It’s a very early start today – up at 05.30 for pickup around 06.00 or so. We have to wake the duty manager to check out! We’re collected and on our way up to Tap Lamau pier in Phang Nga – this is due east of the Similans, but is a good two hour drive from Kata, up on the mainland and well away from Phuket. We soon have a very full minibus, most of whom are day trippers – some diving but most will be travelling to the Similans to snorkel. We realise later that it’s a mighty long way to go for a day trip – probably a 7-8 hour round journey from the main areas of Phuket, and that’s just travelling time.
We arrive at Tap Lamau and it’s a busy place – lots of dive and speed boats, most of which are heading in the same direction. We jump onto a speedboat and we’re off – it’s a bumpy ride, mostly full of snorkelers, and an hour and a half later we sight the Similans. We approach a dive boat – not the one we’re staying on, this is a day trip vessel which will be used as a brief intermediary for us. We’re straight off onto a dinghy – just the two of us it seems – then heading for our liveaboard. We spy some divers who’ve surfaced nearby and slow down then stop – it turns out they’re from our boat so we pick them up and head off to NV Scuba Cat. Once we get they’re we’re all introduced. It seems the Scuba Cat is very quiet – in fact, the divers we picked up are the only ones there and they’re heading back to the mainland today, meaning we’ll be the only ones onboard, which is fine by us as it means plenty of space on the boat and ultimate flexibility for the diving!
The boat itself – NV Scuba Cat – is actually an old modified catamaran. It’s big, heavy, and uses a lot of fuel to move, so it spends all of the high season out in the Similans (divers transfer here via speedboat like we did), and all of the low season moored in Racha Yai (the primary day dive site for Phuket) with a month off between each in dry dock for maintenance. However, the design is of big benefit for us, as it’s extremely stable – even in strong winds (and we did encounter some...) it remains pretty stable while all the other boats tend to list quite heavily in the water.
And then we’re into a routine we’ll get used to very quickly – dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat... On our first and last days we do three dives, the other days we do five dives per day. Which, by any stretch of the imagination, is a lot of diving – 21 dives in five days for us. We’re on our own for the first day, then the next day three Americans come out for three days – one of them is a recently qualified dive instructor who’s trained with Scuba Cat, the other two are his buddies on holiday. No-one else joins us until the day the Americans leave when we are joined by two Finnish divers who live in KL and are down for one night (the weekend) only. All in all, it’s a pretty small group which is really good for the diving. Our instructor and dive leader is Gerry, a Malaysian woman who’s travelled a lot and only a year ago was working for the Marriott group and was actually a customer (over Xmas and NY) on the same liveaboard we’re on now! She’s a great diver and a really nice person – very easygoing with a great sense of humour and lots of amusing stories. The boat crew are excellent and very helpful, while the cooks manage to deliver excellent meals every time, they are not even phased by the fact they were given ten minutes notice that we are vegetarian – and, as usual, the boat captain (Cap’n Pip) is a real character!
