Khao Lak, Don’t Hold Back

When looking at best places to scuba dive, one place that kept coming up was Thailand, and in particular, The Similan Islands, just south west of Khao Sok. I convince James we should do it. After Thailand, we’re unlikely to be finding further opportunities to dive, so let’s go out with a bang. With a ridiculous array of options to choose from, I eventually give up and go with a package deal from Sea Bees Dive Centre. The package includes five nights accommodation at their resort, pick-up and drop-off in the area, and three days of two-dives-per-day. Staying in one place isn’t something we do often, so this is a real treat we’re both looking forward to, and it falls on James’s birthday too, even better!

Therefore, when I find out I’ve told them to pick us up from the wrong accommodation in Khao Sok, my heart sinks. Thankfully, the Green Palm Resort isn’t too far from our Green Valley Resort, and we are soon on our way, in a private van no less. So this is how people with money do it!

We arrive to the resort and are happily impressed with our latest lodgings, including a big pool of varying depths, palms, hammock, and aircon, sweet sweet aircon! We head out to a local eatery for lunch, and then come back to test out the pool. The deepest part is 3m deep to allow for people doing their scuba training to do their confined dives in here. We use it to practice swimming down to find and grab a coin.

Sufficiently cooled off, we relax some more, knowing the next few days are taken care of, bliss. A little frog even comes to welcome James.

I’ve calculated that we’ve stayed in over 70 different accommodations so far, add in the logistics of getting to and from each one each time, and you’ll get a bit of an idea of why it’s so nice to not have to do this for a few days.

That evening we have dinner at a vegan place, but this is no ordinary vegan place. On the menu is cottage pie! I can’t resist, even if it is vegan, and James goes for an impressive burger. The best thing about my meal is the gravy, oh how I’ve missed you gravy, and I get to eat an abundance of potatoes. Something that’s hard to find in the land of rice paddies.

Our diving adventure begins tomorrow, so it’s early to bed.

Pre-‘Honeymoon Bay’

We’re picked up at 8:45 from the resort and are shuttled 15 minutes south to the pier, where we are herded to a group of about 20 tourists. Some of these people have clearly already met each other previously, others seem to know what’s going on, we stand there confused and clueless. Eventually our names are called and Toni tells us we’re with Viktor, along with Fergus (an Irishman here on holiday), Ben (a German holidaymaker), and Theresa (a German who has lived in Tenerife most of her life and has such a perfect British accent I would have bet money on her being British. She’s travelling about for four months). Toni and Viktor speak in Spanish together and I guess they’re Spanish but I’m only half right, Victor is half Spanish, half Venezuelan. It’s nice to hear Spanish again! He and Theresa converse in Spanish whilst she also converses with Ben in German and us in English without a second thought. Impressive!

As we board the boat, one of the divemasters loudly laments the loss of a beloved breakfast 7 Eleven toastie, berating the staff responsible in front of the paying customers. Luckily our man Viktor is friendly, welcoming, and tells us what is going on. Phew! Maybe he had an extra 7 Eleven toastie to start his day off right 😉 There’s going to be about 14 divers plus three guides on this little speedboat, it’s going to be a tight squeeze! We’ve clearly been spoilt with the Bangka boats of the Philippines with ample space to setup your gear (if the crew hadn’t done it for us) and chillout in between dives. Here we’re trying to get to know our latest equipment, assemble everything and do safety checks without elbowing our neighbours in the ribs, and doing it whilst the speedboat bounces across the waves. I’ll be honest, it’s probably been the worst start we’ve had to a dive trip. However, Viktor comes to our aid and checks we’ve got everything sorted. He’s really kind, doesn’t make us feel stupid (which is important with something like this), and ensures our safety, the most important thing to have the most fun when you’re talking about diving. The last thing you want is to be too scared to question something and find a serious issue under water, so we’re really glad to have Viktor get us settled in to the new setup.

It’s a bumpy couple of hours ride to cross the wavy Andaman sea and get to Island 4 of the Similan Islands.

The reason why these islands are meant to be so great is because they’re out in the sea, but with the islands near by creating the conditions for reef to form and wildlife to make home or swim on through. We don’t get many photos from these dives as the visibility isn’t great, but it’s a good time being back in the water and seeing new sites and wildlife.

