PADI IDC Koh Tao Thailand

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Becoming a Master Scuba Diving Instructor turned my life upside down

I grew up in a little town in the western part of Austria surrounded by mountains and snow. Never did I dream of becoming a Master Scuba Diving Instructor! After completing my law degree and working in that field I needed some time out so I decided to go on a round the world trip and, like most people became mesmerised by the lifestyle people were leading.

Like many backpackers I did my open water course during my travels around Southeast Asia (for me it was the start of an around the world trip). Koh Tao was the place to do it I was told, so I ended up spending a few days in this little Thai Paradise before I moved on with my certification card. Only after a few weeks when people were asking me what I had done so far during my travels I realised what an important role this diving course played for me.

As time went by I forgot about my underwater experience and ended up teaching in a bilingual school in Honduras far away from the coast for some time before moving to Australia where I was surrounded by water again. After some fun diving in Indonesia I knew I had to go back to Ko Tao to continue my education during the next holiday. The place I chose was Sairee Cottage Diving as I heard from many friends that it was by far the most professional run dive company on the island. So I finished my Advanced and Rescue Course there with two very passionate instructors (Gordon and Bobby).

When I came back home I was determined to take the big step into an unknown future by becoming a professional Diver. So I saved some money, put my life into a box and booked my one way ticket to Ko Tao.

My Divemaster Course at Sairee Cottage started off with forty fun-dives followed by many course assists, interesting theory and pool training sessions with my Divemaster Candidate Mentors Jessie and Gaz. Sairee Cottage expects a lot more training from you than other schools therefore I was very well prepared to get into my Instructor Development Course straight after becoming a Divemaster.

My IDC was conducted by PADI Platinum Course Director Marcel van den Berg and two Staff Instructors (Flavius Sleutelaar and Shannon Durrant). My Course colleagues and I couldn’t have been in better hands with this dream team. They went way beyond what was expected of them and looked like proud parents saying goodbye to their children when we went to our Instructor Exams.

Becoming a Master Scuba Diving Instructor

My Divemaster, IDC and MSDT Course at Sairee Cottage on Koh Tao were influenced by beautiful friends I met along the way. I will also never forget my mentors. It was the little things that made me feel so comfortable and welcome there. Being in the water for me is like being free; it is pure happiness and joy and I will make it my mission to show others.

When people tell me how brave I am I often laugh. Whoever raises a family and pays off a mortgage is brave in my eyes. I swapped my courtroom for a long tail boat my suit for a bikini and my car for my little motorbike that gets up any steep hill. I am doing what I love and want to prove that everyone can do that.

If you have any questions on becoming a Master Scuba Diving Instructor then don’t hesitate to leave a reply here or contact me (feel free to write it in German if that’s easier for you) on sprenger.maria@gmail.com

Become a Dive Instructor in Thailand at one of the best dive schools in Asia and get your PADI Instructor certification after completing your PADI IDC program. Thinking of becoming a Master Scuba Diving Instructor? Take the MSDT Internship at Sairee Cottage Diving. This is an eco friendly IDC program including free environmental lectures on topics such as ProjectAWARE and CoralWatch. Watch dive instructor videos on our YouTube channel.

May 4, 2016
PADI MSDT Another Level!

Diving has always been a passion of mine. I first started diving in 2003 when I did my open water course on Great Keppel Island in Queensland. Back then it was just a hobby, it wasn’t until 8 years later that I decided this was to be more than just a hobby, and it was something I wanted to make a career out of. The PADI MSDT program at Sairee Cottage Diving prepared me for the real world in dive instructing.

I did my IDC in Perth in 2011 and that is where my Diving Instructor career began. As soon as I finished my IDC, I was hired straight away by a live aboard dive charter over in the beautiful Whitsundays, Queensland. I spent a few years working on the live aboards, as much as I loved my job, I was only teaching DSDs and leading certified divers, as opposed to teaching courses, which was what I really wanted to do. After a while and a bit of a break to complete a university degree, it was time to pack my bags and travel. I ended up in Thailand in Koh Samui as this is where my mother lives, and my sister came over too to have her wedding on Koh Samui.

PADI MSDT course taken to another level!

