Alisa and I were nervous coming into these couple days on a boat. From
seasickness to ear problems to buoyancy, we had a number of reasons to be. I'll ruin the suspense, though - it was been amazing.
The other 18 people scubaing with us in the Simalan National Marine Wildlife Park were mostly from Germany and the others from Brazil, Spain, and Ireland. We got paired up with Vincent and Jessica and Nele - all open water certified years ago, and haven't dived in a while, so they needed a refresher course... The refresher was simply to check weights, hover, as well as my favorite, remove, replace and clear mask.
When I was getting open water certified at Lake Rawlings (highly recommended if the real deal isn't near you), I had a lot of trouble equalizing my ears, to the point where I had a slight tear in my eardrum. The crazy part to me is the amount of pressure equalization that has to happen before you even hit five meters down. The pressure has gone from 1 atmosphere to 1.5, and my ears can definitely tell. I still am the slowpoke at descending, but at least I'm not trying to keep up (or accidentally sinking like a rock) and hurting myself.
The first dive off the Manta Queen II... It was amazing. After all the anxiety, all the stress, (and the money for getting certified), we were truly doing something that was worth all that and more. The crew helped us with everything, from putting on our fins to retying my neck strap when fiddling with the wetsuit untied it.
It was one big step into Koh Bon, and a whole new world was opened to us. We hung out in the coral reefs and the ridge wall, and the diversity was awesome. Besides the dozens of families of fish (thanks for the helpful references, Finding Nemo), we also saw some moray eels, a banded sea snake swimming through the water, and sea anemones with their anemonefish.
Since the motto is "dive, eat, sleep, repeat", we got a meal or warm snack after every dive. We traveled to Koh Tachai during lunch and hopped in to see manta rays! At least three of them were flying around us as we swam along the hilly, coral-covered terrain. After lots of talk about what to do if there was a strong current, we had great scubaing conditions. A giant barracuda was there to greet us when we went down again, though the slow-moving starfish and fan coral were a stark contrast to the zippy fishes. The rock formations around the "Dome of Doom" were cool as well.
Amidst all the excitement, including signing up for Advanced Diver Training while we are abroad, I forgot to be jetlagged until 7:30pm. And then it was time for bed.
I got up at 5, but only partially because of jetlag. I was well-rested, and worked through the review sheets for our five speciality dives we need for certification - deep dive, peak performance buoyancy, underwater navigation, night diving and wreck diving.
We had also altered course and schedule overnight. The woman from our dive group had tingles and soreness in her arm, so she was on oxygen all night and needed a speedboat to take her to Phuket and a pressure chamber to see if it was decompression sickness. Our initial goal of Richelieu Rock was north where reports said it was choppy, so we traveled back to Koh Bon.
The advanced training was still on, so a dive down to 26.5 meter showed how the red spectrum of light gets filtered out at that depth. Another manta swam by and around us!
Next, it was to the Simalan Islands proper, starting with the 9th and last. "Simalan" means nine in Thai - makes sense right? The dive spot was called Three Trees, and we were going to do some training... Until the sea turtle showed up. He was gliding along the bottom, using his beak to rip off bits of coral. So stunning. The mounds of coral (that wasn't as healthy due to activities before it became a marine park) we separated by sand - a new environment to dive in. The pinnacles of coral coming out of the sand were like little miniature worlds.
West of Eden, by the seventh Simalan Island, had it's pinnacles more clustered. We did some navigation skills (which including traveling a square and counting kick cycles, which Alisa and I agreed was harder than using the compass). We found cold water for the first time on the trip, but the thermocline was at about 12 meters, so we stayed above that. On our way back, another turtle was sighted flying around, but our air and time limits were approaching, so we had to leave.
Because of the change in schedule, we now had a night dive on the list! Out came the torches, and we followed Matt down along a wall. There were little red eyes of crabs staring out at us from coral and anemones. With the light, we could see the red in fish we hadn't seen before. The clusters of lights were all around, and it was fun to just watch the way the water caught the beams - like inverse spotlights were you are focused on the operator, not the target. There was a concrete lady statue that someone thought was a tsunami memorial. Seeing her at night gave an added gravitas to the dive.
