Similan Islands

If you've been reading this blog and keeping up to date with what we're up to then you know one of the best things about teaching is the holidays. While they may not be quite as long as those had by teachers back home (what with half term, Whit and all that) we are in a very good place to be able to take advantage of even the short breaks.

This Christmas we actually had a decent length holiday. Even though we work for a 'Christian" school, Christmas isn't really a big deal and they will often make you come into work for boxing day and other days between Christmas and New Year. This year because of the good timing of the elections we actually had ten uninterrupted days to play with so we decided to take the time to do a liveaboard round the Similan Islands.

Since before I first came to Thailand I had been wanting to visit what is definitely Thailand's best dive zone, not only for the diving but for the spectacular hilly green islands and very unique aquamarine waters that surround them. These islands look like someone has played a game of giant marbles and have huge smooth and rounded boulders cascading into the sea. I had actually managed to get out there 4 years ago with Nicole, but we never had chance to experience the beauty of it as it rained for the 5 days we were on the boat.

This time we were forecast good weather thanks to the wind. Now as most people now already, I'm not the best person to be around on a boat, and truthfully proclaim to getting 'seasick in a hammock' and needing one foot on firm ground when on anything that's moving. Wind is about the last thing I need when doing a long crossing. Needless to say, the journey out to the islands was somewhat messy, and seemed to go on forever. I think I went to sleep at around 1.30 in the morning after trying to sit upright and keep line with the horizon for 5 hours. I spent the night on the deck and was woken at 5.45am by a painfully jolly and awake lady testing out her night-vision mode on her camera and taking photos of me. I was far from eager for my first days diving.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about the diving, which was at times fantastic and at times terrible as is always the case, Nick's blog has more detail if you're interested http://www.nickjhealey.blogspot.com/. But briefly, as I mentioned before, the Similan Islands have some of the best diving in Thailand and unfortunately are going down the same path that parts of Belize and Egypt have. There is a huge number of dive shops that send out both liveaboards and day trips and you often find yourself surrounded by boats on the surface. Underwater in places, the term 'flies on something brown and stinky' comes to mind. Richelieu Rock has to be one of the most incredible places I've ever been, but unfortunately, similar to the experience I have whenever I visit Ras Mohammad in Egypt, the diving is being completely ruined by the dive shops. You have divers picking things up and putting it in their pocket to take home, other divers bouncing up and down on coral while posing for photos. The site is so busy and the guides so familiar with it that they just swim from place to place where they know the cool stuff will be. This leads to queues of divers waiting to see the seahorse or the Harlequin shrimps. I gave up on this after politely waiting my turn to take a picture and the being rudely pushed out of the way by some queue jumper. The guides can be lazy and don't need to look for anything, they just wait to see a pile up of people and they know they've found the right spot. We found this game quite entertaining after a while and would cluster round something and show it great interest before swimming off and leaving the waiting queue of people wondering why we got so excited over a star fish. Some guides and instructors were obviously very good, but with the risk of sounding like a 'dive snob', there really needs to be some kind of vetting that goes on before the guides take their divers there. With the prerequisite simply being the basic ability to dive. A dive site like this should not be treated as a classroom.

Other than this slight stress the trip was great, we got an all to brief glimpse of a manta, and we even had roast turkey dinner on board on Christmas day. Also, there is nothing like spending a year in the Caribbean to make you appreciate large schools of fish. It seemed like every dive site we went to was a haven for fish. Another highlight of my trip was bumping into a certain videographer friend underwater, who I've not seen in over 4 years.

The pics are my first attempt with my new camera (cheers for the Christmas pressie mum!)