Due to Chinese new year, which was last weekend, flying around in Asia is challenging. For example, almost all flights from Phuket to Bangkok are sold-out or quite expensive for few next days. So we did a bit of googling where to go and decided on Philippines.
Tomorrow we will fly to Singapore and 17.2. we fly to Cebu, Philippines. Plan is to stay for three weeks (max you can without a visa) and dive in few of the islands there. Should be pretty good diving :) This is our first time in Philippines.
We flew with Malaysian Airlines from SGN via KUL to HKT. Took us six hours, but it was the cheapest option. Phuket was a good destination for us for few reasons. First we wanted to meet Olli's colleague Paivi and her family there for dinner. Second, Maija's wetsuit needed some repair and third we wanted to go diving to Similan islands which are easily accessible from the nearby town of Khao Lak.
We stayed in Phuket for only few nights and after having dinner with Paivi we took a local bus to Khao Lak. Still the same day we shopped around trying to get a liveaboard booked for the next day. It was very easy afterall. We chose Khao Lak Scuba Adventures and their Manta Queen III boat for a 4D/3N liveaboard. The concept is very good, but perhaps there are some improvements to be made for the implementation.
MQ3 is a big and comfortable diving boat that cruises in the Similan Islands. There is a speedboat going there and back every day so you can only do two dives during a day if you come back to KL in the afternoon the same day. But we stayed of the MQ3 for three nights and did 14 dives during that time. All the diveguides we had were pretty good, some excellent. We saw all kinds of cool stuff like many octopuses, seasnakes, scorpionfish, etc. and I would say that diving in Similan is slightly above average on our scale. Visibility is over 20m all the time. Sometimes more than 35m.
Right after the MQ3 trip we booked another trip with KLSA. This time on their Manta Queen 4 (they like to write it IIII). This one is a traditional liveaboard in the sense that you start and end the trip with it instead of any speedboat trips to and from it.
MQ4 was a 3D/3N trip with 10 dives included. We left in the late evening to Koh Bon where we had the first two dives the next morning. We also dove at Koh Tachai, Surin Islands, Richileu Rock and one wreck near the mainland.
Richileu Rock is said to be the best dive site in Thailand. Maybe it was twenty years ago, but it really wasn't anything SO special now. Lot's of nice soft coral and cool small critters like seahorse, harlequin shrimp, etc. But if this is the best Thailand can offer, then we are a bit disappointed but only because it is so hyped. Anyways it is above average so all good. We did three dives there and the current was stronger every dive. It was really like in a washing machine at times, current going all directions including up and down, and clearly not suitable for beginners.
The good side of strong currents is that they improve the probability of seeing something BIG. Like in Koh Tachai where we also had strong currents. There we saw the biggest manta ray ever. It was 5m wide and it stayed with us for 11 minutes. This time Olli had the camera with him so you can find some evidence in the video below. At Koh Bon and Tachai we saw also Leopard Sharks. They are really cute creatures.
So I guess we could say that the liveaboard trips were quite successful. Then it was time to go back to Phuket where the idea was to get Maija a new wetsuit. The old one has seen more than a hundred dives already and is now too cold for her. Olli dives without a wetsuit and even so the water is too warm for him (28-30C degrees), but Maija gets cold in her 3mm wetsuit after 20 minutes. So we went to a wetsuit shop and, long story short, Maija now has a CUSTOM MADE 5mm wetsuit. It cost 160e which is 100e LESS than her old off-the-rack wetsuit. Now, that is a good deal!
We also got a few more dive gear for us like a compass, dive torches, SMB and pointer sticks (also good for making noise for attention when you bang them on your tank), etc.
Making the wetsuit took a few days and so we decided to shop around Chalong bay for some diving the next two days. There are many diveshops here and we visited maybe five of them to ask what kind of trips they do. The last one we visited was Kiwidiver. It is a small shop but very friendly and you could feel the professionalism entering the shop. So we reserved a trip to Racha Noi island with them for the day after tomorrow. While we were paying Olli noticed their advert on "beach diving" and got curious. Where could there be good diving off the beach in Phuket? Kevin, the owner, said that Kata beach had quite good diving especially if you like macro stuff (small but interesting creatures). We were skeptical but had nothing else to do the next day so we decided to give it a shot. And boy was it good. We were really amazed! Right off the Kata beach, you know the beach where Aurinkomatkat does trips, we simply walked past all the sunbathers to the sea, emptied our BCD and started discovering all kinds of animals on the sandy bottom. Our max depth was just 8m and divetime was 1h30min/dive!! We did two dives and saw all kinds of cool stuff. Olli didn't have the camera with him, but our instuctor/diveguide did and you can see the photos here.
The next day we did the boat trip to Racha Noi where we did two dives plus one on Racha Yai (we were there in December). Again some really good diving and I found a really weird nudibranch for which our diveguide was really enthusiastic about. I'm sure he will add those photos also to the facebook soon so keep an eye on this page. Yeah, we don't have facebook pages but seems you can't escape facebook anyways...
So what next? Don't know. Diving somewhere for sure, but where... Tomorrow we will head to... We don't know where but we will let you know either as soon as we figure it out or after we have already been there :)
We have got good tips about divesites around the world while talking to people on the boats and so on. These are on the table for SEAsia:
Philippines: Many islands there have good diving.
Malaysia: Perhentian and Tioman Island. We did OWD in Perhentian six years ago so we want to see how the diving is nowadays. At least it is cheap. We did AOWD in Tioman island about four years ago so it is about good time to go back there also :) Sipadan is always and option, but might be too expensive for us. It sill remains the #1 dive place on our list.
Indonesia: Komodo seems to be a must do. Then there are Togean islands, Bunaken and Lembeh strait in Sulawesi. Raja Ampat is probably too expensive for us this time (maybe next year ;). Bali/Gili/Lombok might be an option but we will wait for news about the dive quality from our friend.
If you have any tips where to go diving around here at this time of the year, then please tell us!
- Maija & Olli
PS. Sorry Hannu, couldn't find the coffee video ;)
PS2. Sorry Paivi, we didn't take our phone with us to the liveaboards and we remembered only there that we were supposed to send you sms about our plans... Sorry
PS3. Another example of world being small: We saw Ashley in MQ3. She was our Rescue Diver instructor in Utila half a year ago. We had no idea we would see her there so it was a really pleasant surprise!
PS4. Aino and Jukka wrote their version of their trip to SEAsia. We added it to the earlier blog post. Check it out!
PS5. Pictures from Raya Noi/Yai trip here.
You can see the Big Buddha from our Hostel (7-Inn, highly recommended.)
We rented a moped for 200THB/day so we could take a closer look at the big buddha.
Driving in Phuket is very easy.
Muchos turisticos...
But the views are good. Here you see Chalong Bay.
The big white buddha again.
They also had a smaller golden buddha there.
Buying banana pancake after dinner with Paivi, Marko and Olivia (can you find everyone in this picture ;)
Lot's of seafans in Similan Islands.
Peacock mantis shrimp
Scorpionfish are good at camouflage!
Manta Queen 3 is very comfortable. This picture is from the dining deck after the daytrippers have left.
Olli chelaxing between dives. Koh Bon island is behind.
And finally. Video summary of the diving in Similan. Watch it in fullscreen and until the end! :)