Our first dive is to Honeymoon Bay and shows us lionfish galore, and also unfortunately-faced moray eels. We also see a smooth flutemouth, indian ocean sweetlips, speckled sandperch, huge sea cucumbers that look like Dune sandworms in miniature. Some are smooth all over, others have flappy bits, some are all black. They range to being over a couple of feet in length, their weird feelers/legs moving them across the sand. We also see our first halityle cushion starfish, which looks like it’s name, so much so that I first wonder if it’s a starfish at all!

Here’s some Google-provided photos:

The second dive is to West of Eden. This one has huge boulders beneath the surface rather than corals, and we have a swim around the formations that marine life here calls home. We get to see butterflyfish, longfin banner fish (or moorish idol or both?!), blue ring angelfish, black blotched porcupinefish, the redtooth triggerfish, and all the Christmas tree worms.

Unlike the Philippines, there’s no sea squirts, just the Christmas tree worms everywhere you look. They retract into themselves if they sense you near, it’s like a Mexican wave when you swim by:

It’s been a good day getting back under the water. James has managed to control his breathing so we’ve been able to eke out 53 minutes compared to the 30 in El Nido, and I haven’t flown to the surface with an empty and bouyant tank. Maybe we’re getting a knack for this now.

That evening we decide to check out the night Market nearby, Bang Niang market. It seems to be a market specifically setup for tourists, so it has souvenirs, street food, and all the elephant pants and tiger balm the foreigners could need. In addition, there are an array of waterpistols and super-soakers to arm everyone for songkran this weekend. Some kids (and grown foreign adults) are already practicing by shooting passing tourists, but just a little hit here and there. We can handle this! We grab some bites to eat by way of corn on the cob, spring rolls, fried chicken and a kebab. Somehow this all costs more than two meals in a Thai restaurant. Gotta love that gringo tax!

For dessert we try some cold stone ice cream. This is where they pour cream over a freezing cold stone (or metal in this case) that turns it into ice cream. Our man chops our chosen toppings into the freezing cream, check out the guns!

It tastes even better than it looks. Over to James for the next few days…

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Go With the Flow

We return to the harbour and await our assignment for day two of diving. I give Viktor a wave and expect we’ll be back with him on the bumpy speeding sardine can that is the Orca. I am wrong. Today we’ll be led by the lovely Sam from Belgium (originally South Africa). We will also not be on the Orca but instead on the Runaway. It’s around twice the size of the Orca with half of the amount of people on board. It goes half the speed, has a flushing toilet, a shower, breakfast, a chillout deck and you can even buy cold beers! It feels like a cruise ship after the vomit inducing experience of yesterday.

We won’t be heading to the Islands today but to another wreck close to the mainland. After an hour of gentle cruising and inhaling banana bread and creamy coffee, we’re given the dive briefing. Sam will lead us, Tim from London (but born in Hong Kong), a German and an Austrian. Tim has a huge camera rig and zee German has a Go Pro, I think we’ll need to invest in an underwater camera of our own before long.

We put on our gear, take a giant stride into the water (much easier when the boat isn’t rocking in huge waves) and descend down the line towards the wreck. It’s pretty darn sandy down below and visibility is low at best. Still, there are plenty of fish down here, using the wreck and murky water as a natural barrier from the current and a hiding place from predators. We saw many moray eels yesterday and here at the wreck we find their black and white cousins, the honeycomb moray. On top of that we spot the poisonous lion fish with their graceful but deadly spines. Other highlights are many porcupine pufferfish casually sat bobbing about between large shoals of yellow fusiliers and then the occasional giant pufferfish floating through the water like a huge zeppelin. The stand-out experience of this dive is being able to swim through the huge schools of fish that couldn’t care less about us, they barely move. The huge porcupine puffers just hover and watch us with their big, wide, smiling mouths, forward eyes, and little fins waving back and forth with apparent bemusement, “these silly four-legged seals blindly flapping away“. No matter how panicked we get about getting close to them due to surges of current, not once have we seen them puff up.

