Thailand - When 200 Divers Spot One Seahorse

After diving in Egypt last year, I wanted to continue my "diving career" and so I chose Thailand as the next destination for it. As in Egypt, here its also quiet affordable to spend a week on a dive boat and also moving around on land doesnt require large budget.

March 25 - Busy Bangkok

View from hotel

Arrived in busy Bangkok three days ago. As I didn't inform myself much about Bangkok and didn't know the areas, I decided to make hotel reservation in advance and as the Lebua at State Tower Hotel hat a century discount offer I went there. The view from the hotel room all over Bangkok is phenomenal.

Tomorrow I will leave Bangkok and fly to Phuket, from where I will take the ferry to Ko Phi Phi. A small island in the south of Thailand. So the plan for the remaining 2.5 weeks is like this:

Bangkok
Kho Phi Phi
Krabi
Khao Lak
Diving Liveaboard (Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock)

Route from Bangkok to Kho Phi Phi and Khao Lak

March 31 - Kho Phi Phi, Krabi, Khao Lak

Kho Phi Phi Island

Took the ferry from Phuket to Kho Phi Phi, this small island in the south of Thailand. Spent two days there and moved then on to Krabi for two days. All of them well prepared for tourists, but I do understand why it became such a tourist spot - they are all nice places to spend vacation. However, surely they will become even more popular in the future and therefore the amount of tourists will increase massively.

Time to Scuba now

Sunburn at Khao Lak

I'm here in Khao Lak now and tomorrow I will join the scuba diving liveaboard for one week. The boat is from the operator Sea Bees and the route will be up to the Richelieu Rock and then towards the Similan Islands, with 3 dives per day. As researches on the internet told me, these must be world class dive spots. I'm excited:)

Till tomorrow I will spend time drinking coffee, eat rice and rice and some rice and try to hide as much as possible in the shadow. Was this morning at the beach of Khao Lak and thought that at 9am the sun surely isn't that strong yet. So I spent 20 minutes on the sun chair and now I know, the sun in Thailand is strong already in the early morning and it is clearly visible in my face now.

March 8 - Diving Perfect? Yes. Overcrowded underwater? Yes!

A great week of diving in the Andaman Sea has ended yesterday. The boat "Sea Dragon" was almost full with 14 divers. The boat isn't the biggest nor is it the best equipped, as it has only four showers on the whole boat. But I didn't mind so much about it as I knew it already before I made the booking. It was OK at the end of the day everybody got the necessary amount of water to become clean.

Seahorse

More important was definitely the diving and that was what I expected. It was perfect. So far I only have one liveaboard experience to compare with, which was in Egypt. But I would rate this week as same good as it was in Egypt. There were lots amounts of fish, huge swarms. Nice and intact corals. Some different sharks. Fantastic land trips to small remote islands. And the top attraction were the Seahorses, which are extremely difficult to spot and make photos of, because they like to hide behind dense corals. Sure, the photos I made aren't that good, but I tried my best :)

Many divers there, no? Yes!

The only draw back that I noticed of the whole week of diving, was the amount of different dive boats. There are not only many liveaboards at the same dive spots, but also numerous day boats that coming from the mainland.

And these are not just small boats with two divers on it, no, among them are some "warships" with several dozen chinese (and other) divers on it.

Not to mention that it sometimes happened under water to lose orientation to which group someone belongs to, while it was inevitable to not bump into other divers while crossing "roads".

Jump to photos of Diving in Thailand Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock