SSDC - Taking the Reagan Approach
The Divemasters, Instructors and Managers who run the dive shops and dive schools on Koh Tao are fiercely competitive. There were two methods dive shops and schools would pay their DMs and Instructors: A flat-rate monthly wage or a percentage based wage (based on how many paying customers there were). Potentially the latter would be more lucrative, but only with a good flow of customers. Without a steady stream of business the bills would just mount up steadily.
At first all went well, the relaxed, stress-free atmosphere and Will's hands-off 'Reagan Approach' to being the boss seemed to be paying off.
As far as I was concerned I was on the up and up though, the shtty parts of SSDC were certainly nothing in the grander scheme of things and at the time you just made do and got on with the job. I wasn't the strutting alpha-male minded dive instructor (something Koh Tao is overrun with) and several of my peers did not like the fact that a mere Divemaster walked into a job straight after getting his DM ticket. Looking back the other divers who went on to get their OWSI ticket did seem incredibly petty in some ways.
SSDC - The Rise and Fall
The first few months went well, the dive bookings were high and money was rolling-in. We'd just installed an air-compressor on board the sea dragon (ending the back-breaking chore of transporting scuba tanks on and off the boat each day) and an order was placed for a speed-boat to be built-to-order. The rainy season was still around but this didn't dampen the diving spirit! It was one big party with the PADI logo seemingly looking down on us as the children of the beach.
The Diving Knights, Barons and Kings
Our other diving 'musketeers' at SSDC, aside from Wildren were a varied species indeed. We had a tattooed part-time instructor who claimed to be an ex-US Marine on-the-run. This was despite having an Aussie accent and having the manner and way of a Walter Mitty. He never really got the message that he wasn't employed by SSDC but just as a free-lancer (brought in for any overspill we couldn't handle). He got booted, but it took a while.
The feather in our cap was Bob, a retiring but astute dive instructor who'd recently got his Staff Instructor ticket. A Brit who had travelled around the world and had built up a network of diving contacts. His encyclopedic knowledge of diving was second to none and he was a very talented instructor.
A roving technical diving instructor 'Loz' also joined our merry band. A real maverick, he followed his own path, having worked all over the world but could charm a bird from the trees and make it look like childsplay. He and Bob were often at loggerheads and would jockey for supremacy as 'senior' instructor. It wasn't an unfriendly rivalry though, one was from the murky world of technical diving the other from the fresh and breezy recreational sphere. There was respect for each other other. The same was also apparent with Loz and Wildren. At first Loz's quirky ways and happy-go-lucky charm aggravated Wildren, who brooded that he was too much for SSDC but we won him around and the team was almost complete.
There was another Divemaster, a matronly girl from Finland who spoke fluent english and Finnish. She had a seemingly innate artistic talent, any artwork or painting that needed doing around the place she took care of. Even without being asked.
Then there was me, Johnny B!
Besides the usual donkey work that Divemasters are saddled with I was very much the glue that helped the place stick together. I helped build up the dive shops website, ran the marketing and promotion of the place made sure the DMTs weren't destroying the place and did all the routine crap that DMs often do. We'd do a lot of stuff pro-actively too. Looking back I was a very different person then. These days I'd tell a person to take a hike if I was a DM all over again, but back then, on Koh Tao the 'Micro-Universe' effect was that you just did what was expected of you and party to beat the band. We even had our own Island dialect and language.
If you took a girl out, that was laying siege. First base or kissing was taking the walls. Inside the castle but not the keep was oral and sleeping together but not full sex. Taking the keep was going all the way. As you can imagine, we could be speaking about many things and even fluent english speakers would struggle to understand what we were saying if we used dialect.
The land our diveshop was built on belonged to the thai owner 'Balm'. Originally the locals in Koh Tao were crab fishermen and coconut farmers, when the tourists and back-packers came along the locals moved more into restaurants, building dive shops and bungalows.
