A PADI Instructor short story – Hélène from Blue Season Bali

Are you curious about becoming a PADI professional? You’ve probably already been to different areas to dive and experienced all sorts of diving! So have a lot of our interns and instructors at Blue Season Bali. In this series of blog posts, our PADI professionals will tell you all about their path to professional diving, why they became a PADI Pro and where they enjoyed diving the most. We hope those stories help you choose your own path to becoming a dive professional, maybe even a PADI instructor!

This time our PADI Course Director Hélène tells us all about how she ended up becoming a PADI Pro:

I grew up in France where I went swimming in a local pool every week.  As they also offered diving courses I first started diving when I was a kid, being only 13 years old. So I did my Open Water Course in a River in France, the Charente. The water was cold and green and I didn’t see any fish. It wasn’t very impressive to me and I decided to proceed my diving somewhere else.

For my Advanced Open Water Diver I went to Malaysia when I started to travel and it was stunning! Tropical diving can’t be compared to diving in a river. I was completely amazed by everything. I saw my first turtle as well as my first shark – yay! After that I knew that diving was going to play an important role in my life and every next holiday or trip was about diving.

So of course I continued my diving education.  I went to Mexico for my Rescue Diver , then did my Divemaster in Honduras for one month. I’ve been diving in a lot of places in the world – France, Malaysia, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Kenya, Mauritius, Egypt, Thailand, Fiji… but Indonesia is by far my favourite country to dive. You’ve got everything there – a diverse marine life, healthy reefs, wrecks and the opportunity to try out all sorts of diving.

The first time I came to Bali was in 2011 and I fell in love with the country and the diving straight away. So I considered continuing my dive career here.  I left my job in sales back home, packed two bags and moved to Bali. From 2013 on, I did my PADI instructor, my Master Scuba Diver Trainer, my IDC Staff Instructor and my Master Instructor on Nusa Lembongan, a small island close to Bali.

Somewhere along the way of my diving career I realised how much I liked teaching especially training dive pros. That’s why I wanted to take it all to a next level and become a PADI Course Director. After the extensive application process and my experience working as a full-time instructor – I got accepted into the training!

After all the time I spent in the water for over 20 years now, diving still means the world to me. It is my favourite place, my happy place, the place that still takes my breath away and I never get bored of it. I found my path in training people to be instructors, to help them share their passion for diving. It makes me so happy to see them teach as new PADI instructors afterwards and tell me how they are spreading the virus of diving!

Hélène’s story is quite impressive, isn’t it? Are you thinking about becoming a Divemaster or PADI Instructor, too?  Let us know all about it in the comments!