Travelblog Phuket – Part 2 The Diving!

I received my SCUBA certification 30 years ago, and used it a lot throughout my 20s and 30s.  In fact, sometime around 1991 I came to Phuket while I was working for Club Med.  While here I did a 2 tank dive, the second of which was at a spot called The Flower Garden.  It was a high speed drift dive, lots of ‘flowers’ but not much else besides sea slugs.  On the ascent, we heard the boat pull away and looked up to see tons of Portuguese Man o’ wars over our heads.  The dive guide gave the order to descend and swim out.  None of us got stung, but suffice it to say Phuket did not hold great dive memories for me, even though all reviews would indicate it to be a great dive spot.

Fast forward to 2017, and my handsome hubby wanting to display his shiny new PADI creds.  The obvious choice was get him underwater while here, so off we went!  They really have ramped up the program and are doing a fantastic job with the diving experience here.  Everyone who books gets a private dive guide or guides for their party be it 1 person or 20.  The dives are done cooperatively, with divers and dive companies sharing one of several large, purpose designed boats.

Each group with a specific guide or guides to accompany them.  Our guide was Colin, and he was with us for two days of diving.  He was not only our dive guide, but also our photographer.  All photo credits on this post go to him.

Larry and I were among the second group to be dropped off.  One we got underwater we were happy to find good visibility of around 20-25 meters.  Larry’s classes and check dive had been beach dives in the Arabian Gulf.  Fins had churned up so much silt off the bottom that his visibility had been less than a meter.  I enjoyed watching his face as he looked around.  His eyes were wide with wonder and he was smiling the whole time.  We had tons of cool stuff to see, and it made me happy to have somebody along enjoying themselves as much as I did.

We had 3 dives each day.  They were each 50 minutes in length, with an hour minimum break between them.  The dives went from 7 to 25 meters in depth.  Visibility varied as you will note in the photos.  The stuff we saw was also quite varied.  The Thais have been working to try and bring back the coral, creating underwater marine parks and protected areas.  This is having mixed results as they don;t really have the resources to police it.  That said, there are places where the coral is beginning to come back.

It is amazing how much energy you use, and how hungry you are when you come up from a dive!  Larry and I agreed that if we went diving a couple of times per month it would greatly improve out fitness levels.  Thankfully, they served both hot breakfast and lunch on the dive boat, as well as snacks of fresh fruit.

I am sad to say that one photo taken that did not come out very well was of blue tipped spiny coral.  It was SO beautiful!  There was a large grove(?) (maybe) of it.  It looked as if the tips were glowing.  The photo was very disappointing though, so I have to go with the memory and did not include that shot here.

We got lucky on the second day of diving, and got to see a few reef sharks and a couple of banded sea snakes.  Both days we saw eels.  On one of the dives the second days there was an island of what looked like a field of yellow daisies (actually anemones) but Colin was looking the other way so I have no photo!

Our dive site on the second day was the Phi Phi islands, an under-water preserve.  As we descended we could see that something had really stirred up the water, lowering visibility quite a bit.  Nevertheless it was another great day of diving!  There is more to see than to write in this post, so I am simply going to add more photos for you to look at.  My best recommendation is to learn to dive.  There are thousands of places around the globe where you an go and see these amazing and colorful creatures…  Give it a go!