Similan Islands Dive Trip

See the first half of our dive pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kersti.miller/200903DiveTripSimilanIslandsThailand?authkey=Gv1sRgCNDTk_Sf3puvAQ&feat=directlink

We bought a CD with professional pictures of the trip, including underwater photos -- and we have lots of pictures from our friend Danny that we met on the boat. He was in our group and took heaps of great shots of the manta rays and other cool creatures. Will upload those pictures soon!

Just another beautiful sunset...

Our dive boat, the Black Manta

Sunning in the early evening on the top deck

A curious and friendly Hawskbill Turtle came over to be photographed.

Our dive trip was fantastic! The water was calm, the boat was very luxurious (for a dive boat), the crew was very kind, capable and helpful, the food was delicious, the diving was pretty spectacular, and the islands were beautiful. Could we have asked for more?! They even gave us massages for $20/hour ;) Yes, I took them up on that!

Billy did all 14 dives of the trip, while I skipped 2 night dives and only did 12. It was a lot of diving... 4 each day, with 2 on the last day. We dove at a new place each time, but the islands were close together so there wasn't much travelling. We dove at Richelieu Rock, which is one of the premo spots in the world.

Here are some highlights...

• We saw HUGE, I mean, really, really big manta rays. They were 3 meters across and came amazingly close to us. We must have seen 5 while under the water, and a couple more from the dive deck. Billy saw a smaller one (2m) just while snorkeling! They are curious rays, often circling us to get a second look.
  
• Once we came over a ridge and held onto the edge of the rock (very strong current) to watch a white tipped shark swim around in circles. After a minute or two the shark swam off and immediately a big (2.5 m) eagle ray swam into the scene.
  
• Leopard Sharks
  
• There was heaps of purple soft coral that was so elegant.
• Big fat moray eels (4)
• Tiny sea horses (Tigertails)
• Hawkesbill turtles
• Heaps of interesting fish... schools of blue surgeon fish, giant barricuda, some lion fish, Parrot fish, long finned bat fish, octupuses, Kohl's stingrays, Giant Trevally, seal faced pufferfish, box fix, unicorn fish, sea cucumbers, scorpionfish
• Delicate whip coral, staghorn coral
  

They served meals after each dive, which were SO good. It was the best food of the trip thus far. All was spicy and delicious. The desserts at tea time (after dive #3) were so good... sticky rice w/ mango, mango custard filled buns, dim sum... and we always had fresh fruit (dragon fruit, papaya, watermelon, pineapple).

The only not so good part of the trip (besides not seeing a whale shark) was that we re-created a scene from that horror movie, Open Water. We had started a dive around 5:30pm, so dusk was setting in. We had flashlights - but it wasn't a night dive. Anyway, they dropped us in the ocean and our group started the descent. There was a strong current so we quickly drifted from the boat. We descended slower than the group because Billy was taking his time equalising (our dive guide was well informed that Billy was slower to equalise, and we had already done 3 dives with him). Anyway, the visibility was poor and all we could see around us was green, plankton filled water... but we could see the bubbles generated by our group members. All of a sudden, the bubbles disappeared and we couldn't see our group. I immediately wanted to surface. Billy though wanted to give it a minute, so we waited about 45 seconds, looked around everywhere. Finally he agreed to go up... we were at about 16 meters so we did a safety stop for 3 minutes at 5 meters and surfaced.

We were so far from the boat and they couldn't see us! The water was choppy--the only time of the trip actually. The waves were small - maybe 1,5 meters, so nothing huge, but it definitely restricted visibility. We started swimming towards the boat, but we couldn't move very fast with our super crappy rental fins. With the current, we were probably going backwards. At this point I started to flip out. I was not a happy camper! But Billy kept me quasi calm. We stopped trying to swim and I took off my fin and started waving it around as best I could. Eventually they spotted us and a small boat came to pick us up... But OH MY GOD I WAS TERRIFIED! So that's why I decided not to risk it again with the next 2 night dives. No thanks.

The reason we got lost from the group was the current was much less at the deeper depths, so while we took our time descending, we drifted from the group. The guide went back up without doing a safety stop, so he surfaced much faster than us. In hindsight, perhaps we shouldnt' have done the safety stop because that caused us to drift even further from the boat. But I didn't want decompression sickness! But I guess for that short of a dive we could have gotten away with it. But my computer told me to do it, so I did. Anyway... it was an adventure.