Today was the day I was waiting for. It's the dives that Thailand is known for - second only to Richilieu Rock which can only be reached by a liveaboard boat. These spots are coral outcroppings in the ocean more than 30km from any other island. It's where many fish congregate to feed and whale sharks and manta rays have been known to hang about.
To start with, I did not have the good fortune to see a manta ray on my dive. This was slightly disappointing but on the other hand, I did see a leopard shark!! That was awesome.
Instead of taking the slow sailing 2-tiered boats, we took a high speed boat similar to prior boats that I've used in the past although it was fully covered and reasonably comfortable. My diving company (Andaman Dive Adventures) wasn't making any trips to these northern sites during my 3 days of diving but the manager there Lee Johnson made the special effort to call the other dive organizations to fit me onto one of their boats. We ended up going to Hidden Depths but my divemaster Maiko, with whom I've been diving for the past 2 days, came also with another diver. I have to say the diver to divemaster ratio on these dives have been really impressive. There have never been more than 3 divers to a divemaster. Even when the full boat complement of divers was 10, they still brought along 4 divemasters. Really great service!
Muang means purple and Daeng means red in Thai. At Hin Muang there was really beautiful purple coral that I've never seen before, different shades of purple, really special. At Hin Daeng there was also the purple coral but also red ones.
They say diving these sites is like fish soup and they couldn't be more correct. I've never seen so many fish crowded around coral. In fact, while I was taking pictures, I was actually annoyed because at times random fish would get in the way of the fish I was trying to take a pictures of. Can you believe that? The diving was really fantastic.
I saw so many powder blue surgeon fish for the first time. I think if you wanted to write a fish book of the Southeast Asian seas, you could just come here and spend a couple days and you'd get a catalog of them all. It's really a special place and well worth the trip.
On Andaman Dive Adventures again - I really liked this company. When I was shopping around, I emailed the top 5 dive outfits on tripadvisor in Ko Lanta. I picked this one because they had good pricing but also because I got a good vibe from them while emailing them. I was not incorrect. On the day I arrived, they tried to pick me up from the ferry stop (they weren't able to because of a significant ferry delay but they tried very hard). Then they worked hard to get me on a boat to Hin Muang/Daeng during my 3 days of diving which I really appreciated. Then in the end because I dove with them for 3 days I got a package discount and a free T-shirt which is fantastic because I already wanted to buy a T-shirt. They have a great name - Andaman Dive Adventure - that about sums it up! Definitely recommmend!
No comments:
Post a Comment