Saturday, December 29

Similan - Thailand's top diving places

Simlan is quite far away from Phuket center, there was a car that came and picked us up 5.40 am and then drove us 2 hours up to the north of the island. From there we took a speedboat for another 1.5 hours before arriving at the big boat. It was a 4 floor huge yacht with pretty much everything, rooms, food, toilets, showers, all diving gear you can imagine and a lot of people. The dives were both deep dives, went down to 34 meters. The reef was beautiful, really colorful and the sight was excellent!! This was my top 2 dive ever! So far Gato Island in Philippines is still the best ever! The only sucky part about the first dive was that on 12 meters the camera case started leaking water and broke the camera. Luckily I had an extra one that fitted the same case. 

Our boat, the right one
Similan Island Nr. 7
Top deck for tanning, floor was about 100 degree warm
Finland snow mixed rain and -2 degree, Beijing snow and -5....Easy choice to come here

The gear on first floor

The color is not right on all the pictures, some should be more colorfull but down on 30 meters it looks better live than on cam

Just about to reach 30 m
The chorals were forming cave like patterns
Down deep, even though on 30 meter can still see the surface in the background
Coming out of the cave

Fish!!!
Was quite a lot of divers
Like mushrooms on the bottom

Choral wall @ 28 meters
Found a huge manet in between a huge chorral, thanks for the torch Eveonne, would not have seen this otherwise

So beautiful landscape, should be more colorful than this deep blueish shade

From inside the cave
Fish having lunch :D
The gate to nothingness


3 minute safety stop

Thursday, December 27

Thailand - Phuket

Time to get away from a busy mega bustling city and fly to Phuket for chilling and diving!
The flight was just under 2 hours and Air Asia had really good prices even though it was peak season. The first day we just settled down, drove around the place with our newly rented scooters.

Lucky or what? 888!
Some BBQ the first night out by the sea


First morning we set out to Raya Yai corral reef, just 1.5 hours by boat outside the beaches. Visibility was alright but the life under water wasn't very much compared to earlier dives I've been at. The deepest point was just 13 meters so not very deep for today's dive.


 The clam
 Weightless Buddha
 Like in an aquarium
 Seasnake! and a fish biting it

 Some people doing the open water training for getting a diving licence


 Happiness and cyanide fish? :)
 Blue corral all over the place


 Sea slug
 Pretty good visibility
 Ascending time
 Found Nemo!!
 Seastars

 More nemos
 The blob
 After sitting in the sun for 3 hours, diving 2 hours feeling kinda exhausted! Tomorrow morning at 5.40 am to similan which is suppose to be one of Thailand's best diving places!! Great start on the diving set! And thank you so much Evonne for borrowing the camera and other gear to make these pictures possible! :)