Eric & Laura's Dog, Scuba, & Travel Website
THAILAND & CAMBODIA
Diving the Similan Islands 2/16 - 2/21, 2000
This Looks WAY too long, just show me the underwater pictures!
This Looks WAY too long, just show me above water pictures!
Diving was definitely a reason that we decided to come to Thailand in the first place. The best diving in the area was said to be in the Similan Islands. Due to the monsoon season, though, boats only go out here from about October to April. We looked around at various dive packages and they were all very expensive. We finally found Sea Dragon Dive Center (66-76-420420), an excellent outfit. Four days of liveaboard diving (11 dives), food, ALL gear, 1 divemaster per 4 divers, and lodging all cost an unbelievable 15,800 baht per person (around $400!!). Night dives cost an additional 750 baht. The other advantage is that the dive operator and boat leave from Khao Lak, which makes the trip to/from the islands shorter, allowing you to go to Richelieu Rock (famous for whale sharks), Surin Islands, and Koh Bon (good for manta rays) in addition to the Similan Islands. We couldn't believe it and were convinced that there was a hitch. Let me tell you...there is no hitch! Don't expect luxury but it is comfortable. I was pleasantly surprised that National Geographic Adventurer just featured diving with Sea Dragon in their July/August Issue as one of "The World on the Cheap" trips. This is the real deal and worth every penny. You will save a bundle if you dive with Sea Dragon. If you do not dive, the Similans is an EXCELLENT place to snorkel. As a matter of fact, all of the pictures shown here were taken while snorkelling with one of those cheap, disposable, water proof cameras. We saw 2 turtles, countless colorful fish, eels, an eagle ray, and lots of coral at very shallow depths. Some times you will be snorkelling mere inches away from the top of staghorn coral. (BTW - Remember to click on the thumbnails to see the larger pictures with explanatory text).
We arrived in Phuket from Cambodia via Bangkok and had a day to kill before the boat left from Khao Lak (it left in the late evening...around 8 p.m. or so). Khao Lak is about a 1 1/2 hour drive from Phuket Town. We decided to go to Phuket Town to spend the day and then head over to Khao Lak in a hired car (with driver) for 1200 baht. I can unequivocally say that Phuket was one of my LEAST favorite parts of the whole trip. It is filled with farang (i.e. foreigners) and is really expensive. There is very little here that is not a tourist trap. We did take the bus to the beach at Patong the next morning to get a massage. The beach was horrible with bloated Europeans in skimpy bathing suits sauntering around everywhere. The massage was also pretty expensive at 500 baht/hour. The massage was good (it usually is in Thailand) but we could have done without the whole Phuket experierience, so give it a miss if you can.
We boarded the Andaman that evening in Khao Lak and motored our way to Richelieu Rock. I slept quite nicely in the boat's bunk. We were awakened early the next morning for a 7:30 dive. I looked around and saw 3 other dive boats which made me groan a little. I came to find out that Richelieu Rock is one of the more popular places and has very few mooring locations, so the boats are really close to each other. We dove in and were led around by our dive guide. We saw some interesting stuff which we had never seen before such as pipefish (related to seahorse), lots of lionfish (with their deadly spines), and anemonefish dancing in and out of the anemones. It was an interesting dive and lasted about 50 minutes. Sea Dragon does not let you set your own profile unless the whole group has computers. The limit is 50 minutes or 50 bar, whichever comes first. Dives don't go deeper than 100 feet and the water temperature is around 85 F with occassional thermoclines (a 3 mm shorty is provided and recommended). We were fed a delicious breakfast of pineapple, eggs, bacon, sausage, bread, jelly, etc. and lounged around deck reading until our next dive at 11:30. We dove the same spot. This time we saw a huge mantis shrimp, cleaner shrimp cleaning our divemaster's hand, huge eels, moorish idols, anemone crabs, huge grouper, and lots of other fish. The dive was interesting but we were a bit saddened not to have seen a whale shark. Oh, well.
