Thailand: Islands - February 2009
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français
I've been through a bit, but here it is... I'm a Rescue Diver. Literally "rescue diver". The training is very physical. Exhausting, but exciting!
My mission: to save people
I spent four days saving people! Finally, "guinea pigs" who played, at your choice: drowned divers, panicked or unconscious divers or divers who ran out of air... A life-size aquatic role-playing game, which allows you to acquire the right reflexes in the face of accidents and all emergency situations in diving.
I took the course with a Finn, Christian. He was stronger than me, and much better at throwing buoys and pulling on the surface. But underwater, despite my less powerful size, as I have been diving longer than him, I was the most comfortable.
In short, we formed a perfect pair, well complementary.
Very (too?) realistic exercises
Our surface exercises were so realistic that at one point a guy on his long-tail boat ran straight over me to help me, as I struggled to tow to the flat. -form of the boat my instructor, Adrian, who had started by drowning, face in the water.
Of course, he didn't see the long-tail coming. And the Chao-Ley on his boat did not understand, despite my signs, that it was a rescue exercise. The guy grabbed Adrian by the hair to hoist him onto his boat... I can tell you that the "drowning man" was resurrected at once!
As usual, the videos and the manual Padi that accompany the practical exercises are laughable, with their "American" staging and pedagogy. Some passages are even a bit ridiculous in the French translation, which is often literal and clumsy...
But the training itself is super demanding, very interesting. Of all the dives I followed, it's probably my favorite. Despite the physical fatigue.
As a result, it's the end of the holidays, and I'm exhausted... But what a satisfaction!