After a few months, as much as I was enjoying the family time, I knew it was time to get back in the water. I really wanted to get back to teaching, but even though I had been a Diving Instructor for 4 years, I never had the opportunity to teach full courses. So I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to do my PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer (PADI MSDT) and an internship to refresh old skills and learn some new ones. I knew my destination was to be the beautiful Koh Tao. At first it was over whelming as there are so many dive schools on Koh Tao, but I got onto Google and started researching. After about a week of research and phone calls, I found the spot that looked perfect for me, Sairee Cottage Diving.

I spoke to PADI Course Director Marcel Van Den Berg on the phone and he was extremely helpful and friendly, and I knew I made the right choice. The PADI MSDT program was a lot of fun. It consisted of 6 days of learning all the specialties, Marcel even gives you the option to select up to 10 specialties! We had a day dedicated to Eco awareness and did a massive beach clean-up. The final day was dedicated to job placement as well as resume building, to ensure we would all be ready to work on completion.

Marcel was very supportive and a lot of fun to learn from. Once I completed the 6 day program, I went straight into the 6 week dive internship. The dive instructor internship was extremely helpful as it let me team teach and assist senior dive instructors on a number of courses. This was excellent to learn and to build my certifications. I have had a lot of fun on my PADI MSDT on Koh Tao and on the MSDT internship on Koh Tao, I have learned a lot and made lots of new friends, plus the diving has been amazing on Koh Tao!

Krisztina Balazs
PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer

At Sairee Cottage Diving we take the MSDT course to another level, adding extra dives, lectures and real life experiences. At Sairee Cottage Diving we also truly care about your future and we will do anything to help you get a job in diving as a PADI Dive Instructor during our Diving Job Placement day. Please leave your comments here with questions about our MSDT program in Thailand with Sairee Cottage Diving or if you want to share your experience with your MSDT program.

Become a Dive Instructor in Thailand at one of the best dive schools in Asia and get your PADI Instructor certification after completing your PADI IDC program. Prepare for the real world by taking the MSDT Internship at Sairee Cottage Diving. This is an eco friendly IDC program including free environmental lectures on topics such as ProjectAWARE and CoralWatch. Watch dive instructor videos on our YouTube channel.

March 10, 2016
I never liked water, now I’m a working Diving Instructor

I’ve never liked the water. I’ve never really liked the beach, or the sun. It was messy, wet, and just too hot. Can you believe I am now a working Diving Instructor? Coming from Melbourne I wore black all day, every day, and rode my black vintage bike to and from my advertising job in the city. It was a good life; I had a good job, a nice apartment, and Melbourne is a place where there is something happening all the time.

After a while however, I felt like I wanted to experience more than just the standard grind of working weekdays (and weekends!) with only four weeks of annual leave a year to explore places outside of Melbourne! I never in a million years thought that I would ever be a working Diving Instructor though. That was when I decided to quit, sell everything (except for a small box I left with my parents), and move to London to further expand on my advertising career. I also had this small plan of traveling around South-East Asia for a few months before embarking on this new adventure in this new and exciting city.

Can you believe I am now a working Diving Instructor?

That small, tiny, minute idea of exploring SE Asia before moving to London became a whole lot more very quickly. Two weeks in each country became four weeks, and then two months, quickly making my initial three month South East Asian journey into a year saga. I also randomly stumbled upon a small island called Koh Tao, off the east coast of Thailand. My boyfriend convinced me to try scuba diving, despite my fear of water, and my hatred of sandy bottoms, and we walked around Koh Tao with the intention to find out more information about diving. We got some great information from a certain dive shop and tentatively said we might be back, and then we came across Sairee Cottage Diving. That unfortunately, and fortunately, changed everything. We were so taken in with the staff who greeted us, that we signed up there and then for our Open Water Course. It was an amazing experience, and my greatest personal achievement up to that point considering my fear of water, and the open ocean. I will confess that I panicked the first time I went underwater doing skills in the shallow end, but the Divemaster (thanks Shaun Cleary!) who was assisting the instructor stared into my eyes intensely and calmed me down completely just using his eyes. After that experience I was completely sold. From Open Water, I went straight into the Advanced Open Water Course (reasoning that I would be a better, more experienced diver), and then continued traveling for a few months. After our visas were expired, and we were done with living out of a 25L backpack, my boyfriend and I had to make a decision of whether we wanted to continue on with our plan of moving to this big, busy city, or *shock horror* maybe, just maybe, pursue this new thing we had both really enjoyed which involved strapping ourselves into this jacket contraption, breathing compressed air, and wearing flippers on our feet. We chose the flippers.

