Tuesday, November 16, 2004 (Mariner-1 – Similan Islands -
Thailand)
Departing Koh Lanta for our first foray into the
world of live-aboard diving. Meeting familiar friends. A two-hour ferry to
Krabi. The wacky races across country. Not yet started and already planning the
next live-aboard in the busy dive shop. In need of booties. Looking for a way to
pamper ourselves after the live-aboard. Topping up on snacks and batteries.
Where did our backpacks go? A mini monsoon as we boarded the
Mariner-1.
Day 253 (63). Today is finally the day when we
get to go on our very first live-aboard, but not before getting from Koh Lanta
to Khao Lak a little farther up the West coast of Thailand. Our trip today
started with a complimentary truck ride from our resort to the pier where our
ferry was already waiting for us to board. Before we did so, I walked a few
minutes from the pier back into the main town to withdraw some more money from
the ATM. We will at least need to eat an evening meal in Khao Lak and we only
have just enough money to pay the balance we owe for the
live-aboard.
I’m not sure if it
was exactly the same boat that brought us here but it looked very much like it.
Before the boat departed, I noticed that we were moored up besides the Blue
Planet dive boat that we have been diving from. I saw Moni, our dive master, and
we exchanged contact details. As the boat was pulling away, I caught the eye of
the Dutch man that saw the whale shark and motioned to him to find another. He
motioned back that he would try to do so and photograph it for me. I’ll
never forget that one big fish that got away from
me.
The two-hour boat trip to Krabi
was calm and uneventful and we arrived at the dock to be greeted by the throng
of transportation company reps all shouting out the name of their companies with
disembarking passengers slowly filtering into smaller groups to be shuttled away
each time a minibus or coach was full. The driver of our coach got quite
agitated when Sandy refused to allow her main backpack to be placed at the
bottom of what was going to be a huge pile of other backpacks. It took a couple
of minutes for him to calm down but she ended up keeping her bag with her in the
end.
Our small coach was loaded to
the hilt with almost no standing room over. Just why they insisted on packing
quite so many people in at a time was a bit of a mystery but of we went for the
five-minute ride to the next transfer point, the same place where the three
young ladies were still skilfully conning fresh arrivals into expensive places
to stay on the islands. We had to wait for just a few minutes before our
air-conditioned minibus was full and we departed. We didn’t get too far
before we stopped and were told to get out and wait for a short while in a
coffee shop. Apparently not everyone on our minivan was heading for Khao Lak and
this next transit point was where we were again to be redistributed into
different vehicles. As it turned out, our vehicle was the same air-conditioned
minivan we just arrived in and just when every last seat was packed, mostly with
German package tourists, we set off for Khao Lak. Although our driver was not
the sort of complete maniac on the roads that we’ve come to expect from
Thailand, we quite clearly heard the tires screeching as the minivan careered
around the hairpin bends of the steep mountain passes. There had been some rain
with the roads being very wet and although nobody voiced it out load, I think
everybody in the van was wondering just what the sate of our tires and brakes
were.
Bald tires or not, we arrived
in the middle of the very small town of Khao Lak after a couple of hours of
white-knuckle driving. Along with every other passenger in the van, we were let
off with our luggage by the side of the road, exactly opposite the Sea Dragon
dive centre, the company with whom we will be diving over the next few
days.
It was quite busy in the dive
shop and the whole place seemed very disorganised to our untrained eyes. After
removing our shoes and walking in, however, we were soon latched onto by one of
the many staff there and the ball started to roll. After figuring out who we
were and on which boat we were booked to dive on, we next had to complete a few
forms and get ourselves measured for our equipment. Pretty much all of the staff
are Europeans, with Germany, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Austria all
being represented by someone.
There
are actually two groups of islands off the West coast here that are worth
visiting. We are already doing the Similan Islands but after learning some more
about them, we are now also considering a second live-aboard around the Surin
Islands. To offset for the additional expense of this, we may forego a few days
of travelling through Laos and possibly even Cambodia. Laos was always going to
be an optional extra country and barring Angkor Wat at Siem Reep, there is
nothing else that we want to specifically see in Cambodia either. Since diving
is so cheap here in Thailand, we want to maximise the advantage of our being
here. We’ve been told that we will get a ten percent discount for the next
live-aboard as repeat customers as well as another five percent for paying cash.
This brings the total of a three-day three-night Surin live-aboard down to just
11,800B (€227) each. With nine dives, that’s a total of just
€25 per dive. However, that also includes our accommodation and living
expenses for the three days, which saves us up to another €270 so this
brings the actual cost of the dives down to just €15 each per dive. We are
very much enjoying the diving here in Thailand and it seems a shame to miss up
on the opportunity to get more diving in at such a cheap
price.
