We checked out from the guesthouse in Khao Lak, and stored our big bags at Scuba Acventures, and then we were off to the beach. Spend most of the day there, and in the afternoon we tried in vain to upload our blog, it was frustrating that the wifi connection was that bad, cause we were way behind with it, and wouldn't be able to do anything the next 4 days, while we were on the liveaboard diving trip. We repacked our small bags and left the big bags in a storage room, now we were ready for the 4 days boattrip.
We got a voucher for Scuba Adventures Restaurant and enjoyed dinner there, with all the other people, who was going diving the next 4 days. We then got transfered to the boat, we were 29 guests on board, plus boatcrew & captain, around 9 thai, and 8 diving instructors. The boat was nice, clean and well maintained. There was an orientation meeting just when we entered the boat, and afterwards we were shown to our cabins. We shared room with a dutch/german coulpe, who both live and work in Dubai. The guy was dutch and had exactly the same accent as Pimp from Team Easy On (a danish comedy show). We really strugled not to laugh everytime he spoke, but it was really hard for us!
We were 4 doing the advanced open water course (AOW), and we met up with our instructor, Fai, and already had some academics. We all went to bed early, cause the first dive would be 8.30am in the morning. So everyone wanted to be fit for the dives the following day.
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Relaxing on the beach
Sunday 12th Jan.
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We were both quite nervours, because of our lack of experience, but as soon as we got into the water it felt okay. We had to do 5 special dives according to the AOW, so this dive would be our deep dive, where we went down to 30 meters. Awesome time and fantastic dive with loads of different things to explore. We dived 4 times during that day, and when we didn't dive we either slept or ate.
The food was brilliant and there was snacks during the whole day and free water, it's very easy to get dehydrated while you dive, and specially with 4 dives in 1 day , so we had to force ourselves to drink twice as much as usually.
We did a peak performance buoyancy dive and a nightdive, as a part of our AOW. The nightdive wasn't as scary as first assumed, and neighter as special as assumed. We both like the day dives more, where the visibility is better and brighter. After a long day of diving, we were knackered when we finished the dinner.
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| A gorgeous divesite, both over and below the water |
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| Brilliant breakfast at the boat |
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| Happy divers |
Dive day #1
Scuba Adventures motto is: Dive-Eat-Sleep-Repeat. And that's pretty much what we did this day.
We went for some amazing and undescribable fantastic dives. We had 1 extra dive in the morning, because we had to do a AOW navigation dive, so we actually had 5 dives this day. We really began to feel relaxed under the surface, and started working with our breathing and position in the water. We also started to make jokes under water, which is by the way, the most stupid thing to do, if you dont like water in your mask.
In the night time we watched a movie with the instrutors in the nice living room area. Fai, our instrutor wanted some academic time with us, but realized we just started to watch the movie, so we got her convinced that it was better to do the next day.
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| Sunset dives are beautiful |
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| Cuttlefish (squid) |
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| Giant moral eel |
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| Ay ay skipper |
Dive day #2
Dive-Eat-Sleep-Repeat.. Oh yeah there's definitely something about that motto. We had 3 dives at Richelieu Rock, which is among the top 10 best dive sites in the world, and it had a totally crazy sea life. As part of the AOW we tried to dive with nitrox, which is enriched air, that allows you longer bottom time, shorter surface interval, reduces exhaustion and reduces risk for decompression sickness. We couldn't feel the difference, except for the longer diving time.
The sunset dive was really amazing, we saw big schools of tunas, trevallys and barracudas (some of Erik's favorites). We felt so lucky.
At night we celebrated that we all got certified as Advanced Open Water divers. Duke from our group had been thinking forward, cause he brought a bottle of whiskey that we all shared. Got in a good mood quickly, but thinking about next days dives, made us go to bed early. We still had 2 dives the next mornin, and I can't imagine that is any fun to dive with hangovers.
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| Batfish |
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| Duke, us, Swan & our instructor Fai. |
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| Nemo |
Dive day #3
Wednesday 15th Jan.
As every other morning our tripleader woke us up with his happy voice and knocking on the doors, telling us that it was diving time. We were really tired in the morning, but there's really no better way to start the day, than go and explore the sealife below the water surface. We really love diving now, there's no turning back. Diving is our new thing and it's gonna ruin us!
The second dive this day, was a ship wreck dive, an absolutely fantastic dive with thousands and thousands of different fishes. We didn't know where to look, cause there were fishes everywhere around us, like a massive fishsoup. It was unbelieveable. Some of the fishes we saw on the whole trip was: sting rays, moray eels, lionfish, pufferfish, boxfish (one of our favorites, and Erik is also feeling sorry for them, haha), snapperfish, triggerfish (specially the clown triggerfish is nice), octopus (they're really shy but we managed to find 4 during all the dives), angelfish, butterflyfish, seasnake, batfish, nemofish (my favorite), scorpionfish, just to mention a few, but the list is long.
