Similan Islands
Trip Start
Jan 29, 2008
1
29
32
Trip End
Mar 04, 2008
Ko Similan,
Thailand
Saturday, March 1, 2008
We got to the dive boat soon after the speedboat was up and running again. We got on the dive boat and were greeted by my dive master, Vincent. He is awesome and fun and only leads the advanced group so its a good thing we stayed in Ko Tao a little longer to get our advanced certification or else I wouldn't have got such an awesome DM.
Right after Vincent gave us our boat and dive walkthroughs, we geared up and jumped off. I met my diving buddy, Anja, while we were getting ready. She is a very nice gal from Germany. We were also diving with another pair, Scott and Kelly, who are pretty fun.
We were at Christmas Point at Ko Similan in the Similan Islands. Right off the bat we saw four massive Napoleon wrasse, which was really cool.
Gear on the dive deck
I saw a couple on the Great Barrier Reef with Ally and I remember they scared the crap out of me because they were so massive. But now I was familiar with them and knew they were friendly so I got a little closer to see how big they were, which was about five feet in length.We came up for an hour surface interval and a quick meal before going back in to another dive spot on the same island. During lunch a huge sea turtle came up to the boat so the Thai staff threw out some pineapple for him. He quite liked that so they threw out some lettuce but he snubbed it. He was more into fruit. Watermelon and pineapple were definitely his favourites.
On our second dive we saw this massive school of barracuda. Vincent took me by the arm and guided me right up to them. It was amazing watching them swim right past my face! I felt so close that if one of them turned their long sharp face in my direction it would probably touch me. I also saw my first leopard shark of the trip on the floor looking all big and scary, and then saw a white tip reef shark swimming around us. I also saw a blue-spotted stingray in the sand and so my dive buddy, Anja, and I floated around that for awhile.
My liveaboard
There were also massive potato cod on this dive. There was so much down there that I had to take notes in my dive log as soon as we surfaced to remember it all.After the second dive, we had another rest and then an afternoon dive on a wreck, the Atlantis X. I was quite excited about my first wreck dive but it wasn't that fabulous after seeing sharks and turtles and stingrays. However we did see a toilet and a mattress down there, so that was something. We also saw a sea turtle, perhaps our lunchtime friend, swimming above us. Maybe he was coming back for more fruit.
After that it was time for dinner and then a night dive! This was kind of weird. It was hard to see anything but we did find an extremely fat moray eel hiding not so well from our torches. It was interesting diving somewhat blind. Usually night dives are more exciting because creatures that hide during the day come out at night, but we didn't get lucky with that. When we turned to go back up, our lights lit up the surface and we could see it was raining hard. When I surfaced I couldn't see a thing because my mask is missing windshield wipers. So I took off my mask and the rain was pelting down so heavily I think it was actually worse, because I couldn't keep my eyes open.
We got back to the boat freezing our butts off and I didn't want to take off my wetsuit. I finally wriggled out of it and ran for my towel on the dive deck, soaking wet. Since that didn't do me much good I ran to the showers and warmed up, then got into my warmest clothes and settled in for the night with some hot chocolate.
