arabianply
Registered
Good day to all.
In the first place, its a real #itch to get to this island (the second largest after Phuket). We took a bus out of Ekamai station (East Bangkok) and after five hours going south east, reached the pier at Laem Ngop, to catch a ferry to north of this huge island, which took 30 minutes. Then we took a open taxi from the pier to the south of the island (below which lay all the supposedly good dive sites) to a "quiet" fishing village of Bang Bao. We were told earlier that on the way we would get "blessed" with sprinklings of water from the locals, as a form of greeting during the Thai festival of Songkran. So there we were, cameras on the ready, sitting in an open taxi... Instead what we got was more like a drenching baptism as scores of drunk local boys threw buckets of ice cold water, from both sides of the road! Everything was wet including my passport, wallet and camera. So beware the Songkran water festival and wrap everthing in plastic and wear just swimwear whenever you travel during this festival anywhere in Thailand !
Having reached Bang Bao we found out that all the accom was fully booked and was lucky enough to share a room on wooden stilts with an bathroom attached literally to it hanging over the river. The funny thing was to see the expression on diners in the opposite restaurant seeing your "stuff" being flushed literally outside into the river.
We picked a dive shop for two dives the next day at Bt1800. We could have got a better deal if we went a few more days but we wanted to first see the sites if its worth. That decision turned out to be the right one. The two two dives were just off a large island about 1 hour by ferry south of Koh Chang, called Koh Rang. The first site we went was called Koh Tiang which was basically large pinnacles and boulders with very little variety of coral or fish . The second was called Horse Shoe which had better tracts of multi-color/species of coral, but again, not many fish. The highlights were only one turtle and one small spotted manta. In addition we spent more than hour bottom time each dive because the depths were on average 8 to 10 metres.
Later the divemaster was complaining that the usual varieties that were seen earlier were probably scared off by the huge number of snorkelling tourists and hundreds of speedboats that were in the area at that time.
It was the shortest number of dives we did during any such trip. It will be some while before I go to that area again, for sure!
In the first place, its a real #itch to get to this island (the second largest after Phuket). We took a bus out of Ekamai station (East Bangkok) and after five hours going south east, reached the pier at Laem Ngop, to catch a ferry to north of this huge island, which took 30 minutes. Then we took a open taxi from the pier to the south of the island (below which lay all the supposedly good dive sites) to a "quiet" fishing village of Bang Bao. We were told earlier that on the way we would get "blessed" with sprinklings of water from the locals, as a form of greeting during the Thai festival of Songkran. So there we were, cameras on the ready, sitting in an open taxi... Instead what we got was more like a drenching baptism as scores of drunk local boys threw buckets of ice cold water, from both sides of the road! Everything was wet including my passport, wallet and camera. So beware the Songkran water festival and wrap everthing in plastic and wear just swimwear whenever you travel during this festival anywhere in Thailand !
Having reached Bang Bao we found out that all the accom was fully booked and was lucky enough to share a room on wooden stilts with an bathroom attached literally to it hanging over the river. The funny thing was to see the expression on diners in the opposite restaurant seeing your "stuff" being flushed literally outside into the river.
We picked a dive shop for two dives the next day at Bt1800. We could have got a better deal if we went a few more days but we wanted to first see the sites if its worth. That decision turned out to be the right one. The two two dives were just off a large island about 1 hour by ferry south of Koh Chang, called Koh Rang. The first site we went was called Koh Tiang which was basically large pinnacles and boulders with very little variety of coral or fish . The second was called Horse Shoe which had better tracts of multi-color/species of coral, but again, not many fish. The highlights were only one turtle and one small spotted manta. In addition we spent more than hour bottom time each dive because the depths were on average 8 to 10 metres.
Later the divemaster was complaining that the usual varieties that were seen earlier were probably scared off by the huge number of snorkelling tourists and hundreds of speedboats that were in the area at that time.
It was the shortest number of dives we did during any such trip. It will be some while before I go to that area again, for sure!