The boat moved after the second dive to an island named Koh Tochai, which is part of the Surin Islands. We were stuffed with lunch (the Thai staff fix delectable fish & vegetable curries!) and hopped in the water at 3:30 p.m. We didn't see much of anything exciting here beside some very pretty nudibranchs, a large tuna, and a huge green eel. We did go to the beach here and it was WELL worth it (so go!!). The beach was beautiful and deserted with awesome shallow snorkelling. It was extremely relaxing. The captain decided to stay here for the night. We ate a great dinner, played cards in the common area, and went to bed eagerly anticipating the next morning's dive. We moved to another location on Koh Tochai called "Batfish Rock". Our first dive of the morning yielded one of these large batfish on the way down. The dive had a very strong current but swimming through the boulders was very nice. We had to go through a small swim through between some of the boulders which was just a soup of little fish. It was pretty cool. We swam back up to the surface after about 40 minutes (the dive was pretty deep at 93 feet) and had breakfast. The boat moved to Koh Bon for the next dive. This was a GREAT dive (even though we did not see any mantas). You swim along a steep sloping bank of coral. The island sits in the middle of nowhere so you have a good chance of seeing pelagics. We didn't see any but did see some beautiful angelfish (such as the blue ringed angelfish), a school of squid (cool!), a small green turtle, a HUGE fish with a ramora on it, lots of schools of different fish (including a very large school of banner fish), colorful nudibranchs, and lots of zebra striped Oriental Sweetlips--this on top of some beautiful coral formations. It was the best dive up to that point.
The boat then moved to Koh Similan (K #8), one of nine Similan Islands. We got in at a place called "Turtle Rock" for our last day dive. The landscape was strewn with huge boulders that you could swim in between in countless swim throughs. Saw a bunch of fish but the highlight was definitely the topography. The captain decided to spend the night here, so we went to the nearby cove to see the sun set from a HUGE boulder formation. It was a beautiful spot to watch the sunset, with dolphins jumping in the distance and a few diveboats right below us in the cove. Our divemasters had told us that we didn't need shoes to climb to the top of these boulders. Don't believe them! Our feet hurt like hell...bring some sandals/shoes that you can scamper around in. We decided to go for a night dive at "Turtle Rock". The dive only lasted 17 minutes. The reason is that my wife ran out of air (we didn't check our gauges as closely as we should have and didn't notice that our tank hadn't been refilled after the last dive). She used my octopus, we locked arms, and made a controlled ascent to the surface. Besides a little embarrasment, we were fine. The moral of the story is that being in a paradise like this can make you a bit careless and you aren't as careful as you should be. Always check your own gear and your buddy's! We did this but apparently too casually. We made 4 mistakes: 1) She didn't notice that her tank hadn't been filled, 2) I didn't notice that her tank wasn't filled, 3) The people didn't fill up the tank, 4) We didn't let our divemaster open up our tank valve like he usually does (he also checks the gauge at this time).
We stayed in Koh Similan that night but moved to a different dive location called "Monkey Face Rock". This was another GREAT dive. It started with a descent to 98 feet (I got a little narcosis buzz) and we immediately saw 5 1-ft blue-spotted mask rays swimming around. Then we swam through this sand bottomed canyon which was amazing. It was like floating between skyscrapers! We saw lots of schools of fish and even swam through a large school of damselfish. The dive then goes along a sloping field of coral. There was a green turtle a mere 12 feet away from us....oblivious to our presence. He slowly swam around the coral and stopped at this little piece of coral. He gently snapped it in two and began to eat it daintily. He then grabbed the remaining stump, braced himself with his front flippers against the rocks and began voraciously pulling out the remaining coral...pulling a large chunk of stuff from the rock face along with his tender morsel. It was great! We got back on board and moved to Hin Pusa (K#7). We dived at a site called "Elephant Head Rock". This was another interesting dive. The current was very strong but visibility was great. This area is also littered with huge boulders with lots of swimthroughs. You swim through the gaps in the boulders and come into rooms surrounded by boulder walls or zigzag through sandbottomed corridors between them. It was really cool even though these corridors seemed to heighten the strength of the current. At one point I did manage to wedge myself in a 1 foot gap to see a small reefshark under a rock shelf. We came back up for lunch and had a rest. We snorkelled to the nearby beach and saw some incredible coral formations along the way, along with a school of squid and an eagle ray swimming just a few feet away from us (see picture on top). The water was crystal clear and it was very nice.
