New town , new dives

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  Phuket, Thailand
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A new bus ride for a couple of hours and I arrived to Karon Beach, suburb of Phuket. On this part of the trip I tagged along with some friends from the liveaboard, Ted, a funny British fellow living in Germany and his girlfriend Eli. They had recommendations to use Dive Asia as a dive operator so we book 3 days diving with them and then we checked inn at Pineapple Guesthouse, a nice big room with fridge, TV and hot water for 700 baht, more than what I wanted to spend but made life easier. Karon Beach was supposed to be the relaxed part of Phuket, well it is not, thousand of people whatever you go, row after row of umbrellas, it makes South Beach look like a very calm place!!!!!!!

There were so many people all over, that  we choose to sit and have beer during the afternoon and a bite to eat to called an early night, .
They picked us up at 8.30 am took us to get the others guess and then to the pier to do the dives of this part of Thailand.
. Once again the food is great and plentiful, on 2 dives days they provide breakfast lunch and fruits, as well as coffee tea and hot chocolate included in the price of the dive around 3100 Baht. When there is a 3rd dive you also get dinner.
A day diving usually goes from 8.30am to 5 pm o 7pm. The boat carries around 40 yes 40 divers so be ready to have company.
Visibility again was not that good around 40 feet, water temperature 83 degrees same as Similan Is, Coral in fairly good shape and an immense variety of species, nothing  big , until the 3rd dive when 2 beautiful Manta Rays of about 7 feet delighted us for about 15 minutes coming and going while feeding, it really was great.
The last dive at an Island named Koh Bida Noi we also had an amazing dive, this is fairly much a wall drooping till about 90 feet with beautiful corals, soft and hard, nudibranches, seahorses, elegant ghostpipefish, octopus etc. 
Of course after  dives like these you forget about all the craziness and people surrounding you constantly. Many thanks to Pae  our dive master who besides having a kin eye he also showed us to the other side of the island where there were less divers.
After one day of degassing and bidding farewell to my friends I will go to famous Phi Phi Island..........

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