Travels in Thailand - Phuket & The Andaman Sea 2008.

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Kim

Here for my friends.....
ScubaBoard Supporter
Messages
13,224
Reaction score
86
Location
Kyushu, Japan
Last year I was contacted by a young Australian lady who teaches English close to where I live. She had just learned to dive in Okinawa and was looking for someone to dive with. We tried a couple of times to arrange something last year, but each time something went wrong and we couldn't dive. The last time was 6.30am, just as we were about to leave for Sasebo after she had stayed the night with us, and then came the phone call from the dive center to say the waves were too much and we couldn't go.....

So I said, more or less tongue in cheek, "Well it looks like we'll have to go somewhere like Thailand to get a guaranteed dive!"

........and then I saw the gleam in her eyes and realized that she'd taken me very seriously! Two days later she phoned me to confirm she really wanted to go........so I booked the trip.

This would be my third trip to Phuket and the Andaman sea and due to how busy it already was I elected to go with the Colona 6, which I'd been on on my second visit. The Colona does 2 day trips to the south of Phuket...Phi Phi, Hin Daeng, Hin Muang etc - and 4 day trips to the north - the Similans, Surin, Richelieu.....

.....string them together and you've got yourself a diving safari for 6 days with potentially 21 dives if you do them all. Before I'd always been on the northern leg first, but this time we were starting in the south.

After arriving in Phuket we spent one night in our hotel - the Baan Ton Saai in Patong..

2435760078_e6a705b560.jpg


....before boarding the Colona 6 the next day.

The Colona is quite a small boat, maximum 14 divers, and it's quite 'intimate' and close together. It's probably not the first choice for anyone who needs a lot of privacy! However..... it's clean, the crew is excellent, the guides are knowledgeable, and the food is good. It's a nice boat.

2434870527_68fb16362b.jpg

Having had our first briefing, set up our gear, settled into our cabins, and ate dinner - we set off heading for Hin Daeng & Hin Muang as our first destination. Thai boats leaving harbour have a tradition of setting off a load of Chinese firecrackers - to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck!

2435688010_75ca8750e3.jpg
 
Day 1 - Hin Daeng & Hin Muang

To the south of Phuket there are two rocks in the middle of the ocean. One breaks the surface, Hin Daeng - while Hin Muang is 8 meters at it shallowest point. "Daeng" means red in Thai, and "Muang"....purple. "Hin" is "rock". So we were starting off at "Red rock", and "Purple rock".

Hin Daeng is the easier dive as it's shallower and if there is a current it's easier to hide from. This was where our guides - Steve & Paulo - wanted to do our first "check-out" dive....to make sure weighting was OK....have a look at the skill sets in the group etc etc. It was a good job too as we had one lady from Hong Kong who was an Open Water diver with 8 dives.....the last one in 2005! I think Steve had to more or less clip her to his harness for the whole dive. There was work to do there.....
rolleyes.gif


For my part I had my own concerns. In truth I'd hardly been diving at all since having surgery more than a year before, just 5 times....and I'd put on around 20 kgs too!
huh.gif

I was pleased I could actually get into my 3mm wetsuit still, and my guesstimate about the weight I'd need was a bit much, but easy enough to deal with. This was also the first time I'd seen Maggie in the water....but she looked great....no problems at all. All in all it was a good first dive and we saw a lot....... ornate ghost pipe fish and peacock mantis shrimp among the highlights. Unfortunately though I'd left my camera on the boat to keep potential task loading to a minimum in case of unforeseen problems so some good photo ops were missed.

The second dive of the day was on the much more challenging site of Hin Muang. The lady from Hong Kong was politely told that the dive was too deep for her certification level and she'd have to sit it out. Hin Maung can have quite a current as well. It's not a place for a complete novice, especially one seemingly lacking several basic skills. The current wasn't actually too bad and we had a nice dive exploring the rock.

Then at the end of the dive the Mantas arrived....two of them.

We were actually already on our ascent to the safety stop when they appeared. This was the signal for the water above us to suddenly fill with bikini clad bodies leaping into the water from another boat that had arrived as we were underwater. It was chaos. The mantas didn't seem to mind though, just swimming circles round the proceedings.

We finished our stop and got back on the boat for lunch.....

2434874681_3e69e0780d.jpg


After lunch I realized that the mantas were still there. I saw one nearly breach, and they appeared to be swimming around the boat. Plans changed and this was going to be our third dive too, so we suited up and jumped in again.

