usually finished up at around 4pm or 5pm. Over the remaining days, we worked through the skills by doing a mixture of confined water dives before moving on to open water dives. The full list of open water skills which you will complete are available here. We went through each skill in the classroom first. He demonstrated it again during the dive and after that, it was my turn to show him the required skill.
For our final dive, the boat was being worked on so I didn’t have the opportunity to do a dive from a boat. Hopefully it’s something I will get to do in the future. There are several dives you can do (Pescador Island is a very popular one) which you can view here to give you an idea.
You will need to download the PADI app in order to log your dives and these are nice so that you can reflect on your dives but it’s also part of your proof as a diver. Before you can get your final certification, you will need to complete an exam.
There is an online version with 50 questions followed by an in person one with 25 questions if I remember correctly. You need to score 80% or higher. The online version was great practice for the in person one and I felt a lot more at ease once I had it completed. You also need to dive at least once every six months to keep your certification, otherwise you need to do a refresher course.
Overall Thoughts
Scuba diving is something very much out of my comfort zone and I found it quite challenging. That said, I do think that it is also very rewarding as well! I found it very challenging to remember all the information as well as reminding myself to relax and not overthink everything.
For example, I spent so much time trying to remember the ways to remember some of the acronyms (STELA, SORTED AND BWRAF in particular) that I then forgot what the letters stood for and what I was meant to do. You can view what these acronyms (and many, many more!) mean here. BWRAF was definitely my biggest worry and while you do a buddy check, it’s still something you need to know.
I would also make sure that you are well rested and ready to take it seriously and learn. Everything you learn will definitely be put into practice at some point. This is also important to know for when you reach a point in the theory where some terminology can be alien to you but it will make sense once you have to complete a skill.
Something I know as a teacher is that every learner is different and we all learn things at various paces. I found things such as the equipment assembly and de-assembly intimidating but that doesn’t mean that you will.
Another part I found difficult was compass navigation (I even struggled with this on land!) but as my instructor told me, if you can do it once, you’re not going to forget it either. This made more sense to me when I needed to use various skills during the dives.
One thing Yohann told me was to make sure I never hold my breath and I genuinely think that this was the thing that kept me most relaxed throughout the dives. Furthermore, I’m a total talker as well and being underwater, it’s all signals! It took some getting used to non-verbal communication.
While all of this may seem overwhelming at first, it is very doable. It was a humbling reminder to me as a teacher as well to remember this experience when I’m back in the classroom as a teacher.
There is so much life to see underwater and it’s an incredible skill to have. While I did spent a lot of time (and oxygen!) mentally preparing myself for the next skill to come, I loved the moments looking at the different coral and sea-life underwater.
Thanks for reading!
