Elephants!

Well after a wonderful trip we are now home and back to our real lives!

Chang Mai

Sunday Walking Street Market

Caitlin making some egg-rolls.

Cashew chicken.

Muah Tai fight.

Baby Elephant at the Chaing Mai Zoo.

Mmmm...Banana Chocolate pankake.

Similan Islands, Koh Bon, Richelieu Rock (4day, 14dive, Liveaboard)

We arrived late in the afternoon in Khao Lak after coming all the way from Koh Phangan. We decided to come back to khao lak again, since we heard that the Similan islands were the best place to dive in all of thailand/southeast asia. We talked to a bunch of dive shops and managed to get an awesome deal on a last minute spot on a dive boat headed up from Phuket that had two bunks left. So we decided to go for it, a 4 day 14 dive livaboard with a company called "WestCoast Divers" (...how appropriate), that hit the Similan Islands, Richelieu Rock, and Koh Bon, Koh Tanchai (all the best sites in thailand). I had no idea what to expect since most of the diving in Egypt was done from the beach, so doing all the dives from the boat was very different.

Our boat the "West Coast Explorer IX"

Our spacious room was maybe 7ft by 5ft wide on the boat. 4 people were supposed to sleep in this room but we gave up and slept on the sundeck after 1 night. This was mainly due to the fact that I slept on the top right bunk and my feet would stick in front of the door so every time someone had to go to the restroom my feet would either get hit by the door or shoved out of the way. (with 3 other girls in the small room this happened all too frequently...)

Main deck on the west coast explorer

The boat held about 20 divers+crew and all of our dive gear. The trip departed Khao Lak at about 9pm and we motored all night to the similans to start our diving early the next day.

Sunrise at "Richelieu Rock"

A standard day on the boat started with a 7am wake up followed by a 730am breifing and suit up for the first dive at 8pm. After the first dive we had breakfast then relaxed for our 1-2hour surface interval. We then did a second dive around 11-1130am getting out to a tasty thai lunch. then again we rested and snorkeled...until our third dive around 3pm, then another rest/beachtime till we did our final dive of the day either at 6pm(dusk) or 7pm(for a night dive).


Our days were very full and it was otherworldly to spend close to 4 hours a day in a fishtank swimming with thousands of fish. Over the couse of the trip we got to see; a freeswimming octopus, a couple banded sea snakes, numerous moray eels, cuddlefish, napoleon wrasse, manta rays and some of the largest schools and baitballs of fish I could imagine. The dive sites also all had 20-30meter visibility underwater, crazy being able to see the surface from 100ft underwater!!


The best dive of the trip was on Koh Bon a small island north of the Similans famous for its Manta Sightings. We had heard that the day before we did our dives there had been some manta sightings so we were very excited to get in the water and try our luck. We jumped in and withing a couple minutes of decending a lone manta about 4 meters across did a slow flyby.... then another followed it shortly after. We drifted with the current, following the mantas to an under sea ridge where we held on to some cracks in the rock and just waited. The current was very strong and there was no hope in swimming against it so we just watched and waited as the mantas did passes and circled! at one point there were three different mantas hovering around us, seemingly playing and showing off, effortlessly gliding in the current. what amazing animals...

Leaving Koh Bon and the mantas

Then next best Dives were on Richelieu Rock an undersea pinnacle even farth north up the coast. This dive had great visibility and the pinnacle was teeming with life and color.

"Richelieu Rock" dive briefing map

One of the most eventful nights on the boat, had nothing to do with diving. We were sleeping up on the sundeck after giving up on the tiny room when we awoke to a thunder and lightning storm and a strange crashing noise. We got up and looked over the side of the boat and saw that our mooring line had broken and the huge boat was smashing up against some large rock in the bay. So with lightning overhead, the tide going out, and the thai crew looking frantic checking the hold for leaks....we thought that our trip was gonna get cut a little short. A nearby dive boat luckily came an helped tow us off the rocks before we got beached or sank. We found out the next day that the boat had been only slightly damaged and the trip could continue.

