Tremendous Thailand
With only the light from the glowing moon and twinkling stars to guide us, we made our way down the floating pontoon with our luggage. In the distance we could hear the sound of an approaching boat – I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was a minor miracle I was even here.
“I strongly advise you not to take the flight!” said the pharmacist as he handed me the number to the out-of-hours emergency doctor. Only three days earlier, the night before our flight to Thailand, I’d been hit with a mysterious stomach bug that left me almost incapable of doing anything. I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t pleasant. I hadn’t been able to pack properly or sort my dive gear out for the trip. In desperation I’d simply thrown all my gear in the case and travelled to the airport with the others. On the off chance I felt better, I’d travel with them. If I didn’t improve, my trip was going to be over before it had begun.
I let out the breath and soaked up the atmosphere. We were now sat on a Thai long-tail boat and motoring out towards the Scuba Adventure liveaboard. The stomach cramps were now just a memory as we got ourselves acquainted with our home for the next five days and introduced ourselves to the other divers on board. There was quite a mix, including the four of us from Chester, four from Switzerland (one of whom lived in Chester!), a father and son team from ‘darn sarf’ and another couple from the UK. Dive guides John and PJ were to look after us for the five days.
We were here looking for the “big boys”. Specifically manta’s and whale sharks. Some footage of the previous weeks trip was shown and they had a number of manta ray encounters that were simply breath taking. Sadly though, they hadn’t seen a whale shark all season. And they hadn’t seen both mantas and whale sharks on the same trip for over a year.
On our first morning we were woken at 4am by the boats engines. We were finally under way to the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea. We lay in our beds as long as possible but eventually conceded we weren’t going to get anymore sleep, so headed topside to join the others in a light breakfast and enjoy the first rays of the morning sun. PJ gave the briefing for the first dive, a coral reef on Similan Island #7, Koh Payu. The interesting feature on this dive was a resident ‘Spearing Mantis Crab’ also known as the ‘space crab’ – a strange beastie with big rotating eyes that sits in its hole at 30m waiting for passing fish to get close enough to grab! Following the briefing, and a rather hurried kit up, we were into the 30c water and descending down. After visiting the ‘space crab’ we gently meandered back up the reef in the company of the usual array of tropical fish – jacks, trevallies, glass fish, trigger fish, morays etc – the water teemed with life, Red Sea eat your heart out!
Everyone safely back on board, we were underway almost immediately to a site famed for Manta sightings, the tension was building on board! Koh Bon forms part of the Surin Islands, and we could see how popular it was by the other six boats that were already on-site. We went in almost immediately as one of the larger boats was just picking up its numerous divers. The dive was on the west tip of the island, where an underwater ridge runs down under the water. This was a favourite spot for the mantas – but had they already been scared off by the hundreds of divers in the water? We dropped down the ridge in a healthy current, halting our descent at 31m. Our group of six finned gently against the current staying close to the ridge, waiting to see if anything turned up. Spinning around my brother and I saw the rest of our group ascending up the ridge, but we decided to look around one last time. We were glad we did! Just coming into view from the blue, we first saw the glint of white, then the unmistakeable black outline of a huge manta. Probably about 4.5m wing tip to wing tip. We desperately tried to signal the others, but gave up to watch the manta instead! It passed us about 10m away, then we slowly followed it back up the ridge gradually reducing our depth as we went. By this point everyone else had seen the manta too, and divers were racing in from all over. The manta glided past everyone, slowly turned right and disappeared into the warm blue water. Back on the boat we were all buzzing. Our first manta ray! Log books were filled in and pictures were shared around the group.
Our second dive at Koh Bon was to be on the reef North West of the ridge. Massive sections of the reef were damaged and smashed corals littered the floor. All down to some bad storms that had battered the island over the past few years. Climate change anyone? Still, life was abundant and we saw huge shoals of tropical fish, giant morays, sea snakes, titan trigger fish, barracudas etc before finally surfacing. Our third dive of the day was pretty much a repeat of the first dive, but with two mantas circling us for nearly forty-five minutes. You could say we were spoiled, as we were starting to think this manta spotting game was easy!
