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Published: April 1st 2009
Rise & shine!
The morning trip to work is always early but never boring...So...having lived here for 3 months so far doing an internship as a divemaster, it makes sense to make an entry about the diving in and around this peaceful little piece of paradise...
Starting with the local dive sites... Bida Nok;
Bida Nai;
Ma Long ; and
Pa Long These are the sites we go to most often, basically because they're close, tend to be sheltered from the current...and are home to a HUGE range of marine life...with even the odd Whaleshark & odd Mantaray spotted in the surrounds by an excited few divers...I believe that here it's the pictures more than the words which can speak for the divesites, which is why I've included so many in this blog. Please note that all photos included here have been taken in and around the Phi Phi islands...and yes, it really is this beautiful here!!
The local sites are close enough to Maya Bay to dock there at lunchtime between each dive. I would like to emphasise how stressful it is "working" at a place that enforces an extended lunch-hour
Lionfish
Handy Hint - the prettier the fish...the more poisonous it generally is...!! in a bay that overlooks an internationally-renowned tropical location...at 10:30 in the morning...!!
You think that going to the same few sites each day would mean that I get bored of the surrounds.
However, there always seems to be something different, new or challenging each day...a new baby octopus; strong currents; beautiful or poor visibility...
Sometimes there are too many fish & you can't see the coral, and sometimes you can't find a single thing...
But the beauty in a dive where you don't see anything is that you still have a good time, generally because you're diving with people who rarely dive and/or are experiencing the sport for the very first time. These people in particular have reactions are primal, varied and ALWAYS entertaining.
I've decided that the feeling of diving to a combination of 3 key components:
1. The astronaut who has to move at a slow & calm pace;
2. Superman, who can fly & be invincible; and
3. Darth Vader...who can always hear himself breathing...
When you watch people experience this feeling for the first time, you see reactions anywhere between a complete freak-out [closely followed by them shooting to
Lunchtime!!
The view from the boat most lunchtimes... the surface], and a calm synergy with the underwater environment, where they become totally relaxed & a part of that environment.
I've seen a serious Russian businessman in his 50's get a cheeky look in his eye & ask me if he can do tumbles in the water;
I've seen teenage girls freak out and swim away from little seasnakes...
and I've spent entire dives holding 150kg's of French rugby player in each of my hands, redirecting them every couple of minutes with each arm & using my fins as breaks while they completely switch off their peripheral vision and go into autopilot kicking mode.
...And don't get me started with what happens when you get 26 professional divers away from their customers on a mass fundive...!!
Whatever reactions people tend to have on a dive however, there's something amazing about watching humans be stripped back to the unrefined & basic instincts that hit them as they enter a new and unfamiliar environment. To be an observer in this instance is an unusual position to be in, considering today's knowledge-intensive world, where everyone has unlimited access to paper information, yet limited physical experiences with many aspects of their
Fundive!!
What happens when you let 26 professional divers loose in the water for an hour...?? surrounding natural environments. An entirely fascinating study of basic human behaviour to say the least!
...but enough about my psycho-analysis of tourists - back to the divesites!!
Shark Point Phi Phi About a week ago I went with a small group of experienced divers to a site called "Shark Point Phi Phi", which is hardly ever dived by the schools here, basically because it doesn't have as many interesting little things to look at, however has the possibility of seeing bigger stuff
Just as we got out to the divesite, someone shouts out "Whaleshark!!" and everyone looks over the boat edge & sees a massive big shadow in the water & movement just below the surface...so we all geared up really quickly and jumped into the water with the speed of navy marines looking for a torpedo...but alas, but the time we were in the water, Mr. WS had left the building...but there's something so exciting about diving with the anticipation of seeing a big-ticket item at any time during the dive.
There have been a few whalesharks & a mantaray spotted in the local areas over the
Turtle
Bida Nok Turtle past few weeks, so we've had a few dives of late where everyone's missed seeing a couple of turtles & eels because they've been too busy looking out into the blue for something a little bigger, and a little more majestic...
In fact, I've been on a few fun dives recently just to look for the big stuff. This involved me swimming out into the blue until all I could see around me was water …and then it occurred to me that I was swimming in the middle of nowhere, HOPING that something big was going to come out into the water with me!! If I was walking alone in a forest, I would not be looking for something big to come out & find me... I’ve decided to call this inversion of fear in the water "Diveballs", and I believe I've had a severe growth-spurt in that area of late.