We went back to Thailand, back to Koh Tao, and back to Sairee Cottage Diving, and proceeded to complete our Dive Master Training (DMT) over a few months. Never did I think I would become a working Diving Instructor in Thailand! In that time we met some people who have become very firm friends and mentors. After completing the DMT program (another record personal achievement!), I worked for a few months as a DiveMaster for Sairee Cottage Diving, before starting work as their Videographer. I loved this job, diving on the morning boat (the best time to dive in my opinion!), filming Open Water students, and editing in the afternoon. The evenings were fun too, where I would screen the film of the students, hope they would buy a copy or two, and have some drinks and dinner with the newly certified students!

Video work was very fun as I was able to witness and record the students as they came out of the water as a certified diver. As cheesy as it sounds, it would bring me back to the time when I came out of the water as a certified diver and how happy I felt at the time. After a year and a half however, I did start to feel envious of the instructors who would actually be able to teach, and see the progression of their students from being non-divers to certified Open Water divers. That was when I decided to do one more thing. My Instructor Development Course (IDC).

I signed up for my IDC with Sairee Cottage Diving, and it was a nice group of five people. It was two weeks of skills circuits, lectures, exams, and practical exercises (all of which are more exciting than it sounds!), but I wanted to do all of this and more as I wanted to become a great instructor, and not just someone who passed the Instructor Exam. The program was a great mix of exam related exercises, and real life examples that Course Director, Marcel van den Berg brought from his experience as a senior instructor. We also had great input from Flavius Sleutelaar, an instructor who paved the way for many Koh Taoians with over 20 years experience, and Shannon Durrant, a newly minted instructor with experience in technical diving.

Long story short, I’ve now passed my Instructor Exam (IE), am a specialty instructor, and about to start my internship with Sairee Cottage Diving. And I can’t wait!

February 12, 2016
My Journey to PADI Dive Instructor in Thailand with Sairee Cottage Diving

Teaching diving as a PADI Dive Instructor has completely changed my life. Here is my story on the steps I took to become a PADI Dive Instructor and how I ended up doing my IDC on Koh Tao in Thailand with PADI Course Director Marcel van den Berg at Sairee Cottage Diving.

Over many years, I dedicated myself to my studies in order to find a career in which I felt I would work for the rest of my life. I gained the impression that this was normal and necessary from society as well as my family. However, after each accomplishment and further advancement in my career as a mental health therapist, I was still in search of what was next. Passion wasn’t absent from my work nor success, but I did not live a balanced lifestyle. I craved the perspective and happiness I once felt in traveling. After severe burnout and doors opening and closing at the right time, I decided to quit my stable government job and private practice to travel the world. Before I left, I took my first PADI open water scuba course in a freshwater lake. It was a diving lake so it offered some underwater excitement with black hawks, school buses, computers, and more. From there, I made the journey to Thailand with an 11 kilo pack on my back and no plan in sight but to travel to as many countries as possible. I knew scuba diving was one of the many adventures I wanted to experience while traveling. However, it wasn’t until my first experience scuba diving in the sea that my mind started turning. After that, I signed up for my advanced course and a liveaboard. From there, I was hooked, as I found a lifestyle not just a diving career that I fell passionately in love with.