Thanks to Sam for the photos below, hard work guiding people through this visibility let alone taking photos!:

It is a challenging dive as we navigate a wreck that was split into four (unstable as Sam warns us) chunks by a tsunami in 2004. The visibility means you can just about make out the fins of the diver infront of you and the bubbles of the diver behind you. Quite how Sam managed to keep track of the five of us I’ll never know. Then there is the current which drifts us from one end of the wreck to the other without us moving our limbs at all. It’s not the most enjoyable dive we’ve done but a bit like skiing on a snowy day, it’s a different experience and may well make us more confident divers when the conditions are better.

Returning to the cruise ship we feast on lunchboxes, no buffet lunch today but you can’t have it all. There are more lunchboxes than divers so Alex and I help ourself to extras, much to Tim’s amusement who jovially berates us like we are greedy pigs. We are just poor backpackers, we eat as much as we can, when we can! That’s how the stomach works, right? Tim has dived over 400 times, all over the world, since retiring and giving it a first go in 2009, he isn’t desperate to see anything in particular, he just loves diving as a retirement hobby. He tried golf, but it wasn’t for him. Good for him. We discuss whether diving or golf tourism would be a more expensive retirement hobby.

After our lunch has gone down and our dive computers tell us it’s safe, we descend once again. If anything the visibility is slightly worse and the current slightly stronger. There are still some giant fish down here not bothered by such trivial matters. There is the titan triggerfish, deserving of such a title, it is a monster. Plus schools of trevally, Longfin bannerfish and blue ringed angel fish. We also spot some huge jellyfish a safe distance away, cruelly it looks like they are being eaten alive by various hungry fish. I’m not a fan of the stinging buggers but that is a pretty grim existence. On our way back up the line, after our dive computers tell us that’s long enough at 18m down, a group of large bat fish socialize with us with their grumpy faces as we make our three minute safety stop.

Back on the boat, Tim shows us a picture of a black and white sea snake he saw and the rest of us totally missed. He advises us to stay towards the back as you usually see more. Advice that will pay dividends on the dive tomorrow. Alex asks Tim for some photos of the day, at her suggestion of one of the batfish, he can’t contain his laughter at a request for a photo of one of the most common fish ever. I guess we’re still in the phase of being happy seeing even the most common animals!

I relax on the boat whilst Alex chats to Sam about life as a travelling divemaster, he’s a tourist here too! Him and his girlfriend Anna are travelling around, working a couple of months diving to earn money, then moving on and travelling some more for a month, then starting the cycle again. It seems a pretty decent way to earn money and travel as you go. Getting paid to dive and experience this wonderful underwater world seems a bit of a dream. However, it’s a lot of responsibility to look after a bunch of strangers in this relatively risky environment, no guarantee the people in your care can be trusted, adjusting to having complete noobs in your group and/or people more qualified than yourself. It would certainly make an already varied job very variable!

Getting Caught in the Rain

In the evening we decide to head to the beach front to catch the sunset. It’s a race against time and as we rush through the street market we’re set upon by locals with buckets of water… The Songkran celebrations are in full flow and there is no avoiding the buckets, water pistols, hose pipes and super soakers pointed in our direction. We try in vain to keep the backpack dry but before long everything we have is soaked through! Rumour has it this tradition started with the monks blessing people with water to celebrate their New Year and it has turned into a giant multi day water fight! It brings a wicked smile to the locals faces as they spot fresh gringos to soak, especially the kids, it must be their favourite time of year.

Eventually we reach the beach, just in time to crack out the rum and coke before sunset. As we try and find a nice spot on the sand, the heavens open and the weather joins in with the celebrations with a huge downpour of rain ‘blessing’ everything in sight. We hide in the shelter of a palm tree and finish our drinks while the storm passes.

We figure it’s best to go back to our lovely hotel to dry off and change before dinner.

As we walk along the busy road home we are heckled by the dive masters and a few of our fellow divers from the last two days. “It’s that Mancoonian, don’t let ‘im in ‘ere” says Johnny in his broad Lancastrian accent. We let on and pass by to go and get changed.

Alex is of a socially nervous disposition but I convince her we should go and join the dive guys for a beer before dinner. Indeed we do and we join them to celebrate Paulo gaining his dive instructor certificate and enjoy a few beers (on the house) which is very welcome.