Getting towed of the rocks...

Koh Phangan -> Visa Run

After leaving beautiful Railay and the fresh hairstyles we traveled to Koh Samui a large island in the Gulf of Thailand on the eastern coast. We had to make a quick trip to the islands main city to try and renew our 30 day tourist visa at the immagration office there. We had read that one could go and for 500 baht (about 15 dollars) get a 30 day extension. Boy were we wrong. We ended up having to spend 2200 baht for a 7 day extension....apparently the laws have changed.
So with our new visa we decided to head to Koh Phangan a smaller island just north of koh samui famous for its Full Moon Parties, beautiful snorkeling and cheap beachside accomidation. We rented scooters (see picture of gas station below...) and went beach hopping for the first couple days snorkeling and exploring. The reefs were all within swimming distance of the beach and were teaming with life. The water even had good visibility unlike the diving in the gulf.

Caitlin found a good price and did here PADI open water certification on the island and passed, so now I've got a certified dive buddy. In the meantime I did one dive at the so called "famous" Sail Rock, but the visibility was awful only about 1-2 meters at depth (definitely very claustrophobic...bummer) so not quite what I was expecting.

After a week enjoying the fish tank and the beaches, we got dressed up in all neon and headed to Haad Rin for the Full Moon Party, a 20,000-30,000 person party on the beach. It was pretty wild and the people watching was great. We got to see a bunch of fire dancing, fire breathing, fire jump roping...you get the idea. The jump rope was about 30 feet long and anybody could try, I considered trying it, but then realized I would probably catch my hair on fire or something and thought better of it.... Anyways quite the experience.

After the party we had to make a break for the border to get a 15 day visa extension. We heard the best way was to head to Ranong near the thai-burmese border and make a day trip to burma. The whole scene was quite strange and basically the trip consisited of getting on a boat driving half an hour to a private burmese casino on an island waiting 30 min then returning back though thai immagration....Silly, but the whole process cost much less than at the visa office and it got us a 15 day extension.

Well next up, off to Khao Lak for some diving with Caitlin in the Similan Islands!

Railay

Well we made it to Railay, an awesome beach community cut off from mainstream tourist thailand. No road can reach Railay due to some huge limestone cliffs cutting it off from the nearby cities, so longboats are the only option. This was great because it cut down on crowds and made the whole place feel like another world. I just finished reading "Jurrassic Park - the lost world" so we half expected to see a couple dinosaurs pop out of the jungle. Sadly this never happend... But we did get to see plent of very original haircuts. Railay is a popular spot for rock climbing, with its huge limestone cliffs and ocean views. This attracts quite the large hippie climber population, and with the hippies came the dreads and wild hair. Something I had never seen, is the rat tail dread. Imagine a full head of dreads, then shave everything but one or two that come out of the back of the head, or the dread mullet was also a favorite.... we decided that the local climbers got the hair cuts to prove that they were locals, what tourist/anyone else would get that style unless you were planning on sticking around in a community cut off from the outside world.

A view of railay from above.

A cool swim through we did when the high tide covered the whole tube.

TonSai beach, Railay (some night climing happening in the background)

On Ton sai beach we got lucky and happened to be there when a thai reggae group was playing at one of the beach venues. They were great and did a bunch of covers and originals (atleast a 4 hour set. The fire dancers came out with the band too.

We also did some hiking around Railay and heard that there was a lagoon on the center of the pennisula. It was surrounded on all sides by couple hundred foot walls and the only way into the arena was up and down one of the steepest trails I have ever hiked/mostly climbed. (Also note: hiking in thailand is the best way completely drenched in minutes) The Lagoon was beautiful and was totally worth the trek.

We are now on our way to Koh Samui to get our visas extended and do some more diving!

Koh Lanta / Mantas

After leaving the Phi Phi Islands we headed south by boat to Koh Lanta. We arrived to find empty beaches, great food, cheap lodging and plenty more of Thailand to explore.

