When I'd arrived and found Similan Diving Safaris, I paid and got outfitted for the trip. The beauty of arriving in the morning despite a 4pm departure time was that I had first pick of the gear. I found a wetsuit that fit like a glove, and a mask and flippers that seemed to as well. (More on that later.)
I introduced myself to Thierry and Fokke, French and Dutch divers, respectively, who had done the trip twice already and signed on for a third, they'd loved it so much. Then, while I still had the chance, I ran the length of the main beach and back again and found an ideal yoga platform, perched looking out over the water.
By the time I'd finished stretching, our departure time had come. When we reached the dock, we passed a wreck from the 2004 tsunami, still sitting ashore.
As we boarded the Dolphin Queen, the others complimented me on how lightly I'd packed: little more than swimwear and two bottles of red wine.
Upon boarding, I stored my things in the charming, practical cabin I shared with Sophie (Danish), Maia (Czech), and Mark (French), who would also make up my dive group.
Afterward, I returned to the main floor to check out the fabled communal food area, which truly merited inspection. The cokes, beers, and juices in the fridge required purchase, but we had free run of everything else. Tea, coffee, bread, jams, peanut butter, and cookies awaited anyone looking for a snack. Electrolyte-replenishing powders, of which we were expected to take two a day, sat ready on the center island. Books on diving, fish identification, and travel in Thailand stood on the shelves.
After I'd explored the dive platform, the quarters of Captain Tid, and the roof deck above, I simply sat still, observing the goings-on around me. The last of the voyage's preparations fascinated me. I'd wondered whether or not we would stop for gas along the way, and my query was soon answered when this truck pulled up with enough for the whole journey.
That evening, cooks Ya and Gay served a Thai meal so good I had trouble believing it had been prepared in the tiny one room galley downstairs. After our head diving instructor, Stu, had debriefed us on the trip, Swiss friends Sebastian and Steven joined Thierry, Sophie and me in a game of Asshole, with Sophie winning each hand and Sebastian always losing. As we played, we watched the crew manically fix a busted propeller in order to get us on our way in time.
I couldn't believe, upon waking in my bunk the next morning, how comfortably I'd spent the night. I'd had a wee bit of nausea before falling asleep, but then I was out! From the hallway, a chorus of "Under the Sea" rang out in a loud Northern English accent. Stu sang atonally as he rapped the cabin doors, periodically interjecting, "Wakey, wakey!"
I took advantage of my small head start and darted into a restroom to take care of my morning routine before the queue formed. When I climbed the steps to the main deck, few others had made it up yet, but the galley crew had already set out a lovely breakfast of fruit, tea, toast, jams, peanut butter and nutella. Francisco, a dive instructor from Chile, had put on his morning playlist, starting, as he would each day, with the perfectly-suited, universally-beloved Hawaiian version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
When everyone had finally wandered up and filled their plates, Stu began the first briefing, imparting essential safety information and letting us know how long we'd stay down, to what depth we would go, and what we might expect to see on the site of Anita's Reef.
Downstairs, each of us had a crate and station set up for us with our gear at the ready. After we'd layered on our suits, booties, weights, and goggles and strapped on our regulators and tanks, we'd do our buddy checks and then waddle to the platform, where native-Khao-Lak boat boys Po and Liek, would fasten on our fins.
Then, in the water we went! Tam, the only local dive master onboard, led our group masterfully. No sooner had we descended than we swam into a veritable cornucopia of underwater life.
Within the first few minutes, we'd seen lion fish...,
...bannerfish, and ember parrotfish, and as we went on, we saw moorish idols, gorgeous coral, giant gregorian fans..,
...giant trevally, and kuhl's stingrays.
We surfaced exhilarated, exhausted, and famished. Luckily what I'd taken for breakfast before the dive turned out to have been merely an early-morning appetizer. I'd forgotten that they'd asked us to pre-order as much eggs, ham, sausage, french toast, pancakes or rice soup as we wanted the previous night, but everyone's choices lay on the table when we returned, along with more jam and the like.
After meal number two, while most everyone else took a raft over to the beach, Stu sat me down to go over the Advanced Open Water Diver Training I had just decided to integrate into the trip. As a bonus, I'd get to use one of the shop's dive computers for free and be able to monitor my dives more closely.
I spent the first half of our second dive-- at Deep Six just around the bend from Anita's Reef-- practicing buoyancy and navigation with Stu before we rejoined the group for more fantastic fish-viewing. In addition to more of what we'd seen the previous day, trumpetfish and surgeonfish abounded.
You might recognize this cousin of Dory from "Finding Nemo" as one of the latter. Then of course, there were numerous cousins of Nemo himself amongst the many clownfish we saw.
But my Pixar marine education aside, I'd never even heard of most of the creatures we saw in droves: nudibranches (colorful sea slugs), crown of thorns starfish, coral-handed cleaner shrimp, and dozens of others. Off in the distance, a leopard shark passed by, totally indifferent to us.
Stu let me know through hand signals that he was pleased with my diving and would take me through a trickier section of the reef. He led me through a narrow gap between three abutted coral walls, unaware of the surge on the other side. As I came through, with barely enough room for me and my tank, the surge caught me and through me upward. My tank banged against the rock, and blood seeped out of my hand where I'd hit the coral.
Eventually, we ascended into a light rain, which continued as we ate yet another sumptuous meal that made me anxious about the fate of my waist line. But the dives took everything out of me, leaving me exhausted and famished, so I resigned myself to my heightened caloric intake and settled in for a post-lunch nap on one of the deck benches. Besides, I thought, eating large quantities of food this good hardly merited sympathy.
For our third dive, we stayed in the Similan Islands, but hit a new site: West of Eden, which featured a reef octopus..,
...oriental sweetlips..,
and big thermaclines-- channels of water of drastically different temperatures that ripple like a sci-fi time warp effect.
Afterward, we had a snack of cheese, olives, crackers and dragon fruit...
while I watched Ya braid the boat photographer Lia's crazy long hair into a nomenclaturally-appropriate Princess Leia braid.
It seemed like we'd barely finished our snack when they served a dinner of cashew chicken and squid salad. (I know I'm droning on about the food, but I couldn't fathom how much there would be nor how good it would be!) I made the mistake of taking Thierry at his word when he suggested that I have some of his off his plate and got a death stare and a perfectly serious, "Don't touch my food" in response. Nice guy, but strangely territorial about his meals.
Just after sunset, I experienced the thrill of first night dive at Beacon Reef. I expected to freeze up with fear, but I felt nothing but excitement. We jumped in with our flashlights on and sank to the bottom, unable to see anything outside of the 5-meter long beams in front of each of us. The same fish we'd seen earlier that day looked eerily wan without the sun's light, but no less fascinating, and far fewer showed themselves. Virginie, the French dive instructor, had taken me into her group for the evening and administered my navigation test halfway through the dive. Only when I had turned my back on the group, to swim into the black on my own did my nerves get the better of me. I still managed to swim out and back on the correct heading, but I did so in spite of my heart pounding and my hands shaking.
We followed Virginie closely as she searched the coral for nocturnal life. She pointed out painted spiny lobsters, tapestry and marble shrimp, and more giant morays, which I found even creepier at night. I spotted two huge broodfin cuttlefish mating-- an unusual site, even on a night dive. Virginie was psyched. Before we went up, she had us turn off all of our flashlights and wave our hands about. The water lit up with hundreds of phosphorescent specks, glowingly green against the pitch of the deep.
I topped off the night by winning a few hands of Uno and sleeping under the stars.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Khao Lak, Thailand
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