It was bright and early this morning, and we still had two more training dives in the three that were planned for today. It was a reasonable night's sleep (accounting for exhaustion from eight dives in two days), and I was raring to go at 5:30 this morning, watching the sliver of a moon get drowned out by the sunrise.
Our first dive was at 7:55am - there really isn't much wasted time! All our gear and in the water in ten or so minutes. We did our buoyancy skills, then explored Anita's Reef, on the other side of Simalan Island #5 and #6 from Hideaway Bay, where we were last night. It was sandy, with coral bommies as little pockets of life, covered by a shimmery coating of schools of fish. One pocket was clearly claimed by a moray opening and closing his mouth to show his intentions. On the sand were gobies and the shrimp that they stand watch over. The shrimp see but can't dig - the shrimp dig but can't see. It reminds me slightly of the zebra and wildebeest - the zebra can sense danger, the wildebeest can sense water.
We headed to islands 7 and 8 for what is probably the most memorable dive site. Elephant Head Rock was just the top curve of a granite rock formation that plunged over 40 meters down to the sea bottom. Besides following the currents through crevices and channels, we also did a swim- through underneath a stack of boulders. All the caverns and mountains had fuzzy coatings of coral, with fan coral and fishes waving us through. A ribbon eel was twisting around in the shallower parts where we could get close to the bottom, then we were all twisting around when we hit some currents during the ascent. The boat swung around the help haul us out of the water, and it was an afternoon of travel to our final dive (and the final dive of our advanced course), the Premchai wreck.
Did I mention that we saw a minke whale surfacing while enroute? Just a dorsal, but check that one off a list somewhere!
The weather turned a bit as we approached Khao Lak, with clouds rolling in. We were suited up and ready for the boat to drop us off when the murmur traveled back that the buoy marking the site was gone.
We had filled out almost all our paperwork to be advanced open water divers, but had superstitiously kept the wreck dive blank. It looked like we would have to figure out a different specialty and quick.
Or just find the rope marking the spot. The buoy wasn't marking it, but we followed the descent line down to a murky, furry boat. The ship had been used for tin mining, but that industry had been drying up and, whoops, this ship sank. That was about 25 years ago.
The visibility and the lines of the boat (and them not aligning with the surface) had me swimming at an angle a couple times. But the bubbles don't lie, and I got reoriented. We saw lion fish, a rockfish that blended in amazingly, and schools and schools of small silvery fish and small blue fish. It was interesting, but I felt very crowded because of the visibility. Matt was moving slowly so we could watch him, which meant Alisa was running into him, and I was continually driving under Alisa and hovering until they both moved forward. Some jellyfish relative that is only a single strand has stung us a couple times before, but was extra prevalent near the Premchai. So, while it was very fulfilling since it was the final dive for our advanced course, it was my least favorite dive of the trip.
After coming onto the liveaboard and handing off our shoes, most of these last couple of days has been out of our hands into much more capable ones. A cook, a captain, dive instructors, and the dive helpers have made everything incredibly smooth. The dive conditions were amazingly favorable. Both sea turtles and mantas that we could observe while they carried on about their business... and these seasickness patches have prevented even an ounce of nausea on an ever-moving boat. The efficiency with how the Manta Queen II got flipped was impressive.
I will say that personally, there are some areas for improvement. I grind down on the bite guard to the regulator, and after three days, my jaw is quite sore. The sides of my mouth are chapped from stretching around the mouthpiece. I don't do a good job paying attention to our navigation - it's so much easier to follow and pay more attention to the fishes instead. But, I'm comfortable underwater, and I can keep calm when I need to figure out the right decision to make.
I can hear the money flush away into the deep, blue, beautiful sea...
We got back to the dive shop, turned in our computers for our passports, settled our debts, and were in a cab to Ao Nang within an hour.
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