It was actually sad that the trip was coming to an end, we had the best time of our life and enjoyed every second of it. But sadly we had to go back to the real traveller life again! Haha!
We arrived in Khao Lak around 3pm, and after getting our temporary AOW license, we got a free transfer to Phuket town. As usual we walked around for a while before we found a place to stay, it wasn't the cheapest, but okay, for one night. We wanted to find a cheaper place the next day, but for now we were fine with paying 500B. We were both still swaying, especially when we sat down, it was hard to focus about something. It was time for some dinner and some rest.
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| Pufferfish |
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| Venomous lionfish |
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| School of barracudas |
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| A upside down fish |
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| What to do... |
Dive day #4
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| Nice little park in Phuket town |
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| This girl interviewed Erik about Thailand, for a school project.. and apparently there was more between them than just the interview...!! |
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| Later we both got interviewed by these two shy girls |
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| A break from the blog |
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| Patong beach.. Packed with tourists |
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| Robinson Erik |
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| Notice the blue sign for tsunami evacuation route |
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| Uncharming beach, if you ask me.. |
Sunday 19th Jan.
Blog time..!!
Most of the restaurants in town is closing around 5-6pm, and only a few have normal opening hours.
We found that really strange, and we was shocked several times, when we had walked by a nice looking restaurant and agreed to come back later, and then realizing they closed already. It's really a ghost town. Actually this night people came out from their shelters, cause there was a nightmarket going on, just outside our guesthouse.
I must say that Thailand really learned something from their booming tourisme, cause these people were NOT selling the same food, as everyone else, and NOT selling the same T-shirts, jeans, accesories etc., as the stall next to them. They actually realized that it's a better business to sell something different, than the guy next to you. So thumps up Thailand! We were really surprised of this! In every other country we've been until now, we saw hundreds of examples of how people are selling the same stuff, as the 10 stalls around them. They don't develop their own kind of food, or order different T-shirts, or make up something new, they just copy what their neighbour is doing. It's both funny and sad. But Thailand is really developed compared to Laos, Nam & Cam, although with one exception: the tuk tuks. It's the same as everywhere else. If half of them found another way to make money, there would still be enough tuk tuks on the streets. But it probably takes some more years before they realized that. Well, we were off to bed quite early after a walk-around the market.
I must say that Thailand really learned something from their booming tourisme, cause these people were NOT selling the same food, as everyone else, and NOT selling the same T-shirts, jeans, accesories etc., as the stall next to them. They actually realized that it's a better business to sell something different, than the guy next to you. So thumps up Thailand! We were really surprised of this! In every other country we've been until now, we saw hundreds of examples of how people are selling the same stuff, as the 10 stalls around them. They don't develop their own kind of food, or order different T-shirts, or make up something new, they just copy what their neighbour is doing. It's both funny and sad. But Thailand is really developed compared to Laos, Nam & Cam, although with one exception: the tuk tuks. It's the same as everywhere else. If half of them found another way to make money, there would still be enough tuk tuks on the streets. But it probably takes some more years before they realized that. Well, we were off to bed quite early after a walk-around the market.
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| Flower power |
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| Sweets on the street market |
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| The view from our room |
We checked out from D's Corner guesthouse and hang out at our favorite restaurant in town, owned by some turkish people. Cheap food and good wifi connection!
We left with the public bus in the afternoon towards Phuket airport. Apparently the princess of Thailand was coming to town later that day, so the traffic was chaotic on every road in the little town, and it took us about an hour just to get out on the highway (5-6 km). When we finally came to the airport, we were 1 hour delayed. So we were in a rush to check in and get through the security's. Of cause I was making it worser than it was, but it's just really stressfull to be late in a airport.
It turned out that the plane also was delayed, and our gate was changed, but we couldn't see which gate they changed it to. We asked at 3 different gates, and no one could help us. We got a little confused and frustrated, since time was ticking. Eventually they put the gate number on the screen and we made it to the right gate. TigerAir flew us to Singapore, 1h 20min. We had 3 hours waiting time, that we spended on finding Burger King. The airport is super big, so that took most of our time there. Then a flight (TigerAir again) to Manila, Philippines, 3h 10min. Early in the morning we arrived in Manila, and waited 5 hours, for our next flight (Cebu Pacific), 55min., to our final destination, Legazpi, Luzon island.
We arrived around noon, to the sweetest little airport, same size as a big house, with just one small luggage claim. Charming and very little touristed, just as we like it. We already had a good feeling about Philippines!
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| Our favorite restaurant in Phuket |
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| Local transportation or prisoners...?? |
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| Things to do in singapores airport while waiting.. Praying? Meditation? Watching movies? Childrens playground? Jamming studio? Xbox games? And much more... Crazy big airport..!! |
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SvarSletPhuket Diving | Padi Advanced Open Water Phuket