I miss the sun, the sea, the beautiful beaches and the sunny weather of Phuket!!! :(
back to studies and mugging for exams... :(((((((
okie dokie, no more complaining.. so here I am, giving you guys a report of the trip!
Aundre and I, together with our fellow diver friends left for Phuket on the 25th March for a 4Day 4Night Liveaboard to Similan Islands. It was a much anticipated trip for me as I've never dived beyond Malaysian waters! hahaha.. I was looking forward to seeing sharks and manta rays, some big macro marine life that I've always wanted to see and have never seen!
I shall cut everthing short. Finally, we stepped on to the dive boat - MV Queen Manta II.
She is a 30m long beauty. Too bad, I forgot to take a picture of her. *sulk*
Alrighty, straight to the diving part.
On our 3rd dive on the first day, we saw garden eel. We didn't know what Garden Eels were until our OWSI friend told us that those on the sandy bottom were Garden Eels! They were dancing gracefully on the sandy bottoms. :)
Garden Eel. Lion fish
We did our night dive at Island No. 4 (aka Honeymoon bay) and saw this big and active Moral Eel swimming around the coral! Usually, we would only see Moral Eels sticking their head out of the corals where they are hiding, but this one, we saw its entire body as it manuveur around! Our local dive guide told us that this site is ruined by the Tsunami that hit 2yrs ago. (btw, this local dive guide is really experienced! He has clocked more than 4000, yes 4K, dives in Similan alone! He's like a living GPS. He knows exactly where to find the frogfish, the seahorse etc etc)
Moral Eel. I like them because I think they look as if they are always smiling. haha.
My favourite dive site is Koh Bon (which translate to Island Bon. Ok, and with my lame sense of humour, I said that makes me Island jiaaa since my surname is Koh! ok, not very funny. =X).
This is where I encountered my first Manta ray!!! Yes! These majestic creatures swam gracefully past and beside us! It was right beside and omg, I was screaming with my 2nd stage in my mouth! The water was really cold too due to thermocline! Well, in order to see these big majestic Manta rays, we had to suffer a little bit. Anyway, we all had our full suit on, so the temperature was still tolerable. However, my poor buddy who wore shorties down was shivering under water! haha..
A picture of Manta Ray. My Friend took mostly videos, so I don't really have a very decent and glamourous picture of this majestic marine life.
Also, at this site, I had my another first experience - with shark this time round! Ok, it's not whitetip. It's Leopard (zebra) shark! Well, it's still a shark.. So, was really excited to see it and get close to it. It was lying there, motionless and the rest of us were hovering around admiring its beauty. :) At this dive site, we saw many couples of big cuttlefish! yes, all the cuttlefish that we saw all came in pairs! (Maybe some can explain to be why.) Even in Malaysia waters, the cuttlefish come in pairs too! I saw a small school of swirling barracudas.
Leopard shark! This is a zoom in close up shot. Still. we were not very far from it.
Cuttlefish. Its partner is somewhere nearby.
We did a wall dive for one of the many dives that we did at Koh Bon. The walls were filled with beautifully colourful corals! There were many scorpionfish and stonefish camouflauged among the corals and walls too! Big and girly sea fan protrude out of the wall. The walls were full of surprises as we swam past and spotted so many cleverly camouflauged marine lives!
stone fish. not very pretty isn't it?
On third day, when we were at Richelieu Rocks, the whale shark played hide-and-seek with us. :( This site is known for whale sharks but we were left disappointed because we did not see any. He or she (or they) was at Koh Bon when we were at Richelieu Rocks. Divers who were at Koh Bon saw whale sharks but because we were at Richelieu Rocks, we did not see it. Then, when we went back to again on the last day, the whale shark was spotted at Richelieu. :(
(Kelvin Ngian, you made me write this. Anyway, I shall share my experience with diver friends reading this blog. =P)
On the third day, I lost my compass on the night dive. Don't ask me how I lost my compass which is to be worn on the wrist like a watch, because I do not know. So, as you guys expected, I was really upset throughout the entire dive but no one knew cause I did not say anything until we surfaced. However, I was really touched because almost everyone went back into the water with me to do a search and 'rescue' dive for my beloved compass! Such wonderful friends I have! =D *beaming with happiness* We asked the dive leader of the boat for permission for an extra dive to search for my compass and he granted us the permission so 9 of us did a circular search (night) dive for my compass! Thankfully, we managed to find it during the 9th minute of the 30mins-planned dive. I was really touched because some of the guys have actually bathed and cleaned themselves already yet, they went down and search for my compass volunteeringly! *moved to tears* After that, everyone clocked this dive since it was such a memorable dive. (how often do you lose your stuff and manage to find it back right? ;))
Finally, last day, last dive, I clocked my 60th dive!!! yeah! hooray! hahaha.. And once again, everyone was so nice to me.. (so touched) We took a group photo under water and I brought down my slate, on it written 'My 60th Dive' but it did not turn out well in the photos. It was kinda hilarious cause everyone had to breathe in at the count of 3 and it's actually not that easy to co-ordinate 9 people's breathing at the same time. Anyway, the photo turned out great!
hahaha.. See! no bubbles!!! We can see everyone's face!
yes, that's all for you. My trip to Similan, Phuket. :)
P.S: these photos are courteous of our friend, Gong Wei. Thank you so much for sharing your pictures with us!!!! :)
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