We left Koh Bon that evening for another of Thailand’s famous dive sites. Richelieu Rock is a large horseshoe shaped outcrop of rocks in the middle of pretty much nowhere! As a result it attracts all manner of wildlife from miles around for both shelter and food. We spent an entire day here and dived the site four times, total time underwater three and a half hours. In all probability we barely scratched the surface of this site. As well as the nurse shark, the turtles, the huge shoals of fish, morays, corals and other usual items, it was also a macro photographers dream. Elaborate ghost pipefish, sea horses and harlequin shrimps were just some of the beasties that people travel from all over the world to see. Last year some photographers from the US had flown all the way to Thailand just to take a picture of the harlequin shrimps. The final dive of the day saw us swimming with four huge, skittish groupers, before hanging on the shot in six metres with a shoal of small yellow fin jacks that resembled miniature tuna swimming past. I didn’t want to go to the surface, but with 20bar remaining, it was time to leave!
That night we watch PJ’s film on Cocos. I had a vested interest as I’m going there next year – and one of the Swiss couples were also interested in going. Some of the footage was pretty amazing, PJ really new what he was doing with a video camera. He was making a film of our trip too – a good little sideline with the DVD’s at £45. But from the footage he’d shown us so far it was going to be well worth the money. Finally everyone headed off to bed for a well-earned sleep.
Next morning we were once again looking for the big fish. First site was rather unfortunately named Jet-ski rock, do any divers like jet-skis!? It was a reef in about 15m that then became sand and shelved off as far as the eye could see. There was only one reason for diving this site. Leopard sharks. After feeding in the evening they came to rest in the sandy patches on the reef. We were diving with PJ for this dive so we hoped we’d see plenty of action so we could make sure we were on the trip DVD! The pressure was really on though, thirty minutes into the dive and we hadn’t seen a thing. Finally, I spotted a shark below us about 20 metres away. Using the underwater “grunt” method of signalling, I was able to attract PJ’s attention and the group followed me down to take pictures and have a look at the sleeping shark. The shark entertained us for a few minutes before swimming off – just as I was trying to get a nice close up. Typically I got the blame for scaring the shark off, and even my argument that I found it wasn’t cutting it with the rest of the group! Just glad we’d manged to see a shark, we got back back to the boat to discover the other group had seen three!
Underway again our next site was Koh Tachau, another rocky reef seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Again there was a chance of some big fish, but I think we’d all dismissed the idea of seeing anything larger than mantas by this point. The site consisted of huge boulders on the sea bed, providing a point for corals to grow and hiding places for all the other fish. A very pretty site, and we enjoyed hovering at the 6m mark just watching the wildlife going about its business far below us. At that point, we heard a loud rattling, we looked up to see PJ holding his hand on his head making an imitation shark fin, and he was off. We couldn’t see a thing, I looked at my brother, he looked at me, and we simultaneously finned after PJ as fast as our fins would take us. Most of the divers in the group did the same, but a few were left behind looking a bit confused as a dozen divers swam in the same general direction! I got to within 15m of PJ, and in front of him I could see the outline of a whale shark. My lungs felt like they were going to explode and my legs were burning. I kept going, I could now see the sharks fins, the tell tale white spots, and finally I could make out the ridges running from the back of its head down its back. Satisfied that I’d seen enough to say I’d dived with a whale shark, I stopped finning and tried to catch my breath. My brother stopped slightly ahead of me, and PJ disappeared into the blue after the shark. I had about thirty bar left, my brother was down to fifty. We reluctantly surfaced.
Back on board there were a few distraught faces. The father and son team had surfaced before the shark encounter as dad was low on air. Son still had about ninety bar, but he’d been the good buddy and come up with his dad. He didn’t speak to dad for the rest of the morning. Kids don’t like missing swimming with whale sharks because their dads were now unfit and use too much air! We were slightly gutted ourselves, as when we picked PJ up, he told us the whale shark had turned round and come back! If only we’d stayed at 6m for a few minutes longer! Still, PJ got some cracking video of the gentle giant for the trip DVD.