We had a few hours to kill
before our boat, the Mariner-1, was due to depart. Neither of us had eaten
breakfast so we strolled along the one main road to see about where to get
something to eat. There are quite a few dive shops here and we went into a few
of them to inquire about prices, just for the sake of comparison. It seems that
most of the operators here are fairly comparatively priced so the two discounts
that we will receive from Red Dragon makes them the cheapest option for us here.
There are also very few operators that actually have a live-aboard for just the
Surin Islands anyway.
There are two
types of fin that you can wear - the all-encompassing foot type and the strap-on
type. My feet are slightly wider than the average foot at their widest and the
all-encompassing rubber moult type are always either too long or too tight
across the top and as a result, I opted to go for the strap-on type back at the
dive shop when we were getting measured up. Several of the staff members at the
time told me that it would be advisable to get a pair of dive boots to wear with
the strap-on fins as they would otherwise be very uncomfortable. I wore these
type of fins in bear feet when we were diving in Koh Tao and it wasn’t a
problem so I was reluctant to follow the staffs advice on this. However, my feet
also have a tendency to drop in the water and this makes it difficult for me to
maintain a good, horizontal profile when diving. The dive boats are slightly
positively buoyant and this may help me with my ability to remain horizontal so
I decided to buy a pair after
all.
Whilst in one of the dive shops,
we spoke with a Swede who was telling us a bout a couple of decent wreck dives
not far from here. They are only accessible by one of the local long-tail boats
or speedboat and we are considering this
also.
The Mariner-1 returns to port
at around six in the evening on the final day of diving and this doesn’t
leave us much time to arrange accommodation. If we are going to do the Surin
Islands live-aboard, and this is by no means a foregone conclusion yet, we will
need to spend a few days here in Khao Lak before the boat leaves. We walked down
to near the beach and followed the small road for a while in search of some nice
accommodation. Some of the places are really plush and well out of our budget
range but we decided to have a look at a couple of them anyway. There was one in
particular that looked very tranquil very a beautiful pool and proper hotel-like
rooms with modern beds and bathrooms. Although still relatively cheap compared
to Western standards, the 1,800B (€34,60) per night price tag was outside
our budget range. We’ve thus far been typically paying just around 400B
(€7,70) per night to a room. When we first set out on this trip, we told
ourselves that every now and then, we would allow ourselves the luxury of
spending a few nights in a more comfortable place – a sort of holiday from
the holiday, if you will. The more we looked at this one resort, the more we
liked it and eventually decided that it would be a nice to have a few days of
pampering after the tiring live-aboard so we undertook to come back and stay
here for three nights at the end of our live-aboard. On the way back into the
main drag in the middle of Khao Lak, we were both giddy with excitement at
having a real hotel room to look forward to. A nice, soft bed, a balcony and a
fully equipped bathroom are divine luxuries compared to what we are used to and
it will be a very welcome few days when we finish with the live-aboard. You know
you are a budget traveller when you start to get excided about staying in a
place that actually provides toilet paper with a flush
toilet.
One of the staff members back
at Sea Dragon had told us to stock up on snacks for the voyage, just in case we
didn’t like the food too much. That clearly applies to us so we found a
supermarket and went to town. It wasn’t long before my arm was dragging
with the weight of the basket full of biscuits, crisps and various other
sundries. I also needed to get reserve batteries for the strobe and they had a
stand full of a new kind of battery that I thought might be worth a try. These
‘base nickel’ batteries are marketed for usage with flash cameras so
I thought I’d give them a try. We will be doing four dives on day one,
three on day two and two on day three. We’ll be using the underwater
camera strobe for each dive and I bought twelve of these batteries so that I
could refresh them after every day of diving. We aren’t actually sure how
long each set of four AA batteries last with the strobe since I’ve been
changing them after every day’s worth of diving anyway. We now have quite
a collection of used but probably quite full AA batteries that are becoming
quite heavy. I’d like to re-use them but I’m not sure if it is worth
the risk, just in case I loose power half way through a
dive.
A little farther up from the
supermarket, there was a fruit stall selling slices of various fruits that
I’ve never tried before. They were offering free samples so in keeping
with my recent behavioural change of trying new fruits, I gave a couple of these
a try. It was a very new sensation and I was quite pleased with the taste but I
couldn’t communicate with the woman to learn what they were called so I
have no idea how to ask for them again in the
future.