This time the current was fierce, and the plankton was so thick it reduced visibility considerably. I also found out during that dive that plankton stings on exposed skin. I didn't know that before.

But now the Mantas were everywhere, and there were a lot of them!
cute.gif


It was impossible to get "clean" shots so the following pics have been considerably worked on to produce something to look at. Sorry...it's the best I could do!
biggrin.gif


2434710555_85e84774af.jpg


2434706821_daa07f6c4c.jpg

2435519436_c1424c688d.jpg

We actually spent the whole dive in the same spot - either hanging on to the mooring line, or hiding behind the top of the rock to stay out of the current. The Mantas did the rest....what a show!
smile.gif

When we surfaced the boat moved to the Phi Phi islands for the sunset dive. Steve needed a nice safe site so he could do a quick refresher with his Hong Kong lady. I passed on the dive as after the Mantas I was sure it would be an anti-climax. Luckily, no-one saw a Whale shark or whatever so I didn't miss anything!​
 
Day 2 - Koh Bida Nok, Shark Point and Koh Doc Mai.

After all the excitement of the first day it was hard to work out what could happen to top it. A Whaleshark maybe.....but really....they're rare...very rare. Still, I know the sites we were going to today and they were all great sites.

We started the day at Koh Bida Nok - one of the Phi Phi group of islands. It's a mix of hard and soft corals, lot's of boulders, a small swim through...and lot's of life.....

2435545504_d98fc18898.jpg

We did it as a drift dive with a gentle current to carry us past the scenery!​

2435536276_be36041387.jpg

The second dive today was at Shark Point. This is actually a series of underwater pinnacles gradually getting shallower until the last one breaks the surface and has a light and a bell on it. We were dropping onto pinnacle 2 and intending to work our way north to pinnacle 1 at the end of the dive. Again there was lot's to see but in truth the visibility wasn't that good. About 15 minutes into the dive Maggie called me to look at a Peacock Mantis shrimp. He was a beauty and I really wanted to get a good shot of him. I managed this one....

2381475689_2dbb38f9c8.jpg

....but as I tried to get closer for another go I startled him and he scuttled under a rock. I waited a little to see if he was coming back out but decided I'd better go before the group got too far ahead. As I turned around I saw one diver on my right and started to swim after them. Then a realized that there were another 4 or 5 divers on my left, so thinking that was our group I went after them. Wrong group!! By now I was over the sand between the two pinnacles so I turned around and headed back the way I'd come. No one.....and the vis was awful as well. OK...... search for a minute.......no one.......surface. No one there either. There was nothing else to do than call the dive so I signaled the boat and they came and got me. A couple of minutes later Maggie also appeared. She'd realized I wasn't there and when she couldn't find me run the numbers and surfaced. Good girl.​

Oh well...... stuff happens. It's not ideal losing your buddy but that's why you learn what to do when it happens right?

The third dive of the day is one of my favorites in the Andaman sea - Koh Doc Mai. It's a really nice wall dive that generally has a brisk current running north to south. You hardly have to swim at all - just float along looking at stuff. Today the vis wasn't great but I still enjoyed it immensely. I didn't see the ghost pipe fish that I saw the last time I was here but still.....

2381475327_d34946d026.jpg

So that was the end of the two day leg to the south and we headed back to Patong. Everyone except Maggie and I were leaving the boat and we'd have a bunch of new people to go to the north with. Back in Patong we all got off (even if you're staying on you leave the boat to let them clean everything and refuel etc) Maggie and I had a few hours to kill so we went to a scuba store and I bought a pair of Lycra socks to stop my new full foot fins from chafing my ankles. Then we went back to the pier and took a few pictures of the longtail boats they use here....​

2434880551_15ecc6ec92.jpg

...before sitting in a beach side bar and having a couple of beers before we rejoined the boat.​

An hour later we were watching the "newbies" get their first briefing etc.....and then more firecrackers as we left......and an overnight trip to the Similans......​
 
Day 3 - The Similans.


2435688244_1d774c8950_o.jpg

The north is different to the south. For a start off the visibilty is generally better.....much better. The geology is also different, resulting in large numbers of huge rounded granite boulders, both above and below the surface.

Our first dive was again a check out dive for the new guys - Anita's reef. It's very pretty. LoT's of all types of hard and soft corals, snappers, garden eels, damsl fish, fusiliers, butterfly fish...etc etc.....

