left: "Borans" -- or Komodo Dragons -- giant lizards came for lunch

stuff washed up, probably from Phi Phi

After I found out that the 3'rd dive trip I was booked on was actually a no-go, while waiting for a bus to Krabi in Phuket Town, I was moved to one leaving in two days and so returned to ... Laem-Ka Beach Inn at Rawai There could be worse places to be stuck. The dining area under the mangroves made for a great office and place to hang out. There was a German guy (all Germans here, remember) who humg out at the inn and had a little dive shop on the end of the same road, 1Km out of town and was taking the folks from the inn out to an Island for a day trip. Six would dive and the rest would snorkle or just hang on the beach. It was this day that I reached the grail of billable hours in the morning, tropical diving in the afternoon...

The island was called Raya Island, about 45Km to the south of the southern tip of Phuket. The diving was nice and clear, but really not that interesting and -- let's just say that I was reminded of the difference between good divers and bad divers, the latter who tend to flail about, using up air, grabbing on to coral, molesting fish and the like. Does that mean that I'm turning into a dive snob too? I guess I've been lucky to travel and learn from Connie/Barry and the rest of the Thunder Reef folks. Anyway, the liveaboard trip that I got moved to was only three days instead of four so it was nice to have an extra day of diving and get my groove back before going to Similan.

They'd brought a bar-b-que and were cooking chicken and fish which quickly attracted the attention of -- they called them "Borans" -- other books call them Komodo Dragons. I call them huge lizards. After being fed plenty of scraps, and fighting a bit amongst themselves, the cook eventually had to defend the bbq with a long stick. Speaking of island-critters, the ants were pretty amazaing. About 1/2" long, you could "threaten" them with a piece of leaf and they would attack it. You could feel the vibration in you're fingers when they'd crunch down on it. Eventually others would join in and you could have a tug of war with them. Whey they joined together, it was amazing how hard they could pull back!

The beach was covered with a lot of junk from the wave -- probably washed up from Phi Phi. Unopened cans of soda-pop, tv remote controls, cameras, buckets, sandals, hand-bags (empty) oh, and a valuable water tank which the people running our speed boat salvaged.

These weren't the folks who would be organizing a beach clean-up in the middle of no where, and even with all of us, it would have been a half-day's worth of work. Oh well. Despite all of this it was still a beautiful, scenic beach.

The Divers: Suzuki (Divemaster), Lisa -- Anne, Harman

Needle fish have a long sharp needle-nose and are attracted to the light. You need to keep your light away from your face on night-dives

The boat crew could catch them w/ their bare hands off the back of the boat. The customers tended to fall in.

I'd last seen this particular fish flapping about as it was retrieved from a lost trap that we found floating in the open sea

The Similan (& Surin) Islands, about 50mi west off the coast of Thailand in the Anaman Sea is said to be among the world's top dive spots...

For some reason I was under the impression that a live-aboard dive trip wouldn't be as much fun as staying at a little dive resort, no matter how tacky, right on the beach of some tropical island. Sometimes it's nice being so wrong.

I came back from the internet place and found a note under the door or my hotel room -- someone from ABC (World News or something) wanted to interview me about the dive trip. Actually, it said "follow me around as I prepared for my trip." Right -- they could sit and watch me drink a beer on the beach. I called the dive shop to confirm that this trip was still a go, and he said he'd been interviewed by ABC and that they would be back at the shop at 6pm to catch me, as I was an American. He said they were ok and were actually doing a story on the mis-conceptions spread by the media about how Thailand was as bad off as the other countries, where as it really wasn't. Good for them. The interview was strange. Kept having to re-do parts of it due to traffic noises. They actually filmed me being picked up by the boat company, and making a comment about how glad I was that the other divers spoke english. Hope that didn't air, but I was! It was just a big deal after being at Laem-ka for 8 days with all Germans, only one or two of which could really speak English without struggling. Which is, of course better than typical-American me, who can't speak nary a word of anything but.

So, asside from the other three in the tuk-tuk that picked me up, there was supposed to be six more, all of whom cancelled that day. They probably weren't able to get their money back as the dive co. didn't cancel the trip. It was pretty strange when we got to the boat. A huge liveaboard, capable of sleeping 20 guests with 4 customers and 5 crew. Harman & Anne, a couple from Melbourne, Australia (wonderful people as opposed to the so many other Aussies I've ran across that even make us Americans look socially graced & cultred), and Lisa, from Denmark, a place from which everyone I've met has been warm, friendly, intelligent and generally fun.

So, at this point we have to face the fact that this is a dive trip and my camera pushed its limits just going down those rivers in a zip-lock bag. And, since no one else has a dive camera, the only fish-pics we get here were taken from the boat.

It's enough to get the general idea of the area and how clear the water was. The best visibility that I've ever been diving in, even after Fiji & Malaysia.

Once again, I'm really grateful for the people here (all three other divers as well as Suzuki the divemaster and the crew). Fun, interesting, intelligent people and all good divers (which is a big bonus). And did I mention that they all spoke fluent English? :-) It was constantly amazing how fast the time went by on that boat -- "what, we have to dive again, already? You should be paying us." Evenings generally degenrated into card games -- "Farmer's Bridge" and some Thai gambling game the name of which I still don't know -- played in this case by betting toothpics which tended to roll around on the table when the boat pitched certain ways. Thanks to Lisa for bringing great CD's.