We moved the boat to the next island called Koh Payu (K#6) to prepare for our next dive at a place called The Wall. The idea was to get in, drop to 26 meters, and drift north to south to the shallows where turtles usually hung out. The current was usually predictable here. We jumped in and the current swept us in the opposite direction along the wall. We were flying! Our divemaster had never been here before. This became obvious when the current finally let up and we zigzagged back and forth along the coral "wall". The coral was interesting and we were followed closely by a batfish for most of the dive. Just when the dive was about to end, a green turtle slowly swam towards us and circled above us. It was an interesting dive...starting with a ripping current at first and ending with a drifting turtle! This was our last dive of the day and we lounged around the deck reading and writing. Close to dusk we saw a couple of amazing things. We had, apparently, docked near the fishing grounds of a pair of eagles. They would fly around our boat within 15 feet and divebomb the fish. This was quite a spectacle! The second thing was that we were sitting around when we heard a series of loud splashes. There, off the side of our boat, an 8 foot swordfish was breaching repeatedly! It was amazing. I took it all in, including the beautiful sunset and thought to myself "It sucks to have to go back to work".
We were supposed to do two dives the next day but we sat out the last dive because we had to catch a plane within 24 hours. So...we had high hopes for Hin Phae (K#3) and a dive site referred to as Shark Fin Reef. This was an unusual dive site from the perspective that it wasn't really close to any island. It was just a submerged outcropping that was supposed to have some interesting critters. We dove down to 91 feet and the visibility wasn't too clear at first. We didn't have to wait long to see a HUGE (1.5 meter) blothched fan tail ray glide right past us at eye level across the sandy bottom. It was quite a site. As we watched him glide we saw a small blue-spotted mask ray also swim by. A little later we saw a turtle drifting away from us slowly. This was shaping up to be a good dive! We moved on and did a swim-through. The concentration of glassfish in the swim-through was so thick that you could not see that far in front of you. We exited and saw a 1.5 meter silvertip shark slowly swimming away from us. The rest of the dive was a gentle drift as we passed a huge eel with cleaner shrimps and lots of different schools of colorful fish. This dive was the definite highlight of the entire trip!!!
The boat moved to Koh Huyong (K#1) for the final dive at a place called Coral Gardens. We had a surface interval so we decided to go to the beautiful beach on the island and walk to the turtle hatchery on the island. We found it just off of the beach and spoke briefly to the Thai caretakers. The turtles had just been released the previous day and all that remained was the sorry sight of 3 dead little turtles in a jar of formaldehyde. We did some snorkelling here but went to the wrong area at first (don't snorkel on the left side of the beach as you are facing the water). It was quite boring. The right side, however, was more interesting with coral, anemone, and lots of other fish. We came back to the boat and put on our snorkel gear again as the divers went into the water. The snorkelling was very nice even though the coral appeared to be about 30 feet below us. The water, however, was crystal clear. We managed to see two turtles, though. One of them was near the surface and let us get quite close. We followed him a bit until he got bored and wandered off. This was a great alternative to the dive, despite the fact that some groups had seen a reefshark and a seasnake on their dive. All in all the Similans was good (although not extraordinary). We saw turtles on 40% of our dives, two types of rays, two sharks, tons of fish that we'd never seen before, and some very interesting topography. For $400/person, it was hard to beat! We motored back to Khao Lak, which took about 4 hours. Unless you have arranged transportation to take you directly to Phuket or somewhere else, it is good to spend the night here. Khao Lak is not exactly a village...more like a conglomeration of bungalows & lodging along a wooded road hugging the shore. There is no reliable public transportation back to Phuket so it might be advantageous to arrange this before you leave. Sea Dragon can arrange this for you for a reasonable price (the figure of 600 baht comes to mind but I don't remember that well). It was a perfect end of our trip. We boarded the plane in Phuket for our last day in Bangkok before returning home.