Friday 16th to Sunday 18th March – Liveaboard dive trip on the Similan Islands

Sunday 18^th March.

Another 6am alarm call and this time they wanted us in the water by 620am! The boat had moved us around to the Hin Luang dive site.  The early morning was well worth it.  Our group had only just descended at the start of our dive when we heard other divers going crazy.  This could only mean one thing, something special was nearby.  Sound travels really easily and far under water, so it is regular practise for guides to attract attention by hitting their metal tanks with an object of some description.  This is used to signal when there is something to see but also a repeated triple ‘bang’ underwater is the universal signal for an emergency recall to the boat.  On this occasion there were repeated ‘pinging noises’ of excited dive guides, coming from around the corner of the reef ahead.  To hell with worrying about using up air, Simon and I started finning through the water as fast as we could in the direction the noise was coming from.  I stared up into the water ahead and there it was.  A giant Manta ray gliding above us. Thankfully, it made a few passes for us, but unfortunately, we were down deep at about 25 metres and the manta was near the surface.  It would have been unsafe to yo-yo back up to the surface, so we had to watch in awe from down below.  Dive team two got the benefit this time, the manta was literally on a their level, with them when they jumped off the boat into the water! It was emotional.  It had taken me over one hundred dives to see just one of these beautiful creatures in the water.  It was so graceful, I have a tear in my eye just recalling the experience.  

The biggest shadow is the boat, the other one is a manta ray - Hard to photograph from that distance!

Here is a video (from someone else) for you:

Well camouflaged stonefish

The rest of the dive was beautiful too, but I couldn’t help but hope that when we got up to our five-metre safety stop the manta may choose to make a return visit.  Sadly, it wasn’t to be. Up at the surface it turned out that all the initial noise that alerted us on the dive was about a whale shark that we never saw, not the manta! By the time we had swum around the corner of the reef we had missed the shark but then the manta turned up. We never thought it would be possible to have seen a manta ray but feel a twinge of disappointment in the same dive because of missing something else equally as rare!

Briefing for our dive at West Ridge

Maldivian sponge snail (best I could do!)

For our second dive, we headed back to dive West ridge for the third time. But it was still beautiful! We saw a couple of large Napoleon wrasse, some more Maldivian sponge snails.  Who’d have thought we’d have another great dive, but yet again it turned out that we missed the whale shark that others saw whilst in the water at the same time as us!  Still, it gives us something to keep diving and searching for.  I hear they are great to watch in New Zealand at certain times of year!

Pair of bat fish

Geeking off in the clear blue

Hanging in the blue waiting for the nitrogen to disappear

We still had one last dive to go, but this would be after we had done most of the journey back to the mainland. Before lunch, we had a mammoth briefing all about the departure process whilst we were sailing along and packed up as many of our belongings as we could in our cabin.

About 1pm we stopped for our final Thailand dive at the Boon Song Wreck. This is an old deck that was used in the tin business before being allowed to collapse into the sea.  The bonus being that it has turned into a kind of fish nursery!  The visibility may not have been as good as we had got used to but there were tons of fish and they were very inquisitive and not at all bothered by us.

We were surrounded by fish

Two lionfish clinging onto a sculpture

There was a different species of moray eel we hadn’t previously seen, a honeycomb moray which were common here.

Honeycomb moray

A porcupine fish with a remora attached to its chin and a video below of the same

In the dive briefing we had been guaranteed to see dolphins during this dive, or we could shave one of the dive guide’s heads. This seemed unlikely. After all, we hadn’t seen a single dolphin for three days.  It suddenly became apparent why the guides were so confident.  I chuckled to myself underwater. Kate had seen it all before, many times.  A magnificent way to end the trip.

Me 'swimming with dolphins'

Kate took a seat... she'd seen it all before

We followed our strict instructions to get off the dive deck as quickly as possible after the final dive so that the crew could pack everything away.  Having showered, we emptied our cabins of all our belongings and within 45 minutes we were back at Khao Lak pier (right). Thankfully, the process for returning our equipment and finalising everything was far speedier than the check-in process.  After swift goodbyes to everyone, we were packed onto a minibus transfer back to Phuket along with ten others. 

Final day group photo

It took about two hours before we were dropped off at T-Villa, our home for the night. It was fancy!  Shame it was dark and all we wanted to do was collapse in our room, order some food and pass out.