We finally left Khao Lak and our diving adventures behind to get the local bus down to Phuket. If we had known what Phuket was really like then we would have jumped on another liveaboard! Probably 10 years ago it was an outstanding place to visit as the beaches are lovely, tucked into separate coves and the hills are covered in palms and deep forest. Tourism, however has hit Phuket extremely hard and it is now basically a package tourist destination. Huge res...

We found paradise and it exists in Thailand, more specifically in Ko Surin and Ko Similan National Park archipelagos. To say the islands were beautiful would be a gross understatement. We had intended to do just one liveaboard trip to dive here for 4 days.....we managed to tear ourselves away 3 trips and lots of empty pockets later. The diving was just amazing and to spend days and nights surrounded by crystal clear waters, huge granite boulders rising out of ...

So, after our adventure on the modern day slave ship we arrived in Khao Lak and headed straight for 'Phuket Divers' to book a trip out to the Surin and Similan Islands on a liveaboard boat for 4 days - the sales pitch worked a treat with the suggestion of seeing giant manta rays, sharks, enormous fish and the much sought after whale sharks. With the sale sorted we set out to look around Khao Lak which didn't take all that long as it is literally just one main ro...

Well, the day dawned much the same as all the others - bright, sunny and very hot even at 7am. We headed out on the boat for our deep diving adventure; I was still apprehensive but fortunately almost everybody else had not gone down to 30 metres either so we were all in the same boat (ha ha). After quite a lengthy briefing we got geared up and jumped into the blue. It felt like we were descending on the mooring line forever but finally after a short swim we ha...

We finally found a luxury coach in South East Asia that was exactly that! We journied from Bangkok to the harbour in pure luxury - fully reclining velvet seats, blankets, air con, water, toilets and a DVD to watch - it was almost too good to be true....the catamaran ride over to Koh Tao soon put an end to our blissful state as we bumped up and down in our seats for 2 hours. It was worth the journey though when we arrived and set foot on the warm sand and looked...