After 24+ hours of travel (Oslo-London-Hong Kong-Bangkok) we arrived in Bangkok Saturday evening. We had planned to spend a few days in Thailand's capital before flying to Phuket and go directly onboard the
MV Sai Mai for a four day dive trip. After recommendations from friends and family who have been travelling in Thailand a few times we decided to stay at the D&D Inn on Koh San Road, a popular hotel/district among back packers travelling through Bangkok. Saturday evening at Koh San Road can best be described as a circus. The streets where swarming with tourists/back packers and Thais trying to make a (some what) honest living out of them. Bars, shops, tailors, street food, street bars selling bucket-sized drinks, pirated DVD sellers, people in all ages and shapes in one lovely mix. Truly fun and interesting!
During our three days in Bangkok we visited Siam square to check out some shopping centres more classy than anything we have in Norway. We watched the new "National Treasure" at the luxury "Nokia Gold Screen" at Paragon Centre. A shopping mall that sells anything from cheap electronic to Gucci purses and Ferraris (!), as well as running a full size aquarium in the basement and a IMAX cinema at 6th floor.
On Monday we went on a full day trip covering the floating marked, a snake farm, the river of Kawi and the tiger temple (you know, the monk on Animal planet with the tigers). The guys at the snake farm are nuts, catching angry snakes with their teeth! The tiger temple felt a bit like a tourist machine, with long queues (you could pay to skip the queue and take "special picture", which we did), and everything very strict and organized. But what can you expect? As long as you get to see/touch a real tiger I'm happy! We also got a chance to spend some extra time with three of the tiger cubs, where things wasn't as crowded/strict as with the big cats.
Wednesday morning we flew down to Phuket where we got picked up at the airport by a guy arranged by Jamie at
Sunrise-Divers. A popular activity among divers is going on "liveaboard" trips, where you live onboard a dive boat for several days. There is a wide range of boats operating off Phuket, and I spent quite some time this Christmas trying to figure out which boat to choose. The boats differs in size, standard, price, destination, length of trip and so forth. We ended up booking a 4 days/5 nights/16 dives trip with the MV Sai Mai. We arranged the booking through Jamie at Sunrise-Divers, who did a great job at answering my e-mails quickly and where really helpful! I would definitely recommend booking through Sunrise-Drivers.
The reason we ended up picking the MV Sai Mai was a combination of price, standard, length of trip and number of divers. The Sai Mai only takes 8 divers and 2 dive masters, which isn't much compared to other boats who take up to 20 divers. The Sai Mai also have double bed cabins with private shower/toilet, which is a big plus if you don't want to share a toilet with 16 others… The boat turned out great! It wasn't too small, had a good dive deck and was kept in a really good condition. We left from Tab Lamu pier Wednesday evening, and had our first dive at the Similan Islands Thursday morning. The Similan Islands and Richelieu rock rank on many "top 10 dive sites in the world"-lists, and is considered to be one of the absolute best in Thailand. During the trip we dove at different spots on several of the 9 islands making up the "Similan Islands"-group. We also dove at Koh Bon, Koh Tachi and Richelieu Rock.
During our dives we saw a bunch of new things we didn't see in Egypt this summer, ranging from leopard shark, ghost pipe fish, nudie branch to the magnificent manta ray. The dives where amazing, but the visibility wasn't quite as good as in the red sea. But the dives where still great! Hege got a chance to play with her new underwater casing for her Canon EOS 350 SLR camera. She hasn't bought a underwater flash yet, but still many of the pictures turned out quite nice. She event caught a few nice one of the manta cruising above us at Koh Bohn.
Check out her Flickr site for a bunch of pictures...After four days and five nights onboard the Sai Mai we arrived back in Tab Lamu, a bit north of Phuket, this morning (Monday), and then went directly to the pier in Phuket and took the ferry over to Phi Phi Island. We're going to spend some days here before flying down to Singapore. We haven't made any dive reservations, but like Richard said (one of the guys onboard the Sai Mai trip), dive shop density at Phi Phi is about the same as Starbucks density on Manhattan. I'll keep you posted. Later!