2415968468_2c3a301488.jpg


...at the end of the dive is a solitary pinnacle. On it's own one could spend a whole dive just here, there's so much stuff around it. The Thai call it "Hin Muan Deaw", which translates to "Whole roll of film rock". Unfortunately my camera batteries decided to pack up at the point we got there - so I got a bit less than that!
laugh.gif


Dive 2 today was the site that I'd had my first dive of the trip the other times I'd come here - East of Eden. This is an aquarium dive....it's stunning. There used to be a red frogfish:


2435291663_888bd4eec5_o.jpg


....but it seems he's supposed to now live in an aquarium in Bangkok. Whether that's true or not I'm not sure. But anyway he's gone. This is also the home of possibly the most famous moray in Thailand. He lives under a rock about halfway through the dive. The last time I was here he had a girlfriend living with him....​


2435292993_3492f08383.jpg


Some might remember, or have seen, the You-tube film of the guy having his thumb bitten off while he was feeding this moray (it wasn't nasty - morays just don't see very well!) Anyway - it's the moray on the right that did it - and this is where he lives.

At the end of the dive is a rock/pinnacle similar to that of Anita's Reef - however it's not quite as pretty!

The third dive was on the opposite side of Island No 7 - West of Eden. If you like big boulder and crevices you'd enjoy this. There's lot's to explore and although we actually didn't see an awful lot this time, there's a good chance of leopard sharks, maybe white tip reef sharks. I did see a sea snake here but as those things frighten the bejeesus out of me I stayed pretty far away from it!
laugh.gif

It was a little strang though as for some reason there was quite a strong surge - not current - surge. On the surface it really wasn't rough so I've no idea what was causing it.

The sunset dive today was opposite the rangers station on Island no 7. Those of us that din't want to do it went to the beach instead and took a walk up the path to take in the view.....​


2434874435_97df33e88f.jpg


2435692116_fdf9488186.jpg
 
Day 4 - North to Koh Bon and the Surins.

We kicked off with a deep dive at the north end of Island No 9 - Rocky point. This is another dive for lovers of huge boulders and swim throughs - great fun! This is certainly a dive in current though, and how you swim it depends on which way the current is running on a given day. It's also another site where one often sees leopard sharks - but again......not today. In fact, this entire trip I only saw one leopard shark - as opposed to the 10s or 20s I'd always seen on previous visits. Still - a very enjoyable dive!

Dive no 2 was another potential Manta site - Koh Bon West ridge. The ridge extends from the island out to sea gradually getting deeper and is often a site for Mantas cruising over the ridge. Again......nothing today - but I felt like we'd had enough for the whole trip in the south, so it didn't bother me. It was a bit sad for the guys who'd missed that though. Still - it's a nice dive and we saw more sea snakes and a feeding frenzy of Trevally hunting glass fish, as well of plenty of the usual suspects!

2382307178_d58fec1d9e.jpg


The third dive of the day was a submerged pinnacle - Tachai pinnacle. It's quite well known for bad currents and sure enough as soon as we hit the water and grabbed the mooring line I knew we were in for a struggle. It was already hard work just holding on to the down line, the current was so strong. I was seriously concerned with my camera rig - my strobe fouling some loose rope half way down and nearly ripping the whole rig out of my hands. Even when we made it to the pinnacle it proved almost impossible to fin current "shade". This was where I saw the shark. Normally they're asleep in the daytime....but not this one. He was also busy with the current. I reckoned that there was also a very chance that this dive wouldn't last that long as everyone was having to fight so hard. And it didn't. At 40 mins one of our group ran out of air....completely! Maggie was closest to him and gave him her octo. The guide got us back to the mooring line and switched with Maggie taking the OOA diver onto his own octo. The current was really ripping - hang on to your mask type stuff! Not my favorite kind of dive I have to say.....

The other group got blown off the pinnacle completely and did a blue water ascent a couple of hundred meters away. One more for the experience book!

The boat headed north to the Surins for the night - and the last dive. After Tachai I'd had enough for the day and ecided to just sit it out and wait for tomorrow......Richelieu Rock.
 
Day 5 - Richelieu Rock.

These days Richelieu gets busy - very. The last time I'd been here there had been 14 liveaboard boats on the site. Steve had us on a very early start to get there first and into the water before any other divers. We knew Richelieu could be temperamental. Maybe we face similar currents to the day before on Tachai...who knew?

We arrived on site a few minutes after dawn.....and we were first! The Captain reckoned the current was minimal too so this was looking good. I'd prepared my camera the night before and the batteries were fully charged, and the strobe had brand new ones straight from the shop in Patong. We had an appointment with a family of seahorses!