For dinner we head to the highly rated Mae Pa restaurant where I order my first Thai Green Curry of the trip. It’s very tasty and pretty hot with some massive red chillies popping up in the coconut milk. It’s one of the rare occasions in my life I can’t finish the meal and I roll home bloated and fit to burst!

We’re going to need a bigger boat!

It’s our third and final day of diving, quite possibly the last time we will dive on this trip and it’s also my 35th birthday so let’s hope we see something cool! We start the day off the right way with fried potatoes, bacon and stuffed omelette for breakfast. I read a few well timed Birthday wishes from back home and before long we’re back at the harbour. Today we are reunited with Viktor and Theresa from day one, Sam will also join the boat though we’re not in his group this time. We are back in the sardine can but today I’ve taken an anti-sickness tablet and the journey does not feel as bad. Our destination for the day is Koh Bon, it’s meant to be one of the highlights of the area so that is also well timed.

We expertly prepare our kit and descend to around twelve meters underwater. The visibility here is much improved and we feel more confident that we don’t need to be so close to our guide when it’s this good. Viktor leads the general direction but Alex and I float around looking for some hidden gems. It feels like swimming in an aquarium, there is so much life and colourful coral all around us, totally unfazed by our presence. We’re big game hunting today, we’ve seen many amazing and beautiful scenes underwater but we’d love to see something to write home about. Around 10 minutes into this dive we find just that. Viktor makes the signal for octopus and points to a large rock, doing a little underwater dance in celebration. Inside the rock, some strange blubbery flesh pulses and squirms. It leaves it’s comfy nook to shuffle on top of it’s rock and sits atop of it with the look of a proud home owner. It’s definitely aware of us but puts on a show and poses for the camera as we circle by a couple of times. It expertly transforms itself not just in colour but texture to blend into the rock underneath it, camouflaging itself so that as soon as we look away, we can barely tell what it was we were looking at.

We enjoy looping around and spotting many of the old faithfuls. Viktor has told us that lionfish are actually an invasive species in the Atlantic, and are a menace to underwater life as they have hardly any predators. He’s done work before of being paid to hunt them down in Florida, getting paid per fish, and trying to promote them as a potential food source as people are (understandably) too scared to catch and eat them (although they’re apparently very tasty!). The reason they’re found in new and unlikely places? People buy them thinking they’d make a good addition to their aquarium, only to find they kill everything else in there. The owner then chucks them into the sea, probably thinking they’re returning it to its home, but actually starting a complete wipeout of marine life instead.

After this exciting experience, we continue towards the edge of the reef, Viktor communicates that the current is very strong and we change course. As we do, I notice two divers in another group ascending the line, I assume they had some issues and has to ascend early. I later learnt that because of the strong current they exerted themselves so much that they used up most of their air in 19 minutes! We continue to cruise the shallows and admire the serene views. Towards the end of the dive, following Tim’s advice, Alex and I are lurking at the back of the pack. An unusual shape catches my eye. It’s a large sea snake sleeping on the seabed, black and grey and at least two meters long. Another one for the logbook.

As I’m seeking some shelter from the sardine chaos at the back of the boat, Viktor announces there is an important dive briefing at the front of the boat? As I make my way outside I’m serenaded by a beautiful chorus of “Happy Birthday” and Alex presents me with a cake! A very thoughtful gesture and another special memory to cherish ❤️

Once the cake has had some time to digest it’s time for the final descent. There are rumours of sharks in this area but Viktor doesn’t want to make any promises. We’re just enjoying the visibility and glorious surroundings when he raises his hand in a flat palm on the crown of his head, the signal for a shark… We look into the deep and spot a Blacktip shark around two meters long zagging through the ocean. It’s a bit blink and you’ll miss it moment but we can definitely tell it is a shark and consider ourselves very satisfied with the sightings today. Viktor makes a mime of blowing out candles on a cake under water, it’s a nice touch.

Having had two epic spots, the pressure off, we meander around excitedly pointing to this and that, including many new spots. Thanks to the German couple providing these amazing pics:

Alex is chuffed to have spotted one of the most dangerous creatures under the sea, the scorpionfish, can you see it camoflaged in the rock?