The diving is genuinely amazing. The weather on our first day is glorious and for the first dive we have beautiful crystal clear waters and 40+ metres of visibility – that’s almost infinity from a diving point of view! In fact, even when the weather turns (as it seems to be doing a lot out here – you Europeans aren’t limited to the ‘bad’ weather you know!) vis doesn’t drop below 30 metres or so. It makes for really great diving. The boat stays in the Similans but moves from island to island to vary the diving – there’s a little repetition, usually for the night dives where we dive the same site as the previous dive but generally take a different route, but also to revisit some of the better sites. As well as excellent visibility, the sites themselves are amazing – I’m not sure what geological processes were involved in creating the islands but the underwater topology is gobsmacking – huge boulders and enormous granite slabs, which form the basis for the coral reefs (plus also a number of fun swim throughs!) Even without the sea life, just diving through the huge rocks – which look as though they’ve just been dropped in the sea by some behemoth – is really awesome. Adding the sea life into the equation brings this up to the level of just about the best diving we’ve ever done – which is no mean feat given we dived Sipadan in Borneo three years ago and that ranks as one of the best dive locations in the world! The sea life is also pretty good too – probably not quite up there with Sipadan, but very special compared to most locations we’ve dived. Over the five days we saw a leopard shark, several black tip reef sharks, a nurse shark, a greenback turtle, a number of stingrays (no mantas though sadly!), a couple of octopi, huge numbers of triggerfish (including the dangerous titan triggerfish that attack divers), mantis and dancing Durban shrimps, loads of pufferfish, porcupinefish and boxfish, barracuda, tuna, groupers, plus loads of schools of the more common fish in these waters: parrotfish, sergeant majors, angelfish, bannerfish, fusiliers, sweetlips, rabbitfish etc. Huge numbers, and the variation across each dive site was pretty good. Also, it seems like the fish out here were on steroids – there were huge versions of stuff we’ve seen before: massive pufferfish (maybe 60cm long), huge parrotfish (50cm versus the standard 12cm elsewhere): really, really big fish! No-one is sure why, maybe because the Similans are protected (it’s a marine park policed by the Thai military) and therefore it’s not overfished?
The night dives were also exceptional – due to the visibility, it was possible to night dive without a torch, though we decided to forgo that option! The night dives were generally 10-15m max (compared to the day dives where the first three would be around 25-30m while the fourth was around 20m) so well into the coral reefs where most of the sea life is. We saw plenty of crustaceans (huge lobsters, reef and other crabs, shrimps), cuttlefish (including a juvenile), porcupinefish, and stingrays (one of which swooped over me in my torchlight which was really cool!)
Overall, the people we were with were great fun, and generally were very good divers – I think liveaboards tend to attract divers at a slightly higher level of competence. The boat itself was fairly basic, and would probably be much less fun if it were completely full (it can accommodate up to thirty people at one time) so we timed it well – with just a few of us onboard everything was much more relaxed, the crew were always there to help, and the cooks were less stressed and always produced really good food. I’d definitely come back to the same boat if I wanted to dive the Similans again, and it’s pretty obvious that liveaboards are by far the best way to dive these islands – one night we counted 15 other boats moored round us, the majority of which would have cost a lot more than ours did. Surprisingly, given the large number of liveaboards in the area and the number of dayboats that came in each morning, we only saw other divers on two out of 21 dives, and that was at two of the most popular sites.
Finally, we did our last dives and headed back via the speedboat to Tap Lamau – along with all the other divers and Gerry, as her replacement Vince had arrived that morning, though he was on his own there for a day at least! The trip back was quiet and calm – it was almost possible to sleep! Dry land seemed weird after five days on a boat – you get used to stuff moving all the time, suddenly it’s not and your body tries to compensate which is amusing!
It’s an hour transfer down to Nai Yang which is where we’re staying for two nights. We pushed the boat out a little and booked into what looks like a nice place, though it’s also the most expensive place we’ve stayed at in seven weeks. On arrival the place looks OK, but we soon realise that we’re not the typical visitor – it’s mostly package tourists. We soon find our room is at the arse end of nowhere, and while it’s OK it’s far from being the best we’ve stayed in – and while everywhere else (even the $25 a night places) have provided free wifi you have to pay (through the nose) for it here. Overall, very disappointing. Nai Yang itself is pretty nice though – it reminds us of Koh Phi Phi and Koh Samui, not busy and fairly laid back with a decent selection of bars and restaurants right along the beach. I’d consider staying in this place again should I find the need to head down to Phuket, but I’d definitely avoid the hotel (sorry, ‘resort’) we’re staying at! Finally we pack once again, our dive gear still a little bit damp – we’re heading to Bangkok for the night tomorrow before a couple of days over in Kanchanaburi. Saying goodbye to Phuket isn’t hard, though after the diving and a couple of chilled out days in Nai Yang, the trials and tribulations of downtown Phuket seem a long way away. I think the diving around the Similans probably just about compensates for the hellhole that I consider most of Phuket to inhabit, but only just.
