The Storm Before the Calm: A Last Night Out Before the IDC

The V20 Bar in Pattaya. A good place to chill over a drink to mentally face down what comes tomorrow: the PADI Instructor Development Course.

Tomorrow it all begins again.

For up to four months, six Aquanauts interns have been diving, studying, practicing and, more recently, fretting about the next 10 days: the PADI Instructor Development Course.

Life as they’ve known it, pretty much ceases to exist for the next fortnight. They know they have to work hard to get through the IDC and, for three days directly afterward, the Instructor Exam. That’s probably why last night a few of the divemasters about to make the final leap to instructor figured it was high time to get a drink.

As we note on our website, Pattaya has some pretty decent nightlife. And when you’re in your early 20s and male, the neon can be pretty hard to resist. “Tonight is the last chance for a while for us to get out,” said Dan Craughwell, sitting on a bar stool in V20, a new and unique Pattaya drinking hole. “After tomorrow, it’s the IDC.”

Dan’s drinking buddy this evening, Canadian Chad Peacock quickly agreed. He, after all, knows first-hand that doing a serious course with a serious hangover isn’t smart.

About a week ago Chad and some of the other interns decided to hit the town the night before the IDC Prep Course, a sort-of “mini IDC” where you do some of the first actual IDC exams and then run through classroom, swimming pool and open water drills.

“It thought, ‘hey, it’s just a prep course. No problem!” Chad said. “But the next day I was in the classroom trying to do the exams. I knew the work, but I just couldn’t do the exams. I kept staring at the words, but it didn’t compute!”

By this point tonight, Chad didn’t look like he was computing too quickly again. But he was having fun. V20 is a “vodka bar’ with a heavy sponsorship from Absolut Vodka. It’s hook is the “ice bar,” an industrial freezer chilled to a nippy -20C. Inside is a bar constructed almost entirely of ice, supported only by a steel frame. They’ve got all 6 Absolut flavors, plus some customi creations, such as strawberry, honey and mint.

Chad and Dan tried on a few flavors, then defrosted at the outside bar with a few very tasty (and expensive) cocktails. Now Pattaya is a very inexpensive place, with a cost of living about 1/5 of the U.K. and U.S. But these 3-shot cocktails cost upwards of $6, qualifying them as expensive pretty much anywhere.

“Hey, you gotta understand I’m on holiday,” Dan pointed out. It’s a point that some overlook: Yes, these guys are doing serious dive career training. But they’re also half-a-world away from home, perhaps for the first time, in an exotic location and it is a vacation too. Coming this far and not enjoying and experiencing what Pattaya and Thailand have to offer would be a crime…

… just as long as the partying stops when the IDC starts.