fishchaser
Registered
I've never dove in the Similans before, so I cannot compare it to what it was like before "the wave" as they say there. We dove islands 5-9, plus Koh Bon to the North. Most dives were on the protected East side, but some on the West including the newly re-opened dive site "Fantasy Reef". Dive sites included Koh Bon, Bommies (#9, night dive), Christmas Point (#9), Fantasy Reef (#8), East of Eden (#7), and Anitia's Reef (between #5 & #6), Inside 5 (#5, night dive), Deep Six (#7), Beacon Reef (#8), and Three Trees (#9).
The diving was beautiful. Saw tons of beautiful life such as manta rays, white tip sharks, leopard sharks, barracuda, and many other smaller species. Took over 300 photos on 9 day dives. PLENTY to see. Stonefish, tons of lionfish, morrays (including honeycomb), moorish idols, sweetlips, batfish, octopus, banded sea snakes, skunk anomenie fish, spiny lobster, clown triggerfish, Tiger Cowrie, garden eels, unicorn fish, and countless other species that I have no clue of what their names are (I'm a neubie).
Visibility was about 8-20m (24-60') with an average of about 14m (40'). It was good, but I didn't think it was awesome. Vis was never bad.
There was some damage to some of the reefs. I did see a few table coral that were snapped off. I did see a lot of coral rubble, but looking closer, they didn't seem to have new, fresh breaks. They seemed to have rounded edges where they were broken, which to me means they were broken a long time ago and have rounded the break with time.
Most of the dive boats are not currently running their normal schedules, and their schedules seem to change nearly daily. So, if you have anything scheduled, you should check back often with your dive operation to ensure everything is still on plan.
Airline operations are also changing their schedules to Phuket, so check back with them. I flew Air Asia, and when I checked in at Singapore for my flight to Phuket, they said they were cancelling service to Phuket while I was there in Phuket. I needed to purchase a one-way ticket on another airline to return to Singapore. There were 7 people on my flight to Phuket on a jet that holds 120+. My return trip on Tiger has 18 people on a jet that held 180.
The dive boat I was on was the South Siam 3. Price was about 12,500 baht ($315 US) for 3 days, 2 nights. This included 11, yes 11, dives. 3 dives (including one night dive) the first day, 5 dives the 2nd day (including one night dive), and 3 dives the last day before having to return. Wakeup call was 6:45am, with a first dive at 7:30am. The night diving was at 7:30pm.
There were only 12 divers on the dive boat, myself included. Normally this boat dives 50-70, with 32 of them LOB. I can't imagine what it would be like with that many divers on one site and on the dive deck, but it was great having only 12. And, for us 12 divers, there were 3 DM's on each dive. Most of the time there was 3 of us with our DM, but a few dives he had 5. One DM had only 2, whereas the 3rd DM had as many as 7, as they were all travelling together and wanted to dive together.
My DM was great. He carried a camera on every dive and went slowly, as he himself was taking photos. He was my buddy, so it was great slow diving for photos. He was great with pointing out the obscure things, and didn't go overboard on his noisemaker with the more common stuff.
The boat was very clean on all decks, the heads, and in the cabins. The cabins were well air conditioned and of adequate size. The food was completley awesome. Well, it wasn't gourmet, but it was really good, local foods and tons and tons of it. They fed us a meal or hot snacks about every 3 hours, or about 6 times per day. It seems that you'd get done with a dive, go up and have something to eat, and the next thing you know it was another dive briefing followed immediately by another dive. Sometimes it didn't seem like enough SI, especially on the day with 5 dives, but the computer never got close to deco. Typical SI was 1.5-3 hrs.
Typical depth was 50-60 feet (15-18m) average for a dive (that's an integrated over time average), with most dives with a max depth of 90-ish feet (27m). Deepest dive was 118' (36m). Shallowest was a night dive at 36' average, 53' max (11m/16m). Temperature for every dive, at every depth in the entire water column from 0 to 118 feet was 83 degrees F, or 28.3C. Air temp every day was 80F/26.7C. Every morning was a light overcast which burned off by late morning. Seas were flat calm (not quite glass) with an ocassional light breeze. Definitely didn't need dramamine on this one.
