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Having already seen Bangkok we decided we would just head south, as we only have a 14 day visa this time. Beach time was well over due. Once we got to Bangkok we jumped on the next over night bus to Krabi, one of the gateways to the southern islands in the Andaman Sea. Krabi itself didn't offer us much, it was like a ghost town, arriving on a Sunday probably didn't help. We did find some places open but not a lot.
Our Plan was to head to Koh Phi Phi, chill out, get a boat to Koh Lanta, laze in a hammock. Hoping we would island hop all the way to Langkawi, an island just off Malaysia.
We thought we'd book on a snorkelling trip spend then spend a few days lazing around living the island life. However we ended up booking ourselves onto a Padi open eater dive course, an amazingthe days. The list of sea creatures we saw is huge but the stand out was a Leopard shark and a Hawksbill turtle on our very first dive.We head back to the boat complete blown away by life underwater. It wasn't all play, we also had to practice some underwater skills like removing and replacing our mask then clearing the water,take the breathing thing out of our mouths lose it, find it and put it back in then clear the water. Buoyancy control was the hard one, trying to hover whilst being pushed around by the water, however we get to practice this when stopping to watch turtles, sharks and fish. Of course homework is never to bad when you get to do it on the beach! On dives 3 and 4 the next day, we practiced more skills, including navigation underwater. The highlight of these dives was definitely seeing an octopus, it was amazing seeing it change shape and colour to suit its surroundings.
We'd been complete amazed by the whole experience so we decided to change our plans and stay to do the advanced course. The course takes you on 5 more dives to build you confidence and capabilities, it will open so many doors and opportunities to dive some amazing places.
After completing the open water course we opted for a few days rest. We took a trip to long beach, it's named this because it's the longest beach on the island and also takes the longest to get to, scrabbling over rocks and using tree roots as steps, so the name fits quite well.
We got to choose 5 different dives, each one had tasks to complete followed by a leisurely dive looking for sea creatures. We went for a deep dive, to 30 metres, a navigation dive, underwater photography, a boat dive and buoyancy, Ryan in particular needed to work on this. On these dives we finally got to see some black tip reef sharks, on top of all the other amazing sealife.
After completing the 5 different dives we then got to have a fun dive.
We followed Enzo, our instructor, and we got to head slightly off the beaten track, gliding with the schools of fish we got to swim through a cavern, we entered on the dark side and came out into the sunny side, here we came across a leopard shark. Further along an octopus and then a black tip reef shark, we finished by the dive watching a hawksbill turtle having lunch. We could have gone further but Ryan was nearly out of air. A fitting end to an amazing 10 days. On the final dive we saw 3 leopard sharks, 2 reef sharks, a turtle and octopus.
A completely mind blowing experience.
Now we are heading into Malaysia, first stop Penang, and trying to see if we can get any more diving fun squeezed into our last few weeks in Asia.
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