He was a washed-up drunk (or a wood hippy as Wildren called him) who usually spent the latter half of the day drunk on 'Spy' wine in the restaurant and the rest away from Koh Tao doing a college course in Engineering. I took him to be a 'hands-off' kind of owner but he was a lurking snake of man in many ways. We'd bring a load of divers in for a days diving and he'd announce that the dive boat was going to be used for a day-trip for thai (non-diver) tourists instead! His meddling really did damage to the diving operations.
I got a phone call from Planet Scuba on the second day of work, they wanted me to start work immediately. I turned them down and committed to SSDC. Wildren made a show of this, proclaiming that the 'underdogs' had poached from the one of the big boys.
Koh Tao is a party-island and after the diving was finished for the day the crazy drinking and partying would begin. Almost every dive shop or school has a bar or restaurant (often both!). There was/is a party almost every night somewhere on Koh Tao and to be honest there is probably as much money made in the islands bar industry as in diving! Buckets of sangsom, 'snorkal tests' and a whole host of other drinking games all add to the island madness.
The dive establishments are almost always owned by the original Thai Restaurant owners. After almost a month of working non-stop the rosy facade of diving began to crack under the hard truths and facts to working on Koh Tao, especially a shoe-string dive operation. The the only industrial grade generator on the island provided on-the-grid power from dusk till dawn (1800 and 0800), any power needs outside of this time had to be from independent generators. SSDC had but two, one that was for running the compressor and restaurant at day and for the diveshop; a small jungle-based system that only under 'Balms' consent' could be turned on.
The diveshop was underfunded and the lack of a reliable power supply really exposed our achilles heel. Time and time again customers would be dumbfounded as all the fans, lights, TVs and videos cut-out in the midst of an Open Water course lecture! We'd then struggle to get the battery-linked system fired up while cursing balm and his satang saving tricks. Only to find that the battery's had been drained the previous day/night from the thais watching videos! The lack of any aircon was a real grind, especially when we learned that the next-door dive school 'New Wave' had Aircon piped in and running for free via the 7-11 generator! When the setting sun hit the diveshop from 1530 to 1730 it was like being in a furnace. A solar powered system would of been a boon but none existed back then on Koh Tao, so we often would just sit and wait for the magical hour of 1800 when the main island generator would fire up and the fans would jump into life.
Mosquito's are a gripe anywhere in Thailand. But one thing about Koh Tao and especially Sairee village that they don't tell you in the tourist books is how much swampland and marsh there is that the dive industry is built on and around. The little bstards would buzz everywhere and Sairee's main swamp was less than 50 yards from the gear room! Every time you'd go to lift off a BCD a cloud of them would emerge.
One thing about Divemastering is that the money (like most jobs in Thailand that foreigners get into) was lousy and one of the few perks was free diving on party island. I think that the most I ever earned in one month was about 18,000 baht. This was in late 2003, and even back then it was poverty-line stuff when you factor in visa-runs and the party-atmosphere in Koh Tao. God bless the savings, I think most of us out there pretty much lived off our savings unless you were an instructor for Bans Diving or the like. You'd be dipping in a time here, a time there when money was tight! But when you're cresting the wave and having a blast these things like money can take second place, especially when you live the diving lifestyle in Thailand.
The hours were long, I'd get to the dive shop about 0730 - 0800 hrs, process the fun-divers (usually having them already sized them up with rental scuba gear the previous day), Capt Nemo would bring in the victuals and then it was time for a days diving (usually 2 dives) off the main dive boat - The Sea Dragon. At the end of the diving we'd get back to the mooring, shuttle back via longtail and then it was time to clean the gear, sign the log-books and head to the bar for drinks! This would happen every day if we were in full swing.
If I didn't stay for drinks you'd typically be getting into the room at about 1800 - 1830 hrs.
Our diveshop was the last of its breed on Koh Tao, an independent place which didn't affiliate to the big name brands like Bans or Big Blue and partying for the hell of it and damn the establishment. A Thai government man had recently been ejected unceremoniously from attempting to audit the tax on Koh Tao, we saluted the act. We went out on island clean-up and pulled down power-lines in a drunken blast across the port village Mae Had, it looked hairy for a moment when the local policeman raced over. 'No problem here' bellowed Wildren and simply blamed it on Buddha View!
End of Part 4
Source: On The Road Thailand
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