Koh Pha Ngan

Koh Pha Ngan in the Gulf of Thailand is world-renowned as a party island. However, we wanted to go there to take a free diving course. After a twelve-hour transfer (moped taxi, ferry 1, bus 1, bus 2, taxi, ferry 2), we finally arrived on the island, rented a scooter, had something to eat, and then checked into a very nice Airbnb in the town of Chaloklum in the north of Koh Pha Ngan. If we had arrived at the harbor half an hour earlier by taxi, we could have saved three hours of travel time. But then we probably wouldn’t have seen the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas.

We mainly used the first day to relax: we slept in, had a hearty breakfast, and rode a bit around the island on the moped. The island of Koh Ma was very beautiful, which has a small sandy bridge connecting it to Koh Pha Ngan. Unfortunately, the sandy bridge is quite littered.

On the next two days, we had the free diving course. Every day at 7:30 AM, we set off by boat to Sail Rock, and during the trip there, Lukas explained a lot of theory to us. It mainly revolved around breathing techniques and the different types of free diving. We personally tried out two of them: Free Immersion and Constant Weight. In Free Immersion, you pull yourself down on a line without paddling with your legs. With the Constant Weight technique, you do a duck dive and paddle with your fins, always keeping the line in sight without touching it.

On the first day, the line was 12 meters long, and Markus managed to reach the bottom without any problems on his second attempt. I had some trouble equalizing pressure but managed to do it after a few tries. On the second day, the line was 20 meters long, and neither of us reached the bottom. However, our motivation for the course was not to dive as deep as possible. According to Lukas (or if you research free diving online), the best - meaning deepest - free dives are those you can no longer remember because you are so deeply in a trance. However, we simply wanted to improve our technique for snorkeling and perhaps dive a bit deeper but mainly stay underwater longer.

At the end of the diving days, we did a few fun dives, which suited our taste more. Sail Rock is a really beautiful dive spot where you can see corals and a ton of fish while free diving or snorkeling.

And since we were already on Koh Pha Ngan, we also attended a Full Moon Party on the last night. But what happens at the Full Moon Party stays at the Full Moon Party.