Day one begins with our usual gentle intro and check dive on the well known Anita's reef where we can see garden eels and blue soft corals, once finished we then step up a gear and move to the amazing West of Eden and Deep Six on Island 7.
Phillipe, Frank and Elisabeth continue their diving Education with Toni doing the Padi Enriched air diver course while Steve starts his deep diver speciality.
With Alex, our Chinese instructor we have Jojo doing her advanced course.
Day one ends with the usual night dive on which the highlight was to come across an amazing decorator crab which attaches sponges to its body for camouflage.
Day two and Elephant head awaits us, down to 39 meters with Steve doing a training dive we see a large group of Khuls stingrays in the sand, around 15 to 20 spotted in total,up to island 8 and the beach visit in Donald Duck bay after a filling breakfast then it's off to North point on island 9 for our last Similan dive before we head of to Koh Bon, it was here about 15 minutes into the Thailand dive we were joined by a huge Manta cruising by the outer pinnacle at around 30 meters......awesome, could this be a sign of things to come at Bon and Tachai.....watch this space. Koh Bon provided us with a pleasurable dive along the wall and out onto the ridge where we just hung out and waited before shallowing up around the bommies and cleaner stations.
Tachai the Dome was unfortunately blown out by the wind so we took shelter on the leeward side of the Island and dived where we could, investigating the reef and rocks with an easy drift along the reef.
This Thailand dive trip we return back to Koh Bon on dat three to do three more dives here, Hin Luang the pinnacle, north ridge and west ridge....if you don't get to see mantas after 4 dives at Koh Bon your unlucky, but for us Koh Bon lived up to its reputation and treated us to at least two different specimens. The day finishes at breakfast bend on Island nine back in the Similans where we started the dive just after low water, the intense current generated by the tidal movement gave us an amazing drift dive finishing almost at the north point dive site on the top of Island nine.
The last Thailand dive day saw us returning once again to the awesome elephant head rock between Island 7 and 8 before we leave the Similans for the Seachart wreck which sank a few years ago of the Khaolak coast with its cargo of hardwood which can still be seen all over the seabed and in its two large holds, the Seachart is also home to a dense population of snappers and curious bat fish that hang around the decent line waiting for divers to come down.
The Thailand dive trip is finished on the Premchai, another popular wreck just of the coast near the port of Tablamu, a tin mining vessel dedicated to the extraction of material on the sea bed to make tin, but this floating machine ceased floating about 30 years ago and is now on the seabed in around 20 meters of flat sand. The wreck is home to much marine life and deserves careful exploration around its unusual structure .
Well done to JoJo, Frank, Elisabeth, Phillipe and Steve for completing their advanced, Nitrox, and deep diver specialities.
Thank you all for coming, safe diving and see you all again soon.....
Mark