From Phnom Penh I caught an afternoon flight into Bangkok and tried to cram in as many of my Thai favorites as possible. I dropped $5 on a crappy bed in a Rambuttri street guesthouse, dumped my bags and made a B-line for the nearest restaurant serving Singha beer and pad Thai. I took back all my complaining at the beginning of my trip about the craziness of Bangkok. Thai food is great. Full and content, I headed over to the Khao San Road to meet up with Andreas - one of two charming Swedes I traveled with in Hoi An and Saigon - at STARBUCKS!!!! While thoroughly enjoying my Cafe Mocha - the first Starbucks coffee I've consumed in over 6 weeks - Andreas and I ended up chatting, exchanging travel stories and wandering the Khao San Road until nearly 1:30am. The next morning I forced myself to get up early, and tried to do some shopping, but forgot to consider that because all the vendors stay open until 2am (marketing to the drunken backpackers who can still be found wandering at such an hour), none of them would be up and running at 9 or even 10am. Still, I managed to find the tank top I was looking for, have another lovely reflexology massage at my favorite hole-in-the-wall Spa, and down a banana pancake and pineapple fruit shake. Tourist food, I know, but so good after weeks of rice and rice noodles.
Fast forward through Bangkok airport, another Starbucks, a boring flight, more coffee (NOT Starbucks), Phuket airport, a mini van, and I arrive, excited as ever in Khao Lak, at the Khao Lak Scuba Adventures dive shop for my 4 day Liveaboard. I signed my life away, paid them a lot of Baht, was introduced to my future roommate/dive buddy, ran next door and frantically booked onward airline tickets, and climbed into a minivan that took me to the pier to board the boat. By the time we reached the boat, a torrential rain/thunder/lightning storm started up and kept all of us divers huddling around the tables on the deck of the boat while we waited to get going. After a thorough briefing on all the features of the boat, the crew, the schedule, etc, I had some free time to meet the other divers. I quickly discovered that there were 3 main groups: The Swedish table (6 tanned & tattooed, young 20-somethings who kept to themselves), the French Table (lovely, but would only speak French, of course), and the German Table (mostly older men, travelling solo and also keeping to themselves). I was the only guest on the boat who spoke English as a first language, which never seems to happen on the tourist trails that I've encountered. Luckily for me, I was paired up with the best scuba diving roommate ever. Cornelia, originally from Germany, but working in the Ivory Coast as a Foreign Diplomat, was also travelling solo, loved it, and had done a fair bit of travelling in the past. After we started exchanging travel stories I discovered that she had also traveled to Tanzania, loved Zanzibar and had EVEN visited my quiet, boring little town of Tanga! We could even exchange the odd Swahili phrase here and there. We also discovered that we had the same favorite fish - the Yellow Spotted box fish - and had a lot of shared feelings about travel, careers and life in general. If you know me well, you know I don't usually get along so well with girls, but Cornelia and I hit things off surprisingly well, making the dive trip that much more enjoyable.
Every day went something like this: Vic (the boat's videographer and one of a few dive guides) woke us all up at 7am. We had a few minutes to grab a coffee or toast and fruit before the 7:30am dive briefing, given by any one of the awesome dive guides, and were suited up and in the water by 8am. On the first day we did all 4 dives in the Similian Islands - a protected marine park north-west of Phuket. The first dive was incredible and set the pace for all the rest - we saw octopus, a Hawksbill turtle, ghost pipefish, clownfish, my favorite yellow boxfish, stingrays, garden eels and a beautiful coral reef covered in big coral fans and anemones. My dive group consisted of Joe, our fantastic dive guide from the UK, a french couple and Cornelia and I. After the first dive, a full breakfast was served - anything from pancakes to bacon and eggs, fruit, toast and more - followed by about 2 hours of free time on board. Around 10:30/11, we'd have another dive briefing and another incredible dive. Then, Lunch, 2 hours of free time (sunbathing, reading, sleeping, listening to music, chatting with Cornelia, gazing at the blue water and white sand beaches...) and you guessed it, another dive briefing and another amazing dive. After dive 3, snacks were served and we had another couple hours of sunbathing, lounging around and hanging out. In the afternoons the crew would usually take the runabout over to one of the islands so us divers could sit on the beach for an hour or so before coming back for the last dive briefing of the day. The 4Th and final dive of the day was usually a night dive. My first night dive on the trip left me feeling a little uneasy as Cornelia had recounted stories of being stalked by barracuda earlier that day. The first night dive was uneventful, however, and we spent our time searching out sleeping fish, moray eels on the prowl and nocturnal shrimp and crabs.
In other words, I spent 3 days doing this: Eat, Dive, Eat, Sunbathe, Dive, Eat, Lounge around, Dive, Eat, lounge around on a beach, Dive, Shower, Eat, Beer, Lounge around, Sleep.
Did I mention that the food was also amazing? All thai specialties - curries, pad thai, fresh fruit, spicy everything and Singha beers after the last dive.
The whole experience was absolutely incredible. On the first 2 nights it rained, so I was confined to my stuffy little cabin bunk, but on the last 2 nights it was clear, so I slept under the stars on the roof, rocked to sleep like a baby by the movement of the boat.
On our second night dive, in Koh Tachai, we had a bright half moon and clear skies. We weren't seeing a lot in the way of animals, so partway through the dive I turned off my light. I followed Joe by watching the trail of Phosphorescence swirling behind his fins. When Joe's flashlight died, he signalled to the rest of the group to cover up their lights and we all just swam around the dark ocean, by moonlight, watching phosphorescence sparkle around each other like fairy dust. It was a beautifully surreal and peaceful half an hour, and one of the most memorable dives for me. Spectacular.
Day 3 consisted of 4 dives at Richelieu Rock, considered to be Thailand's #1 Dive site, and one which is frequently listed on the list of top ten dive sites in the world. It did not disappoint. The crescent shaped rock in the middle of the ocean is covered in purple anemones, soft corals and massive hovering schools of fish - giant barracuda, jacks, fusiliers and snappers. Throughout our 4 dives there, starting with a sunrise dive, and finishing with a very unique sunset dive, we spotted endemic Sea Horses, a school of squid, boxer shrimp, harlequin shrimp, rabbit fish, squirrel fish, huge clouds of fairy basslets and damselfish, cuttlefish, octopus, scorpionfish, pufferfish, ghost pipefish, nudibranchs, clownfish, triggerfish and all the regulars of the Andaman Sea (butterflyfish, angelfish, big eyes, snapper, sweetlips, wrasse, parrotfish and so on). On the sunset dive we watched huge feeding frenzies - schools of snapper chasing and devouring sardines in a massive swirling mess of fish - until not a single tiny silver bait fish remained. We watched an octopus change its colors from purple to white, to red to an insanely spiky textured brown and white mottled mess that camouflaged perfectly with the reef. Cuttlefish gawked at us with funny facial (tentacle) expressions while their skirt-like fins shimmered in electric colors, and clownfish lived up to their Finding Nemo characteristics by fiercely defending their anemone homes.
But by far, the most memorable dive of the trip was Dive Number 34 in my logbook - the first dive at Richelieu Rock. I was immediately blown away by the abundance of life surrounding the rock as well as the coral formations decorating the rock itself. Joe pointed out a ton of rare macro stuff to us that morning - the harlequin shrimp, ghost pipefish and sea horses all left me gawking. We swam around about half of the horseshoe shaped rock before spending a bit of time hanging around the middle, right amidst a massive school of yellow fusiliers. It was getting close to the end of an already amazing dive, and the french guy in our group was low on air, so we decided to cut our visit with the fusiliers short, and headed through a gap in the rock towards the blue. We slowly began our ascent to 5 meters where we would begin our safety stop (a stop in an already extra slow ascent to make sure we don't get decompression sickness, aka 'the bends'). Just as Joe began to take out his safety marker, he started SCREAMING into his regulator and pointing/swimming/thrashing downwards towards a whale shark. A WHALE SHARK!!!! My heartbeat immediately quickened into a pounding I could hear in my ears (along with my own thoughts of "No Way. Seriously? Really? Is this actually happening? No Way.") and I started sucking back my air like mad. The 6-7 meter long "baby" whale shark swam gracefully and slowly beneath us, about 4-6 meters down, and away into the blue. We watched it and attempted to slowly follow it until we could no longer see its distinctive spotted back in the distance.
I surfaced, half-crying, half laughing and all of us were screaming and cheering and looking at each other asking "did that just happen?"
Whale sharks are extremely rare to see, and even Joe, who has been diving for about 8-10 years and logged over 2000 dives, has only spotted them 3 times before this one. Many people on the boat had never seen a whale shark in their hundreds of dives. They can reach up to 15 meters, are harmless to humans and are a huge mystery to marine biologists, who apparently know very little about their feeding/breeding/migration habits due to their relatively rare sightings. I consider myself extremely fortunate. While we sat on the surface in shock and buzzing with adrenaline we kept sticking our faces in the water to see if it was still there. After a few minutes, the whale shark came back and Joe started screaming "He's back! He's back!!" so we all stuck in our regs, dumped our BCDs and broke all the rules by swimming a couple meters down to watch the elegant beast swim lazily through the blue.
Once back on the boat we discovered that we were the only group on board who actually saw the whale shark - this makes sense because we came up earlier than the rest with French guy running low on air. While our group of five walked around the boat with massive grins (that we just couldn't wipe away), our diving peers glared at us for the rest of the day. our friend Sharky was not spotted again at all that day.
We finished the diving trip with a dive to the Boon Sung ship wreck, close to Khao Lak. The site was badly damaged in the Tsunami, however, so it's hard to tell that the mess of metal on the ocean floor was ever a boat of any kind. We still managed to see some honeycomb moray eels, octopus, lionfish and an extremely poisonous stone fish (we're talking MONTHS in a hospital in agonizing pain). The whole wreck was shrouded in a school of yellowfin barracuda and tons of damselfish, all of which were totally unafraid of divers. I loved getting caught right in the middle of the school and seeing nothing but a curtain of flashing sliver and yellow in every direction.
I was very sad to hop off the boat after 4 fabulous days on the Manta Queen. The crew and the guides on board were all so much fun, and I absolutely loved the lifestyle. I didn't have to worry about a thing for 4 days, I had great company and I saw so many incredible creatures, making the liveaboard trip my hands-down, favorite thing I've done on my trip so far.
Cornelia and I stuck together for another day following the end of the trip. We split a room at a cool little bungalow in Khao Lak and each had amazing hot showers to finally get rid of the salt water, went bikini-shopping, then grabbed girly (celebratory WHALE SHARK! sighting) umbrella drinks at the local bar, and headed to the Phuket airport the following day before sadly parting and heading our separate ways.
Which leads me to the 4th Country on this Trip: Malaysia...
(Whale Shark photos coming soon, I promise)
1 comment:
sounds AMAZING!
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