We had earlier passed what
looked like a very nice restaurant, and indeed was recommended also by the staff
at sea Dragon, but it was closed until six in the evening. It was now almost six
so we headed back that way to see if they would allow us in already. Fortunately
they did, for by now we were both completely famished. There are a lot of
Germans here and this was a German restaurant that was run by two very stern
looking old German women. The menu was in English and German and there were such
things as Wiener Schnitzel on the menu. I didn’t have to look further than
that and Sandy latched immediately on to the steak. It took its time coming out
but it was certainly worth the effort in the end. My schnitzel was the largest
I’ve ever seen and even with my gagging hunger, I could not get through it
all. We may very well have to go back there again sometime
soon.
We still had about an hour
before our transportation came to take to the dock so we showed the crowd of
staff and guests there our ‘best of’ collection of underwater
photographs. They went down extremely well and even the people that are familiar
with underwater photography themselves agreed that we have some absolutely
stunning shots with a very high overall
quality.
At the behest of one of the
dive masters, we moved our backpacks from the back room, where we had left them
earlier, out to the front of the building so that they would be on hand for when
we were taken to the dock. We lost track of time after showing our photos
slideshow and I suddenly noticed that our bags we no longer out front where we
left them. Unfortunately, nobody in the shop could explain this and we both got
very panicky for a while, as there was another boat leaving shortly before ours.
Those passengers had already been taken to be boarded and it was quite
conceivable that our bags may have been taken by mistake to the other boat. It
wasn’t just the photography equipment that I was worried about. Our entire
lives are in those two backpacks and having them move around the Andaman Sea for
three or four days without us is not something that I was keen to allow to
happen. The staff already had their hands full with making all the last minute
arrangements and getting all the people and equipment onto the boats but after a
half hour of frantic calling around, it transpired that the same dive master
that told me to move the bags to begin with had put our bags onto the gear truck
to be loaded onto our boat. It was actually a very thoughtful thing for him to
do but in hectic rush, he had neglected to tall anybody, ourselves included,
that he had done this. I told the woman manning the phones that I
shouldn’t forget to ‘thank’ him later for his
helpfulness.
Shortly before our ride
arrived, the heavens opened up with full force and it didn’t stop raining
until after we arrived at the dock. It was like several months of monsoon had
waited to fall right at that moment. The road from the dive shop to the dock was
very dark and windy but this didn’t stop the driver from driving flatfoot
all the way to the dock, swerving down some very dark and winding roads in the
process. Between the heavy rain, the pitch-blackness of the open truck and the
hair-raising speeds, we were all extremely grateful to arrive all in one
piece.
The boat is quite large
compared to all the other diving boats we’ve seen so far and we have a
very comfortable double bunk cabin with, most importantly, an electrical outlet.
There is a lower deck that houses the engines and machine room, none of which we
divers got to see. Above that at the lowest level that we have access to is the
main living quarters deck. There are five, compact, double occupancy cabins on
either side of the corridor with the crew quarters located at the front of the
boat. At the aft end of this deck is the dive equipment area where all the tanks
and other dive paraphernalia sits. This is where the divers gear up, small
groups at a time, and enter and exit the water. Between the cabins and the kit
area is the galley and three toilet come shower cabins, each with hot running
water, a wash basin and a Western-style flush toilet. Above our cabins is the
main deck where all the divers generally hang out between dives. In the centre
of the boat is an enclosed, air-conditioned, dry cabin. Here, there is a TV,
stereo, some cushions and mats and so on and with its air-conditioning is a
pretty good place to escape the heat of the sun. Behind this large and open plan
cabin is the eating area. Several permanently affixed tables and benches provide
enough space for twenty people to comfortably sit and eat, read, write logbooks
or whatever. The top deck is one, large, open space that is half covered and is
the place to either lie on a sun bed or swing in a hammock. The entire vessel
has a rather disorienting concave shape along the entire length of it. By
walking from one end to the other, you will first go slowly down and then slowly
up again by the time you reach the other end. As a result of this warping, all
the swing and sliding doors have a very odd shape to them and you never really
know when you are perfectly horizontal or not. The constant rocking and swaying
of the boat add to this confusion and people tend to waddle from side to side
instead of walking in a straight
line.
Shortly after we all boarded
and explored all the boats nooks and crannies, the dive coordinator assembling
everybody on the main deck for a briefing. We were given the low-down on all the
areas of the boat and he went over the itinerary for the next few days along
with pointing out all the necessary safety issues and reminded us all of how to
dive safely and successfully. He was working his way methodically through a
checklist of things to brief us on and it was encouraging to see such good
organisation compared to the chaotic atmosphere back at the dive centre. Now
quite late, there was little else left to do but sink into our bunks and sleep
for the duration of the trip out to the Similan Islands. Our diving adventure
would commence before breakfast tomorrow morning.
Posted: Tue - November 16, 2004 at 05:12 PM