In April, I had the amazing opportunity to go on a scuba diving trip with my scout troop to the Similan Islands. It was AMAZING! Not only did we dive, we also earned a few merit badges and got PADI certified.
Day 1
My flight left at 11:30am so we got up at around 8 and left the house at 9ish to be there by 10. It was a two-hour flight, so I took the opportunity to study my scuba workbook. When I landed, the other three people I was going with and I went outside to meet the van driver picking us up. After a quick lunch at a nearby subway, we commenced the one and a half hour drive to the house we were staying at for three days. We beat the people who were driving from Chiang Mai (they left the day before to start the 17-hour drive), so we decided to check out the beach. The other group got there as soon as we got back. My favorite thing about the house was that it had a ping pong table, which was played non-stop the next three days.
Day 2
We woke up early, ate, and then started playing table tennis. At 9.00 we set out to go to the pool where we were doing our training and meeting our dive masters. That lasted until about 2.00.When we got back, we listened to music, ate some more, went to the beach, slept, and played even more table tennis. We had our first oceanography merit badge lecture that evening and went to the beach at night to collect plankton samples. We waded out into the water and were surprised by how many bioluminescent plankton there were! The whole ocean lit up around us. I had only seen that once before (in Bali), so it was pretty cool to see it again. We came back and spent the next hour looking at the hundreds of tiny animals we found in the water (including three jelly fish which we thought were clumps of plankton at first).
Day 3
Waterfall day! Everyone except for me and a few other people went to a nearby waterfall to hike, climb, and explore. The people who stayed played table tennis all day (-= One of my friends that went to the waterfall climbed up to a restricted area, fell off, and broke his wrist. No scuba diving for him. He had to be flown back to Chiang Mai for treatment. We got on the boat at 10.00pm that night and went to bed at 11.
Day 4 (Day 1 on the boat)
Wake up was at 6am every morning. We went to the main room for the dive briefing and all of the introductions etc. Normally diving started at 6.30, but on the first day, we didn’t get in until 8am. The first dive was good but the second and third ones were the best that day. I saw pistol shrimp, both kinds of mantis shrimp, schools of barracuda, coral everywhere, hundreds of fish, etc. In between dives, we played chess, slept, and watched movies.
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| The view leaving port |
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| Dive Briefing |
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| One of the diving sites |
Wake up-6am
Dive one-6.30am
Breakfast-7.50am
Dive two-10am
Lunch-11.30am
Dive three-2.00
Snack- 3.10
Dive 4- 5.00pm
Dinner- 7.00pm
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| We passed many other dive boats on the way |
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| Another one of the dive sites. |
The 5th day was basically the same as day 4. We started a chess tournament. We saw lion fish, scorpion fish, moray eels, shrimp, seahorses, more mantis shrimp, and the first turtle of the trip.
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| I won that game (-= |
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| Down time in between dives |
Supposedly the best diving in Thailand and I believe it! We ended up spending all four dives of the day here: http://www.richelieu-rock.com/. It was sad because several people were sick that day and decided to sit out on the first dive. I almost stayed but decided to go at the last second. On that very first dive we saw a whale shark. I was glad I went then! We were swimming close to the bottom when our dive instructor told us to look up and there it was! A 5-meter-long whale shark. We swam up to it and had to grab on to the rock wall we were scuba diving below because of the current. The farthest it got from us was about 2 meters away as it was swimming up and down slowly with its mouth wide open. We observed it for the rest of our dive (20 min). The closest it ever got was about an armslength away as we and it were swimming away.
We didn’t see it any of the other dives, but those dives were also amazing. It was a beautiful place. I fell asleep on the roof of the boat and missed the last dive but it was ok.
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| The Whale Shark was Incredible! |
Day 7
On the last day, we were only going on two dives and the seven of us who were flying back weren’t allowed to go on either of them for nitrogen reasons. We hung out, slept, played chess, and ate while the others were diving. Two mantas were seen which made me a little jealous. The last dive was also pretty sad to miss. It was a shipwreck site and huge schools of lion fish, barracuda, and hundreds of scorpion fish were seen. It sounded great. We got to the dock at around 1.30 pm and left for the 1-hour drive to the airport. Our flight left at 8.30pm. 5 hours to wait at the airport. Ughhhh. We could have been home by 5 pm instead of 11 pm! With school the next morning! We spent the 5 hours walking around the airport, eating food, charging our phones, and anything else we could think of until our flight.
Overall it was an amazing experience and I absolutely loved it!
(All of the pictures in this post were taken by scouts and leaders in the troop.)
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