Snake Cave On the subject of diveballs, I recently dived a site called "Snake Cave", named such due to the wildlife that resides in said cave. This we dived with only 5 of us - 2 instructors & 3 divemasters - taking
Blacktip Reef Shark
The shy & retiring Black-tip Reef Sharks at Pa Long a longtail boat out to a remote place at one end of Phi Phi Don.
The entrance to the cave is at 20m depth, and you go through the entrance, which is like a "Z" shape - so as soon as you enter, the tunnel is dark, and you swim with a torch. The tunnel takes about 15 minutes to swim, and slowly ascends up into a cave. At 5m depth in the water, there's a Halocline where the water changes from salt to fresh water & plays with your buoyancy a bit...and also drops the temperature by 2 degrees. It's amazing what a difference that makes in the water - even when the two temperatures are 28 & 30 degrees...celcius!!
Once we surfaced, we were in a massive cathedral of a cave . The cave had loads of stalactites hanging from the ceiling. We put our scuba units down & explored the cave, all with our torches. Amazing acoustics in there too, as there were limestone walls all around, and many walls to climb...and of course, snakes. We saw only one...and every few
Leopard Shark
Another cheeky little shark we share our divesites with... minutes or so, we pointed our torches back at it to make sure it hadn't moved...!! Lucky for us snakey seemed to be unphased by our presence & continued to sleep his merry way through the afternoon as we explored the cave.
There is apparently a guestbook up in one corner of the cave but to get up there we would have had to scale some pretty dangerous rock coated thick in slippery mud so we decided against it...
After a 1 hour surface interval, we headed back into the water & swam out. It was amazing swimming out of the cave, because halfway through the tunnel we all turned our lights off and swam through the darkness, letting our eyes adjust until we could see just a glimmer of daylight coming from the opening up ahead...the daylight got brighter, and as you exit the cave, all you can see is the silhouettes of the divers in front of you, and big schools of fish swimming past, with a backdrop of the most magnificent blue!
Once we were out, we dived for another 40 minutes or so and then got back to the island just before the afternoon
Whaleshark!!!
This is what I'm looking for when I swim out into the blue... monsoon broke out.
We've been getting the most spectacular thunderstorms almost every afternoon for the past fortnight or so. Wet season isn't supposed to come for another month or 2, but hey - global warming seems to be messing with most countries at the moment...and to be honest, the dam needed a bit of topping up also, so we appreciate a little bit more rain here!
AND I now have a new favourite place to be to watch storms from
Hin Deng Care of a dive trip I did a few days ago to a remote divesite called Hin Deng, which we travel to on a speedboat, i experienced one of the most breathtaking sites I've ever seen.
It takes us about 1.5 hours to get to Hin Deng from Phi Phi Don, and we generally travel there in search of "The Big Stuff". As it was, we saw no mantas or whalesharks yesterday, however I saw the biggest cuttlefish I've ever seen - it was the size of a
Fish Highway
The feeling when you swim through a wall of fish like this is similar to how you'd feel if you were the one to part the Red Sea...possibly. turtle!! Because the site is more remote, everything is bigger out there - 2m Moray Eels, full-grown triggerfish and batfish schools that look like mantas when they're in your peripheral vision!!
The divesite itself is one large pinnacle, where you could dive down to 40/50m if you wanted, however the majority of the interesting bits & pieces are generally between 12 & 18m .
So anyway, we were coming back from Hin Deng on the speedboat, and I was enjoying the ride sitting on the roof . With one sweeping glance around me, I realised that I couldn't see a single island anywhere - I had 360 degree view of horizon, and could see different storms brewing all around the boat. There were literally 6 different storms within my view, with bits of blue between them and a bit of sunset also. I actually heard later that one especially big storm I saw was a mini tornado over Phi Phi Ley . Looking around at the storms, I felt like I was king of the world. It was a moment that took my breath away - I just stared at the horizon for the
Manta
The elusive Mantaray... entire 1.5 hours trip home, wondering what could possess anyone to work in any other industry but diving...?? DEFINITELY a "happy place moment" for the memory bank!!
So paradise continues to be wonderful, and I continue to add happy moments to that memorybank for the inevitable days when life may one day be more stressful.
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