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...