I stayed at two different hotels. The first was "Karon Place", on Karon beach. Price was 1600 baht ($40 US) and was very nice and had a swimming pool. Karon beach is a small town. I guess I wouldn't want to stay here too long, as you'd run out of cool stuff, unless you would like the quiet beach. After the LOB, for my pre-fly SI, I stayed in the harder (tsunami) hit Patong Beach, at the 1500 baht ($38 US) Patong Street Inn for two nites. It wasn't as nice as the first place, and lacked a pool, but it was adequate. Food was very good and cheap. I enjoyed several curries at one of the Indian restaurants for a good price. Best price was at Mama noi's in Karon, where I got a dinner and a beer for 110 baht (under $3 US), of which 40 baht ($1) was the beer. And I was stuffed afterwards. Beer was 40-80 baht everywhere ($1-2). The meals I had in Patong were about 400-500 baht ($10-12.50 for dinner, including two 80 baht beers each time). I'd also HIGHLY recommend the "Dream package" at the "Let's Relax" spa towards the South end of town. It was 700 baht ($17.50) for a 1.5 hour massage. This is a higher price than other streetside "vendors", but it's a high quality place where you are treated like royalty, not a corner dive. I had one each night I was there. In fact, I fell asleep 3 times during my first night's massage.
The tsunami. The Thai call it "the wave". Like other reports here, it is true that Phuket was not hit that hard at all. Yes, there was loss of life and property and it's very, very sad. But overall, Phuket was very lucky and much of it is contributed to solid construction and good infrastructure. The beaches were totally clean. I didn't see any damage in Karon. In Patong, which was harder hit, the businesses closest to the beach were badly damaged. About 95% of the businesses were closed/damaged. Many were boarded up, some were just in open rambles, and others were actively being repaired. I was surprised to see the high dollar establishments McDonald's and Starbucks were not being repaired. If you stuck to the main road, you'd never know anything has happened, except for maybe the number of tourists. Since I've never been to Phuket before, I don't know how crowded it normally is, but it seemed fairly busy on the street, although all of the restaurants seemed empty. I did not see missing persons posters anywhere except for at the airport.
Overall a great experience and I'd do it again. Well worth it.
The diving was beautiful. Saw tons of beautiful life such as manta rays, white tip sharks, leopard sharks, barracuda, and many other smaller species. Took over 300 photos on 9 day dives. PLENTY to see. Stonefish, tons of lionfish, morrays (including honeycomb), moorish idols, sweetlips, batfish, octopus, banded sea snakes, skunk anomenie fish, spiny lobster, clown triggerfish, Tiger Cowrie, garden eels, unicorn fish, and countless other species that I have no clue of what their names are (I'm a neubie).
Visibility was about 8-20m (24-60') with an average of about 14m (40'). It was good, but I didn't think it was awesome. Vis was never bad.
There was some damage to some of the reefs. I did see a few table coral that were snapped off. I did see a lot of coral rubble, but looking closer, they didn't seem to have new, fresh breaks. They seemed to have rounded edges where they were broken, which to me means they were broken a long time ago and have rounded the break with time.
Most of the dive boats are not currently running their normal schedules, and their schedules seem to change nearly daily. So, if you have anything scheduled, you should check back often with your dive operation to ensure everything is still on plan.
Airline operations are also changing their schedules to Phuket, so check back with them. I flew Air Asia, and when I checked in at Singapore for my flight to Phuket, they said they were cancelling service to Phuket while I was there in Phuket. I needed to purchase a one-way ticket on another airline to return to Singapore. There were 7 people on my flight to Phuket on a jet that holds 120+. My return trip on Tiger has 18 people on a jet that held 180.
The dive boat I was on was the South Siam 3. Price was about 12,500 baht ($315 US) for 3 days, 2 nights. This included 11, yes 11, dives. 3 dives (including one night dive) the first day, 5 dives the 2nd day (including one night dive), and 3 dives the last day before having to return. Wakeup call was 6:45am, with a first dive at 7:30am. The night diving was at 7:30pm.