Too much fun. It took some pestering and negotiating, but the company didn't have a lot of customers in line so we talked them into extending the trip for one day, if we'd pay the difference -- 4 days & nights instead of 3. Yea!

The Diving My uninteresting and unintelligible but required-to-keep divelog is here. In general this *is* a truely great divespot. For the most part the water is warm (28C/82F) -- warm enough for me to not wear a wetsuit -- and the visibility fantastic (120'+) in most places and with the exception of a few spots, was largely current free. Richeleiu Rock was an exception as the currents were sometimes strong there, which divers never like.

The Similan Islands were largely made up of underwater granite formations and not that much coral, hard or soft (good soft coral at Richelieu though). But there was still plenty to be found and what made up for it was all of the fish. "A lot of damn fish." Mostly the small colorful kind -- More than I've ever seen diving, and sometimes clouds of them that made it hard to see the forrest for the trees. Other note-worthy critters were large cuttle-fish and octupus -- amazingly personable creatures, considering how good they are to eat. Large Morrey Eels (green), rockfish, pipefish (cut from the same cloth as seahorses), trumpet fish, barracuda, tuna, jacks, schools of banner fish, boxfish, puffers, unicorn, angel, butterfly, parrot, and always my favorite: "Moorish Idol Fish" (the striped one in the aquarium played by William Dafoe in "Finding Nemo") and of course Nemo himself, damselfish -- not many of those or anenomes except for Richeleu).

Also a nice assortment of good sized reef-sharks and I've also never seen so many leopard sharks and especially so close (just a few feet away). All in all, great diving. Seemed to mix some of the interesting large fish, and the depth and drama of Sipidan with the paradise-garden qualities of Fiji.

All in all I forget how ... relaxing diving is. Not going through your air too fast is a bit of a "tedimation" work-out as it is, and given all of the sensory input there's not a lot of thinking going on. But it's also quite a work out (you burn the same calories as running) so then there's all of the relaxing to be done between dives. What a great way to take a break from all of this traveling...

The dive company van dropped me off all too abruptly at the bus headed for Phang Nga Town, near Phang Nga Bay [PANG'-NA]. At the bus -- we actually flagged it down on the road. It didn't take long for post-great-dive-trip-depression-syndrome to kick in. I was super tired -- exhausted -- and I think a cold was/is trying to set in.

Phang Nga is a little town north of both Phuket and Krabi -- well protected by the Phuket peninsula, so no wave damage. It shares the name with the Phang Nga Provice where 1700 people died, in and around Ko Lak. The dive boat left from a pier there so we got to see what a tsunami does to an extremely flat, unprotected area. It's amazing how far inland toppled concrete walls could be seen.

Phang Nga Bay is mostly known for some amazing limestone formations that jut out of an otherwise very flat area covered with Mangrove forrests. It's not very touristy here -- sometimes it's hard to find any english spoken and I'm learning to order food by walking about a restaurant and pointing someone's dinner out when I see something that looks good. It seems a lot hotter here (or else it just got hotter) and even the next day I'm still feeling really really beat. Just like my last few days in India -- maybe there's a pattern that I should be learning from here.

There are almost no tourists here so it was hard to find anyone going on the usually full boat-tours of the bay. I was walking down the street and a guy from a tour shop recognized me and said he'd found one other tourist that wanted to go, so I went.

The boat tour was ... ok. We went through little "alleys" among the Mangroves and finally out into the bay where you could see the formations. One of the stops was "James Bond Island" (where they filmed some of "Man w/ a Golden Gun" (which I have a mind to run across the street and rent tonight). The other tourist was Shi, a man from Japan who spoke very good English and was good company for a half day tour.

The boat driver was taking us through a cave when the propeller caught on a rice-sack and got stuck. These are "long tail" boats where the propeller is on the end of a 10' shaft that sticks out behind the boat. Of course, I thought the engine quitting among all of the stalagtites hanging down was part of the show. Reaching up to the top of the cave, we got the boat out, and decided that someone would have to swim to get the thing off. Just as I'd gotten all of my pockets empty, another boat showed up around the corner and they helped free up the blade. We stopped at a Muslim fishing village, bypassed the fancy restaurant where we were "supposed" to eat and found a little place that served locals. Ordering was pretty tough as there wasn't anyone else eating anything appetizing at the time. We ended up with something basic. On the tables were these plates with something wrapped in banana leaves. Turned out it was sweet-stickey rice with fruit inside. Super-good. One was banana and another this sweet/spicy-hot bbq'ed coconut mixture. I'd learned enought about Muslim villages from Malaysia to not even try finding a beer...

My last day in Thailand. I was tired, but Phang Nga Town is so spread out that I rented a motorcycle just to get around. I ended up doing some aimless wandering and found some cool little parks, with rock formations, waterfalls, etc. Some local fellows were eating something really interesting --- shreaded sugar something-or-other wrapped in these paper-thin flour things. They offered me one (typical Thai hospitality away from the touristy areas). Later I drove up the road through the countryside just for the heck of it and then it got dark....




























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