Hi everyone, My name is Vincent, I'm 28 years old and from Germany.

I arrived on Koh Tao on the 9th of March 2025 to start my Eco-Divemaster Training with Roctopus on the 15th of March. I just want to tell you a little something about Ko Tao and my 3 1/2 months here, that are coming to an end in 11 days. Arriving on the island, I already felt like this was going to be a great 3 1/2 months here. The first few days I went on fun dives to get back into diving, as my last dives were in january of this year. Meeting the rocto staff, being on the boat, and just spending a few days there before really confirmed that I made the right decision coming to Roctopus for that.

After my friend Ryan arrived as well, I quickly felt at home here on Ko Tao. I met her last year diving in Mexico and she convinced me to do the DMT at Roctopus. The warm welcome you receive here on the island is not something you can find in a lot of places. The next few weeks were very packed with workshops, eco as well as regular divemaster workshops, this included artificial reef clean dives, buoyancy workshops, equipment workshops, skill circuits, reef clean up dives and many more. It was very challenging at first but also very rewarding the longer the program progressed. The artificial reef clean dives and the reef clean up dives are both once a week throughout the program and were always very fun and rewarding. A beach clean up is also scheduled every friday in the early evening. I personally saw the artificial reef clean dives as therapeutic and "zen", because you could completely "lock in" for an hour and do something good for corals. Call me a nerd, I guess! The reef clean up dives, where we go diving with net bags and gloves to remove trash from the reefs were always very rewarding, too. I feel like our good karma of doing this often blessed us with amazing sightings underwater during these dives, like turtles, boxfish, eagle rays, baby batfish, venomous sea urchins, queenfish and many more!

So the typical day in the eco DM program is usually 2 dives or an eco lecture in the morning, and another workshop or 2 dives in the afternoon. I'd say most of your days in the program start at 8am and end at 5pm, so you'll be busy, which I actually really love about this program. You're constantly surrounded by likeminded, ocean loving people so most days are very fun and informative as well. The level of teaching is very professional considering other dive shops I've been to before I came here. So how's life in Ko Tao? Simple answer: Absolutely amazing! It is really hard to have a bad day here as the diving, the food, the people of Rocto and my friends that also do their DMTs usually brighten up your day.

There are regular Roctopus staff and DMT events as well which I always look forward to! (thank you, Wes!!) Some of the people I've met here will definitely be friends for life, I can already tell. You can make very profound connections with people on this island from my own experience, so that's what really made this place feel like home for me, too. I was able to host a few little parties in my time here with friends and staff from Rocto and those were some of my favourite days on this island. There's no place I can compare Ko Tao to, It's beautiful, it's special, and I see why some people just stay here for a few years after coming here. I might write another post when I'm done with everything, but this is it for now. Thank you Roctopus, thank you Ko Tao!

Much love,

Vinni