At this point all of our hopes had been fulfilled. We’d dived with mantas and a whale shark. Anything else was now a bonus. Leaving the site, we retuned to Koh Bon, which was on the route back home.
We’d thought we’d seen it all with regard to the mantas now. And now even I wasn’t sure if the mantas could compete with seeing a whale shark! But now I found myself at 25m, hanging in the open sea, about six feet from a five-meter wide manta ray. We’d dropped down the ridge and I’d landed straight in the path of this huge creature, I stopped taking pictures and slowed my breathing down as best I could – I didn’t want my bubbles scaring her off. I rolled onto my back so I could swim in the same direction as the manta, she never changed course, and I just stayed with her as long as I could, looking into that big black ‘cow’ like eye trying to wonder what on earth she must be thinking. When she got ahead of me I rolled over again to see the familiar hordes of waiting divers on the ridge ahead. It didn’t matter though now, I’d had my special moment. We headed away from the hordes and made our way up to the reef to use our remaining air in the shallows and drag our dive time out. In about 8m I heard Jean screaming through her regulator, spinning round we saw her pointing straight up. Right above us, only a few metres away in the shallows, another manta slowly drifted past us. I’d like to think it was the same one. Once she’d gone, we found a large free-swimming octopus looking for crabs, and a seemingly endless shoal of fusiliers swam past us. After an hour, and now low on air, we swam away from the reef in 5m and surfaced.
We counted over 40 divers jump from the back of one liveaboard, so it was no surprise when we descended for our final dive that the mantas were nowhere to be seen. We followed a similar plan as last time, choosing to spend our time ferreting on the reef rather than sitting deep waiting on the off chance the mantas might return. Back on the boat the others told us that they never did.
Our last two dives were also on rocky reefs, one of which was known as boulder city. They were very similar to the other reefs and teemed with life. At the deepest point of the dives we saw the resident ribbon eels, like tiny morays with huge nostrils, shallower we saw bump-head wrasse, napoleon wrasse, lion fish, unicorn fish, surgeon fish, blue spotted rays and angry looking titan trigger fish. At one point in our final dive, a glass fish shoal was so thick I thought I’d swum into a tunnel and didn’t realise I could get out just by moving up! It got a few laughs when we were back on board the boat.
Fourteen dives later, our time on the boat was coming to a close. We were slightly sad to be finishing the diving element of our trip, but I think we were also just about ‘dived up’ after fourteen dives in four days. We’d been very lucky with the mantas and the single whale shark was a fantastic bonus. We left the liveaboard via the same long tail boat, and returned to the hotel very happy divers.
Next day we returned to the Scuba Cat shop that operated the liveaboard, and collected our DVD of the trip. The chalkboard outside read “Manta Madness”. It might’ve got the attention of the passing holiday makers, but ‘Manta Moments’ might’ve been a better description!?
The diving concluded we spent the rest of our trip in Thailand between the jungle and the beach. White water rafting, jungle treks and elephant treks broke the trip up nicely. There’s something very surreal about walking through the jungle, turning a corner and coming face to face with an Asian elephant! The hospitality of the people was humbling, and I don’t think any of us wanted to leave. Our last two days were spent in humid Singapore, another interesting place, but it couldn’t compete with Thailand.
Our last moments were spent sipping Singapore ‘slings’ in the long bar at Raffles. We’ve never run up a £150 bar bill in an hour and a half before, and I doubt we ever will again! From Raffles it was to the airport, and seventeen hours later we were home.
Diving - what we liked…
Excellent wildlife – chance to see some of the seas gentle giants.
Excellent dive guides – PJ and John were excellent.
Water temperature – 30c!
The boat – comfortable but not Red Sea standards.
The food – excellent and plenty of it!
Nitrox – available at reasonable prices.
What we didn’t like…
Qualifications and insurance not checked before we started diving.
Too much rushing about before groups were expected in the water.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:52 am
I cant believe you saw Nemo!