We put our 3 week itinerary together ourselves and shopped around various tour operators for the best deal, we travelled with Worldwide Journey and flew with Thai International. This was not going to be purely a diving holiday so we decided to book the diving once we were there.
Our first 10 days were spent in Khao Lak, it is about 110km North of Phuket – Phuket rests on the eastern edge of the Andaman Sea. We had decided to make Khao Lak our base so that we could dive the Similan Islands. Most of the Similan Islands are uninhabited and are widely recognised as one of the top ten diving locations. Liveaboards are recommended but the islands can be accessed by day trips, about 1½ hours by Speedboat (only between Dec-Apr).
We dived with Similan-Divers, based on Khao Lak beach, an excellent outfit run by an English guy.(www.similan-divers.com). They offered 3 dives per day, their speedboat held 10 people in total (8 divers & 2 dive guides), a nice small group. (Reasonably priced; approx £56 for 3 dives, which included speedboat transfer, breakfast, lunch, soft drinks & fruit all day). I have to say that they were quite tiring days; (7am – 7pm)
The Similan Islands are primarily granite rocks and boulders, both above and below sea level. The boulders create dramatic formations. Many sites feature archways, tunnels and swim throughs. The Vis was a staggering 30 m plus with an average water temp of 30º C. Fish life was prolific mainly small reef species, unfortunately no big fish. We encountered our first ever sightings of turtles and octopus.
Sites visited:
- Elephant Head – (Granite boulders above water are said to resemble the head & back of an elephant – leaves a lot to the imagination.
- East of Eden
- Monkey face
- Bomy Bay
Khao Lak is an excellent place to stay if you enjoy the peace and quiet in an idyllic setting. It is not commercialised in any way – lets hope it stays this way!. Food is exceptionally cheap and of a very high standard. The only restaurants (between 10 and 12 are all located about 20 minutes walk from our hotel down the beach, no need for shoes…but the dive torch did come in handy). We stayed at the Sunset Resort.
Our next 9 days of the holiday were spent in the much busier resort of Kata Beach on Phuket. Phuket has many diving operators, it’s a minefield deciding on who to dive with. All of them operate with much larger boats, accommodating between 30-40 divers. We eventually chose to dive with an outfit called Marina Divers based on Kata Beach, and we managed 3 days diving with them, a total of 7 dives. http://www.marinadivers.com
These dives were slightly cheaper than the Similans, between £25-£30 per day, including breakfast, lunch, water and towels. Although the boat was full every day (35 divers), the dive groups were in small groups of no more than 6 people. I have to compliment the Thai dive guides, although their command of the English language was not too good ( much better than my Thai, I have to say), they had a high regard for the safety of the people in their group, and went out of their way to ensure that you had a good dive. The Vis on these sites around Phuket and Phi Phi islands was between 15m-25m, water temp averaged 28º C.
Sites visited:
- Racha Yai (North & South)
- Ko Bida Nok
- Ko Bida Nai
- Ko Doc Mai
- Shark Point & King Cruiser Wreck
On our second days diving at a site called Ko Bida Nai, we encountered many leopard sharks and Cobia’s. It was amazing, they were everywhere you looked, we got quite blasé about them, we saw so many. (We mistakenly thought the Cobia’s were black tip reef sharks – they look very similar).
The last site we dived was pretty awesome and one site we had wanted to dive for some years. It was the wreck of the King Cruiser, (a 85m steel hulled catamaran style passenger ferry). It hit a coral reef in 1997 and the impact ripped a sizeable hole in the bottom. It took on water and sank upright on the 32m bottom. Amazingly all 540 passengers were successfully rescued. The wreck has attracted much marine life and it is a good multi level dive as portions are within 12 m of the surface. Most of the hull and car deck are safe to swim around. We picked a good day to dive this wreck, the vis is normally not that good and there is sometimes a strong current that can make diving here very difficult. The Vis was excellent the day we went, (20m) and there was hardly any current at all.
The reason why this dive was an absolute must for us was that we had actually travelled on this ferry back in 1994, when we were travelling between Phuket and Phi Phi Island. The photo, right, was taken in 1994 when we were disembarking on to long tail boats to transfer to Phi Phi Island. I guess we were the only divers diving that day who could actually say that they had been passengers on this Ferry!!….(something of interest to note in the logbook anyway). It was a pretty eerie dive, but one that we will never forget!.