Other spots are some new kinds of starfish we didn’t get photos of, so thank you Google for the Crown of Thorns photo. Alex wants to start a cushion range of starfish! There’s also another big Titan Triggerfish digging away at the sand

We finish the dive crossing the blurry thermocline barrier a few times. Even though the difference in temperature is only a couple of degrees, underwater the difference is a hot bath compared to an ice bath.

Whilst I enjoy the sea breeze and sunshine, Alex chats with Sam’s partner Anna on the way back. Finding out that if you photograph a manta Ray that hasn’t been registered yet, you get to name it! In the three months they’d been diving in the Maldives, they got to name three. Apparently the pattern on their underside is as unique as a fingerprint. Same as shell designs or the sides of their necks on turtles. They’re completely unique. Hopefully one day we’ll get to see a manta for ourselves.

Happy Songkran to me!

On our way home from the dive, all hell has broken loose. The celebrations have escalated and there are now pickup trucks loaded with barrels of water and over excited children. There are battle stations dotted all along the road home and we’re in a open back taxi with the shutters up. A loud smack of water slapping our passengers in the face makes us all jump and from here it’s like passing through a warzone as we drop everyone off. Some take it slightly too far and pour ice cold water down our backs or throw water with ice cubes in at us at full speed. For the most part through it’s a heck of a spectacle and locals and tourists alike join in the chaos on this roasting hot afternoon.

We arrive back at the hotel soaked to the bone. As I enter our room I (eventually) notice that the birthday fairies have visited and left a nice surprise for me on the bed. Alex is curiously missing but appears a few minutes later with armfuls of cake and fruit! More treats 😋

We spend the next couple of hours relaxing by the pool and making the most of the happy hour cocktails. I call Lottie and my folks while eating cake and drinking Mai Tai’s. It’s been a pretty good birthday so far!

In the evening we head into town (in swimwear and with water proof bags this time) to join the bedlam. We find our clan in the midst of battle and pick up some water guns to join in the fun. After a couple of beers and a lot of water fights we make our way to the Hungarian restaurant next door. Schnitzel is the highlight of the menu and it just so happens to be one of my favourite meals, it always reminds me of skiing holidays. It’s a very good schnitzel with a side of fried potatoes with garlic, onion and bacon. The perfect Birthday meal.

We agree to meet the gang up the road as (slightly concerningly) they’re riding scooters while we walk it. Not quite sure where to meet them we walk past dozens of market stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful things. By this point, anyone holding a water gun is fair game and it brings a huge smile to the local children’s faces when they see an armed gringo they can engage with. We buy a Chang from the roadside and watch the closing stages of a local concert with water sprinklers soaking the crowd.

As we contemplate calling it a night we spot Sam and his partner Anna arriving on their bicycles (probably the only people in town with bikes rather than mopeds) and cross the road to meet them. We gather outside a bar/nightclub and get another round. The rest of the group arrives and we have a good time in good company. Paulo provides most of the entertainment, continually telling us he’s going on stage to sing next and for some reason, constantly providing the singers with 100 Baht notes. He is in his own world and having the time of his life God bless him.

Around midnight we finally decide enough is enough and say our goodbyes to these brilliant people who have made the last few days and my birthday feel very special indeed. There’s no other way to finish off a perfect day than to get a 7 Eleven toastie on the way home and that’s exactly what we do.

Hanging On

Not very much to report from today. As you can imagine we are both a bit delicate. A hangover in this heat is quite something so we spend most of the day in air con and dipping in and out of the pool. In the evening I treat myself to a massage with some birthday money and then Alex and I go to Pita Stop for some Greek delights to try and cure our sorry states!

That brings an end to our diving expeditions and my bday celebrations. Both have been epic and very memorable (despite all of the booze). We’re rushing back through the country towards Bangkok and then onwards to get to our fourteenth country… Cambodia. See you on the flip side.

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Adventure – experiencing some of the Similan Islands, beachside-sunset-downpours

Excitement – octopus! Shark! Snake! Empty boat. Birthday surprises.

Trauma – ice bucket straight to the face, no visibility and some over zealous divers, crowded boat