When we arrived back in Surat Thani, we were met with a frantic search to find Peter within the 20 minutes before our bus left. Our bus left from the new bus station, which was also called Bus Station 2. Peter’s bus arrived at Bus Station 2, but it wasn’t the new one. The word for “new” is “mai” which is also the word for “no” and the word to use when asking questions in general. I think it’s clear that finding Peter was not easy. Thankfully we managed to ask the bus driver to wait for our friend and Peter strolled up with seconds to spare.
We were headed back to the other side of the Thai coast, with Khao Lak as our destination. Having loved Scuba diving so much, we decided to look for a 3 or 4 day liveaboard headed to the famed Surin and Similan islands. Peter, an experienced scuba diver, had waited for us all to get certified to begin his vacation underwater. The town of Khao Lak was not at all impressive – I’d go so far as to say that it was the Hampton Beach of Thailand. But it was the best place for liveaboards so we found a place to crash for the night and went off in search of dive shops.
We knew exactly what we wanted in terms of our liveaboard. We wanted a relatively small boat that would be departing within the next 2 days. Many dive shops would also keep their boat out at sea, with divers coming and going every day depending on how many days they wanted to dive. We wanted to be sure we’d be with the same people for the duration of our trip, which was actually very hard to find within our very limited price range. During our search, the rain started pouring and we became more and more discouraged with every shop we entered. Feeling defeated we opted to check one more shop before packing it in and heading either down to Railay or back to Koh Tao. Then we entered Liquid Adventure. Their trip was leaving the following evening and had everything else we wanted. The shop had a great atmosphere and we immediately signed our lives away.
Ben and Zach managed to join Rita, Peter, and I just in time for the trip. We boarded the boat with excitement and became even more enthusiastic when we learned more about the boat and what our trip would entail.
Having had mediocre dive conditions on Koh Tao, we had no idea what to expect when we awoke at our first dive site in the Surin Islands. We made an easy descent and could see for what felt like miles around us. The corals were more colorful and the fish more plentiful than any of us could have imagined. We came up from that dive even more astonished than we’d been during our course, and we knew we were in for an incredible few days. Each dive seemed more impressive than the last and we experienced such thrills from all we saw. We dove at a site with a swim through which tested our buoyancy skills, and we did a wreck dive covered in lionfish that tested our nerves. We dove the famous Richelieau Rock, a pinnacle covered in purple soft corals near the Burma marine border, which was discovered by none other than Jacques Cousteau. We also did two night dives that scared us all shit-less as we had no idea what to expect, but we were so enthralled with what we’d seen all of our fears melted away.
We saw countless creatures as well with our most impressive sights being a leopard shark, a juvenile angelfish and a manta ray, which I spotted in the deep while each and every one of my comrades searched for tiny creatures in the corals. I spent a good minute try to signal for the manta ray – which looks like awkward flailing about – but to no avail. I was the only member of my group to witness this magnificent animal, but the sighting was verified from other groups aboard the boat. Other creatures we saw in abundance were pufferfish, boxfish, angelfish, triggerfish, butterfly fish, clownfish, giant blue starfish, parrotfish, and limitless others.
It was a remarkable 3 days filled with 14 dives – totally worth breaking my travel budget for this trip. We met incredible people from around the world – Sweden, India, Germany, etc. The trip had been sold to us as “eat, sleep, dive, eat, sleep, dive” and that’s exactly what it was. Each and every day we’d wake up, have a quick breakfast, dive, eat a real breakfast, nap, dive, eat lunch, nap, dive, eat a snack, nap, night dive, eat dinner, sleep. We hated having to leave the boat and wished we’d been able to spend our entire vacation on the liveaboard. But we knew that even more adventures were awaiting us.
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| Rita and I on the boat |
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| Ridding the boat of evil spirits as we set off |
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| Surin Islands |
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| This might be Koh Bon? |
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| Life on the boat |
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| One of many dive briefs... |
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| Peforming the Buddy Check PADI high-five...Divemaster Dave would have been so proud... |
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| The group on our last dive |
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| Lionfish on the Bon Soon Wreck Dive |
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