When we hit the water it was fantastic. Huge visibilty....no current....perfect. Steve led us down to the Sea horses. There could have been three - Male, Female and baby. As it was Mum wasn't there but the other two were. Time for pictures! Camera on...OK....strobe on....***....nothing happened. I couldn't believe it. Don't EVER buy batteries in Thailand!!! Incredible. And there was nothing to do as the internal flash was blacked out for the Inon optical firing system! Damn!

Well - the rest of the dive was great although I remained pretty pissed at Thai batteries! When we got back on the boat I just removed the strobe completely and reverted to the internal Olympus flash. I was still thinking about the trouble the day before as well. Then I went to Steve and more or less demanded that we go back to the Seahorses at the beginning of the second dive. While we were having breakfast it became clear that today was unusual. There were only three other boats with us, and they were likely to leave after two dives. We started to plan to stay here for three.......

Second dive.......back to the Seahorses..... now the camera worked.

Dad.......
2417752694_1c2a42fa31.jpg


......and Baby....
2417749504_0a5869bc6b.jpg


2418307400_e7c7c67463.jpg

Woo hoo!!​

So what's next.......okiedokie.......clown fish.....
biggrin.gif

2415158049_d71645c2b5.jpg

2415977884_3b365a184f.jpg

2434754735_ce7bc0899a.jpg

2434749569_e67aaf756c.jpg

....Cowries......
2435561196_d5d51f54fe.jpg

....and at the end of the third dive - Chevron Barracuda.....​

2415159627_567462566e_o.jpg

Yup! Richelieu lives up to it's name....completely!
cute.gif

Time to go, and we headed back to Koh Bon for a sunset dive in the bay......​

2415983394_995fb7b144.jpg

2415970996_11242c2587.jpg

2434733063_8fea7819f1.jpg

Now THAT'S a days diving!!
biggrin.gif
 
Day 6 - Time to go home.....

As it's quite a way back to Patong the last day is only two dives.

The first one is a group of huge boulders called "Elephant Head Rock" because it looks abolutely nothing like an Elephant's Head....unless maybe you've been drinking or something. But anyway - that's what they call it. It's a great dive - lot's of swim throughs and I finally found someone I'd been looking out for for some time...Mr Procelein Crab...

2435530800_f9477f9916.jpg


....at the end of the dive we'd been warned to be careful of a lone Great Barracuda which could be aggressive. We found him.....and he looked mean.....really mean. Unfortunately I have misplaced a shot that I got of him at the present time but I'll search for it and hopefully add it to the thread at a later date. This is a great dive site though....stunning.

Last dive was Shark fin reef. This is a pleasant last dive, although somehat unremarkable following on the rest of the trip. Still - it's the closest site to Patong so as a last dive goes it's actually not to bad at all. In fact - two years ago it was the first place I saw Leopard sharks, so it holds a certain place in my heart!

2420030893_c72e4d54b6_o.jpg
 
Aftermath.

The last two times I've been her I've headed straight home when the diving was finished. Because Maggie was coming too we decided to stay a couple of extra days and do a little sightseeing etc on land. In fact Maggie elected to do another days diving on a day boat with a couple of the lads we'd met. I didn't go as I'd arranged to meet Jamie (Batfish) from Sunrise Divers and Chantelle (Ringo) from Phuket Scuba Divers for a meet and greet and a few beers. I booked through Jamie the first time I came, and this time as well. It's easy! We met at the Sunrise office and then headed over to Chantelle's Karon shop on the beach....

2435692760_7360478d33.jpg


....as luck would have it it turned out that the world remains as small as it ever was and Chantelle and I had some mutual aquaintances...it really IS a small world ya know.... I had a very enjoyable evening and it was very pleasant to go somewhere else except the boat!!

The next day Maggie and I had arranged a "tour". Actually, it's something I can highly recommend to fill in a day with a bit of sightseeing. It was cheap......and quite entertaining....

We got monkeys.....
2435692858_ba5a41eeb8.jpg


...Large reclining Buddha in a cave....
2435693022_a16729ece6.jpg

...the island they filmed James Bond's -"The Man with a Golden Gun"
2435693158_b84794f5e8.jpg

..some shopping in a floating Muslim village...
2434875801_3d7e2614ff.jpg

...all in all....good fun, and well worth it.​

But yes.....everything comes to an end and the next day that was it.......back to Japan and the start of a new school year!​

..........with of course.....the memories.......
cute.gif
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom