Day 14- Dive trip to Similans...or "How I woke up one morning, thought I was in Thailand but felt like I was in Germany!"

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The taxi comes to pick us and several others from the bungalows up for the ride to the dock. All of them are either German or Dutch...this should be interesting!

When we get to the dock there is another taxi full of divers, and we all board the boat for the long, bumpy ride out. We're staying overnight on the boat,so we'll have the opportunity to dive 4 times today and 3 times tomorrow before we head back. it's a real mixture of people, some older, some young, all are either German or Dutch. One very large man has spread himself out so much 4 of us have to squish next to eat other like sardines!

We get out to the boat, and are greeted by Pascal, the boat master. After we get our gear all set up he goes over the rules of the boat, first in German and then in English. our first dive is at 11 A.M. We're with 3 others, and a Thai dive master. This guy must think the ocean is a NASCAR track...he's motoring along like there's a shark chasing us! (there wasn't...)The dive was...unremarkable. I have heard such rave reviews of the diving in Thailand, and when we come back up Bill and I both said if we had flown all the way over here strictly for the diving we'd be pretty disappointed.

It's chaotic on the boat- there are 25 divers, all trying to gear up at the same time, and it's a zoo! Much better when the speedboat leaves at 3:30...there's only 9 people left. BIG DIFFERENCE!

One of the divers left on the boat is completing his Advanced Open Water certification. He's Swedish, and begs to be able to go with Bill and I and the dive master on the night dive. They say okay, and off we go into the dark water. It's a different world underwater at night, creatures who hide during the day come out at night to hunt. We see crabs, starfish, and a couple of very large lionfish. While trying to see a crab hiding under some rocks, our Swedish fellow almost sits on a lionfish! Lionfish, in case you don't know, are VERY poisonous. If they sting you, not only will you be in great pain, but it can cause nausea, breathing difficulties,paralysis, convultions, and insome circumstances...death. NOT something you want to mess with! We all lunge for him at the same time to get him away from these things...not the way I want to end the day!

When we come back up we tell him just how lucky he was...he had no idea. we then had dinner (cashew chicken, veggies, fried pork and wontons) and sat on the top deck looking at the stars. One of the men on the boat was a German doctor, who we both really enjoyed talking to. He spent some time last year working with Doctors Without Borders in Darfur. I talked to him a little about Ponheary and her problems with getting medicine for the kids with malaria, and he said she might consider contacting them for help.

I left Bill talking and went to bed. We paid extra for a master cabin, which basically meant we had a small room with a double bunk to ourselves, instead of single bunks in one room below. Woke up in the middle of the night to a very big thunderstorm...which meant we had to shut the window in our room to avoid drowning in all the rain! The room became an oven...making the combination of hot room and very hard bed even tougher to sleep!

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