We spent about a week in Koh Lanta soaking up the sun and the salt. A couple of the days we rented a scooter (only about 7 dollars a day) to explore the large island. We found some great snorkeling and some cool underwater swim through.

We also came across a couple Elephants and Caitlin got to feed them!

I decided to dive again and ended up going with a Scandinavian company called Lanta Diver. They ran a tight ship and had much better prices than on the Phi Phi islands. I decided to do two of the most famous sites in Thailand, Hin Daeng and Hin Muaeng. These sites are 2 undersea coral pinnacles about a 4 hour boat ride south of koh lanta, and were supposedly the best places to see manta rays and whale sharks. They use the pinnacles of underwater cleaning stations. I got very lucky and on both dives got to see a 5 meter wide manta for close to 20 minutes on my first dive at hin daeng and then for the last 5 minutes on hin muaeng. It was amazing to see such a large animal underwater, very other worldly. It seemed that the mantas liked to show off and play with the divers and were not spooked at all. At one point I was only a couple meters away, breathtaking.

We stuck around for the rest of the week to see a couple other beaches and enjoy the inexpensive living for a couple more days. Koh Lanta has definitely been my favorite place so far!

Well up next is Railey, a boat only access beach town, known for its rock climbing and caves!

Kata beach, Phuket to diving in the Phi Phi Islands

Hey since the last post Caitlin and I have covered a lot of ground. We left Khoa Lak for Phuket riding a much less air conditioned bus we managed to hail from the side of the road. we arrived midday in "phuket town" a grimy commuter city nowhere near the beach. we needed a place to dump our packs so we found a super cheap room and rented a scooter (only about 7 dollars for 24hours!) to go exploring. we toured a couple beaches and decided to stay in Kata, a smaller town righ on an awesome beach. We got lucky with an awesome guest house to stay in for about 5 dollars each and spent the next 4 days swimming, snorkeling and sampling the local fare.


After a couple days in Kata we caught a boat to the nearby Phi Phi islands. One of the more beautiful places in all of Thailand, but sadly the most tourist overrun. Their are no roads so all transport is done in longboats around the island.

All driving is done standing and seeing the locals muscle around converted car engines with 15 ft props seemed like quite the feat!


I heard that the phi phi islands were rated in the top 10 dive sites around the world so i decided to give them a try even though the dive trips are a bit more spendy than the rest of the country... I did a 2 dive boat trip with an outfit called Viking Divers to the 2 small islands just to the south of the main islands. All i can say is the reefs were amazing! I got to see a sea turtle, multiple rays and the larges schools of fish I have ever seen, im talking 5-7000 fish schools. Truly incredible!

Awesome shirt.


One of the days staying on phi phi island we decided to go snorkeling at a place called sharks point. It seemed like a long shot but i had heard that it was quite common to see small black tipped reef sharks early in the morning in a rocky cove just to the left on the beach from the place we were staying. I convinced Caitlin to come with and we swam out to the point around 9 am. After snorkelling about for 40 minutes i finally saw a small 2 ft long black tip slowly swimming by. We followed the shark for a while until it finally outpaced us. We surfaced and decided to head back for breakfast. Only to find that after swiming maybe 20 yards we came across another shark, this one nearly 5 feet long. we watched patiently as is meandered along. Then another showed up about the same size! then another even larger about 6ft long.... then another.... to our nervous amazement we soon had 4 differed sharks swiming within eye sight! We turned slowly in the water taking in this amazing sight. At one point one of the smaller sharks got curious and came straight for me only to turn away about 5 feet from my face. We decided we had had enough when we noticed the sharks begining to circle us. wild.

The people watching is great in Thailand, with tourists coming from all over the world. Caitlin and I have enjoyed watching the very posed photographs the most and have tried capturing some of the best. (and then recreating...)


Hope all is well at home!


Some wild wiring in kata...looks pretty safe. It also emits a nice hummm 24/7...