| Brain-bending snorkel tests, poisoned dogs, stoned divemasters, Viagra wine, Apocalypse Now fireworks - that's Mark Ellyatt's take on dive culture in the more hedonistic parts of the Far East |
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Tens of thousands of would-be divers descend on south-east Asia every year to obtain diving certification, get tattoos, body-piercings, dreadlocks or, often, the whole package. Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines figure highly on the destination list for their exotic qualities.
I travel to Asia three or four times a year to run technical training courses, and each trip seems more bizarre than the last.
My experiences around last Christmas were of the sort that occur most days on the "continent of excesses" - which is probably why so many people head there.
On my third day out, I hear a voice among a crowd on the beach say: "Go ask tekkie Mark!" I stop setting up my doubles as someone saunters over: "Come quick, Techno, there's a guy who has the bends, come and see what you think!"
Over I go. A man lying on the floor says he can't feel his arms and legs. I give him a neuro exam, and he does look as if he has a bend. "Get an oxygen kit, someone!" I ask the man some questions, and he reveals that he has just passed his divemaster training course.
I ask him about his "snorkel test". This is where a new divemaster drinks from a blacked-out mask and snorkel into which is poured from a bucket an alcoholic concoction designed to incapacitate or render instantly sick.
My friend on the floor reveals that he had a "special" snorkel test, a new one called "Basil's mix". This is basically vodka with a bag of weed soaking in it! Horrified, I ask him when he last dived.
"Not for four days," he says, revealing that he had drunk almost half the bottle.
The oxygen kit arrives. It's as well we don't need it, because it hadn't fitted together the first time I had seen it, and with even more pieces missing, it certainly won't work now. Motto: check out the O2 kit where you dive, and do an oxygen admin course yourself.
Next day, I arrive early to run a nitrox theory course in an outside classroom. As I am eating breakfast, one of the guys says he has seen the beach dogs given poison.
Ninety minutes later we are chatting about oxygen toxicity when, almost on cue, two huge dogs burst into the classroom in their death throes. They check out, agonisingly. Only the western customers are affected by the scene and lodge complaints, though to no effect.
On Boxing Day, a drunken divemaster is asked to "cease and desist" from his antics. He decides against it, fancies his chances and those who intervene fall on the sharp end of a Thai-Boxing Day special. Motto: Never reason with or try to help anyone who has had too much to drink.
If you are diving in Asia, you will come across drugs. Read The Damage Done, available on any dive instructor's coffee table, before going off the deep end.
If you can imagine learning to dive from someone who might have smoked two or three spliffs that morning, drunk eight beers after work and then got smashed on a bhong to get to sleep, you will start to appreciate the quality of tuition sometimes available. Anything with a corner worth cutting ends up round.
In fact accidents are rare, and everyone seems to have a nice time, but remember that your poorly applied diving instruction might not have enabled you to dive anywhere more challenging. Then again, why would you want to? Thailand and Indonesia have some very nice dive sites.
New Year's Eve pulls out all the stops. The chemists stock up with Viagra for the guys, Rohypnol for the ladeez and any combination of drugs is freely available, even premixed into alcohol. Chinese-origin Viagra wine is a "firm" favourite with many a divemaster looking for a good night out.
Around 11.30pm I take my ringside seat, armed with three months of local wages' worth of fireworks and my bucket of whisky/coke/M150/Red Bull. The nearby clinics are getting fuller and fuller with fireworks-burns victims.
The finale is a firework as big as a 12 litre cylinder. It is lit in a busy street and a taxi runs over it, causing a scene of carnage from Apocalypse Now. People are screaming, but it does clear the busy bar area. I get a fresh bucket, find some newbie divers and try to wow them with my deep-diving escapadesÉ
On 2 January, an early dive is planned. Most people are wearing some kind of bandage, either from a fireworks burn or gravel rash - with mopeds the preferred method of transport, everyone comes off at least once, and the sand piles on the roads are a nightmare.
One early morning out jogging, I had seen some friendly types pouring sand on the corners - thoughtful. You fall off, pay for the bike and your injuries and go home. Economics at its most effective.
These few stories of diving youths in Asia are not meant to horrify, simply to advise. Thousands travel there as non-divers, get hooked and become divemasters and then instructors.
The dive experience they offer, while not in-depth, will certainly be fun, and if later you want to dive back home in the cold sea, you can easily do your course over again, even if it does take you twice as long this time - a full week!
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