I completed my PADI divemaster course and worked for three months leading fun divers around Thailand. I knew very quick into my experience that I craved the same feelings that I had when I first went into the ocean. The feeling of learning that there was a whole new world under the water and also mastering skills I had never done before. I knew teaching would be the best way to show people this amazing world and help them feel confident in exploring it. As I had worked with many dive instructors with both positive and negative qualities, I understood finding the right place was more important than just finding somewhere to do my PADI instructor development course (IDC). After researching various PADI course directors and dive schools in a few different countries, I decided to do it with PADI Course Director Marcel van den Berg at Sairee Cottage Diving in Koh Tao, Thailand. Of course, many factors came into play including cost, location, timing, housing and Marcel’s IDC teaching experience. I had no previous experience with Koh Tao and as a diver in Thailand heard stories in the industry about the factory culture on the island. However, my worries were put to rest in talking with Marcel over email. I learned the stereotype about Koh Tao was anything but true. His communication was organized and clear, which made me feel confident that his IDC was not focused solely on passing the PADI IE (Instructor Examination) but more importantly on teaching me how to be a quality instructor. I know that the fish and ocean entranced me to become a dive instructor, but without the amazing instruction I received throughout all my diving courses leading to the IDC, I would have never continued in the journey. Certain that I would not only pass but would learn how to truly be a Dive instructor, I quickly made the decision to complete my IDC with Marcel.

Although I had tons of experience traveling throughout 7 countries in Southeast Asia, Marcel was always available to answer questions to support my travels to Koh Tao. I was openly greeted by him even though I arrived later than expected. The accommodation in the dorm was a major advantage as part of the IDC on Koh Tao and was more than expected especially after backpacking throughout Asia. After visiting some of the other dive centers facilities throughout my time on Koh Tao, I learned Sairee Cottage Diving has extremely well maintained and updated facilities. The IDC is held in an air conditioned classroom which was my comfortable home for the next two weeks. Unbeknownst to me before coming to the IDC, Marcel and Sairee Cottage Diving emphasize ECO conservation education which was impressive and became one of my favorite parts of the whole experience. They even have a free water refill machine in the classroom which saves on cost and helps the environment!

I felt tremendous stress at first in seeing the fast paced schedule but was quickly relieved by Marcel’s sense of humor and teaching style. We also had two great diving instructors helping us in the journey as they were also studying to become PADI IDC Staff Instructors. Firstly, Flav who has a wealth of knowledge (almost a walking diving encyclopedia), decades of experience, and the calmest demeanor you will ever encounter. And then Shannon, whose creativity and passion inspires you to constantly reach for more knowledge. The three amigos balanced each other well offering different strengths that each helped me grow. I turned to each of them at certain times during my IDC and believe they will each continue to impact my teaching style differently as I advanced as a PADI scuba instructor. I felt fully supported not only by the other IDC candidates, but by all three of my diving mentors that made sure every aspect was not just right but truly understood. When we walked into our PADI IE, we had the support of a team behind us, confident in our abilities and able to provide honest constructive feedback to encourage our success.

We all passed (of course) and went on to complete our PADI MSDT (Master Scuba Diver Trainer). Another benefit of the IDC with Marcel was the option of learning 10 specialties over the course of 6 days. Again, the specialties weren’t treated as just something to teach, we learned why and how to help people accomplish these specialty courses. We did a Project AWARE ECO day joined with another dive school which included a reef cleanup, beach cleanup, and coral watch. I have always been an advocate for animals as I did rescue work previously; yet learning about Project AWARE and how to help the environment and marine life throughout the PADI IDC/MSDT was constantly eye opening. My experience at Sairee Cottage Diving on Koh Tao with ECO conservation will continue to push me to inspire others to support change as well. In addition, Sairee Cottage Diving offers an MSDT diving internship that occurs over 6 weeks in which you gain the needed 25 certifications but more importantly learn from experienced instructors how to teach different courses. This is a great opportunity to learn from a variety of dive instructors from all over the world that have their own tips, tricks and quirks to teaching diving.

I was hoping to have a good experience especially since I booked online and had no previous experience with Course Director Marcel van den Berg or the dive center. However, I had an unforgettable one instead in which I feel confident in my future as a PADI dive instructor. I never had a doubt about making a change in my life and am looking forward to the future paths I can take as a dive instructor after my education and experience with Marcel and Sairee Cottage Diving. Thanks again to everyone who impacted my transformation into a dive instructor. Especially, all my IDC/MSDT candidates, the Divemasters who shared the dorm and were kind of enough to be quiet on the rough nights, and lastly the nightly conversations with my palm tree who kept me sane! Finally, Marcel, Flav, and Shannon; none of it would be possibly without you! If you have any hesitations or doubts about traveling the world and/or possibly becoming a dive instructor, feel free to email me afailor22@gmail.com about any of my experiences which could be helpful to you.

November 19, 2015