Aquanauts’ Latest Instructor Discovers New Career, Friends & Fun in Pattaya

It took her more than two years to finally arrive, but Australian world traveler Carly Hawkins finally made it to Pattaya where she has become the latest Aquanauts Dive Centre intern to become a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor.

Hawkins, 28, first signed up with Aquanauts after visiting the PADI 5-Star Career Development Center’s booth at the Dive 2007 expo in Birmingham, England. The original plan called for her to arrive the following April. Then November. Then her trip got delayed indefinitely. She finally moved into her Aquanauts apartment in December 2009.

“It did for a while like I’d never make it,” Hawkins said. “But becoming a dive instructor was something I always wanted to do. I just had to find the right time to do it.”

In the years between signing up and arriving, Hawkins worked as a teacher in the United Kingdom, using her frequent school breaks to criss-cross Europe to see the sights, discover new adventures and make new friends. She details many of her journey’s on Facebook where, thanks to her wide travels, she’s accumulated more than 1,100 friends.

She finally made the move to Pattaya when, she says, she “just couldn’t bear another winter in the U.K.” She arrived just after Christmas and found she loved it.

“I love the convenience, the people, the lifestyle… It’s so relaxed,” she said. “The dress code is great. The girls are so friendly and I love the beach and the nightlife.”

The two highlights of Hawkins’ time in Pattaya came at the same time: mid-April, when she did both her Instructor Development Course and soaked up everything Songkran, or the Thai New Year, had to offer.

“I hated that the IDC was during Songkran. The instructors could see I was just dying to get out of the classroom and back out there,” she joked. After class Hawkins was off to Soi 7 where she got into blasting everyone with water guns.

Fun aside, Hawkins acknowledges the best part of coming to Pattaya was gaining a new career thanks to her training at Aquanauts.

“They really prepared you for the Instructor Exam,” Hawkins said of the Aquanauts instructors. “The IDC was pretty stressful, but the I.E. was very easy because of it.”

What she didn’t anticipate, she added, was the number of new friends she has made through the internship program, which offers all its students accommodations, all their courses and materials, a full set of equipment, visas and more. “I thought when I came here I was going to be on my own. But all the interns are awesome.”

Now both a teacher and a professional dive instructor, Hawkins has a lot of possibilities in front of her. Her first stop will be her native Australia, where she hasn’t lived for years. Then, she says, who knows? The world and new adventures are waiting.