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Claire & Steve's Excellent Adventure
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 the sea, sand so white that it hurt your eyes to look at it and an abundance of wildlife was just too good an opportunity not to keep going back and totally addictive. We had several thunder storms on our last trip which made for some rocky rides but the lightning was like nothing we had seen before. As well as forking across the sky it also lit up the ocean during night dives, so with all the coloured fish around it was like an underwater disco!
We had 3 very different but fantastic experiences with regard to the actual boats (The Carina and The Hunter) and the people on them. It was like the United Nations of divers on board so it was really interesting conversation when not diving. We were also fed very well - there was always food on the table so any good work done by the exertion of diving was soon outdone by the biscuits and fried food on board. Of course there were also obligatory drinking games on our last trip which got very silly especially with Thai whiskey and chilli sauce involved - Eric, the dive instructor, got caught out when his drink concoction backfired on him big time!!!
As for the marine life, I don't know where to begin but won't bore you too much...we saw the most weird and wonderful sea creatures of all shapes, sizes and colours - seahorses, ghost pipe fish, enormous groupers, giant moray eels, jellyfish, frogfish....the list could go on and on. The water was lovely and warm and the visibility excellent. The highlight of each trip had to be seeing the giant manta rays...they just seemed to appear out of the blue and came so close to us we could have reached out to touch them. They were like spaceships flying through the water and never failed to disappoint. I can't really describe what it was like seeing something that big swimming around but its safe to say that after being in Surin and Similan we are both totally hooked on diving......bring it on, Bali!!!
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