There were only 12 divers on the dive boat, myself included. Normally this boat dives 50-70, with 32 of them LOB. I can't imagine what it would be like with that many divers on one site and on the dive deck, but it was great having only 12. And, for us 12 divers, there were 3 DM's on each dive. Most of the time there was 3 of us with our DM, but a few dives he had 5. One DM had only 2, whereas the 3rd DM had as many as 7, as they were all travelling together and wanted to dive together.
My DM was great. He carried a camera on every dive and went slowly, as he himself was taking photos. He was my buddy, so it was great slow diving for photos. He was great with pointing out the obscure things, and didn't go overboard on his noisemaker with the more common stuff.
The boat was very clean on all decks, the heads, and in the cabins. The cabins were well air conditioned and of adequate size. The food was completley awesome. Well, it wasn't gourmet, but it was really good, local foods and tons and tons of it. They fed us a meal or hot snacks about every 3 hours, or about 6 times per day. It seems that you'd get done with a dive, go up and have something to eat, and the next thing you know it was another dive briefing followed immediately by another dive. Sometimes it didn't seem like enough SI, especially on the day with 5 dives, but the computer never got close to deco. Typical SI was 1.5-3 hrs.
Typical depth was 50-60 feet (15-18m) average for a dive (that's an integrated over time average), with most dives with a max depth of 90-ish feet (27m). Deepest dive was 118' (36m). Shallowest was a night dive at 36' average, 53' max (11m/16m). Temperature for every dive, at every depth in the entire water column from 0 to 118 feet was 83 degrees F, or 28.3C. Air temp every day was 80F/26.7C. Every morning was a light overcast which burned off by late morning. Seas were flat calm (not quite glass) with an ocassional light breeze. Definitely didn't need dramamine on this one.
I stayed at two different hotels. The first was "Karon Place", on Karon beach. Price was 1600 baht ($40 US) and was very nice and had a swimming pool. Karon beach is a small town. I guess I wouldn't want to stay here too long, as you'd run out of cool stuff, unless you would like the quiet beach. After the LOB, for my pre-fly SI, I stayed in the harder (tsunami) hit Patong Beach, at the 1500 baht ($38 US) Patong Street Inn for two nites. It wasn't as nice as the first place, and lacked a pool, but it was adequate. Food was very good and cheap. I enjoyed several curries at one of the Indian restaurants for a good price. Best price was at Mama noi's in Karon, where I got a dinner and a beer for 110 baht (under $3 US), of which 40 baht ($1) was the beer. And I was stuffed afterwards. Beer was 40-80 baht everywhere ($1-2). The meals I had in Patong were about 400-500 baht ($10-12.50 for dinner, including two 80 baht beers each time). I'd also HIGHLY recommend the "Dream package" at the "Let's Relax" spa towards the South end of town. It was 700 baht ($17.50) for a 1.5 hour massage. This is a higher price than other streetside "vendors", but it's a high quality place where you are treated like royalty, not a corner dive. I had one each night I was there. In fact, I fell asleep 3 times during my first night's massage.
The tsunami. The Thai call it "the wave". Like other reports here, it is true that Phuket was not hit that hard at all. Yes, there was loss of life and property and it's very, very sad. But overall, Phuket was very lucky and much of it is contributed to solid construction and good infrastructure. The beaches were totally clean. I didn't see any damage in Karon. In Patong, which was harder hit, the businesses closest to the beach were badly damaged. About 95% of the businesses were closed/damaged. Many were boarded up, some were just in open rambles, and others were actively being repaired. I was surprised to see the high dollar establishments McDonald's and Starbucks were not being repaired. If you stuck to the main road, you'd never know anything has happened, except for maybe the number of tourists. Since I've never been to Phuket before, I don't know how crowded it normally is, but it seemed fairly busy on the street, although all of the restaurants seemed empty. I did not see missing persons posters anywhere except for at the airport.
Overall a great experience and I'd do it again. Well worth it.
