Diving the Similan and Surin National Parks

Today I am on the beautiful island of Koh Phi Phi Don enjoying a little R&R in my hotel room at the Paradise Pearl Bungalows. I have included a photo from one of the nearby beaches just to give you an idea. As my other blogs will mention, I re-aggravated a herniated disk that I had managed to get under control just before the trip. Other than at home, I really can't think of a better place to recuperate for a few days than at this hotel and on Koh Phi Phi. This also giving me a chance to catch up on posting blogs...so sit back and enjoy!

February 25, 2010

Today is Day 3 of 4 on the Similan and Surin Islands liveaboard along the west coast of Thailand. It has really been a learning process for me. That is how I am looking at it. I am learning a lot of diving techniques to deal with current and, as a result, am having to really focus on managing my air consumption. For the first time ever, I have the worst air consumption of anyone in my group. It is incredibly humbling and aggravating.

I have never seen so much coral destroyed and fish alienated. It’s not just the diving groups from our boat, but the groups from other boats. Almost all of the divers have huge cameras that cost a small fortune and they spend their dives racing around to catch the best thing on film and do not pay attention to their buoyancy, their fins, or others at all. I literally got body slammed by a Russian diver that was joining us on the buoy line for the safety stop. When I tapped him to tell him I was here, I was met with an annoyed glare rather than an apologetic wave. I wanted to kick him in the $5,000 camera.

And, to be honest, the dive guides I have seen are not much better. They’ve given more than their share of swipes to soft and hard coral. Worse than that they encourage divers who have glaringly bad buoyancy to look at macro life and say nothing when they knock coral off trying to reach the tiny creature of interest. Above water they preach about how the Thai government doesn’t do enough to protect the reefs and eliminate pollution, but in practice they hire anyone remotely experienced in diving and just chuck anyone who pays to dive in the water and lets them do whatever the hell they want. To be fair, the stress and rescue skills of one of the dive masters is outstanding and the other’s is great, but he gets too caught up in trying to give himself an enjoyable dive.

On one dive, my dive guide sent all four of the divers he was leading off to do their safety stops while he waved goodbye to us and turned his back to continue diving. As I drifted off alone into the great blue pulled by a current I didn’t really know how to deal with, I just made eye contact and waved goodbye. I just focused on getting safely through my safety stop and surfacing so that one of the many dive boats could either pick me up or signal to my dive boat. He did come after me and we ended up on the surface together eventually, but the total trust in him I had managed to build in a day was gone.

On our second dive on the first day of diving, after much convincing on my part, he took me to the surface after I was nervous about hearing a funny noise that turned out to be caused by some air escaping from where my regulator connects with my tank. He tried to assure me that the leakage was small, but the sound seemed really loud to me and I stupidly started to panic. I had flashes of rumors my dive club master had told me about Egyptian dive shops renting shotty gear out and chucking people into the water and telling them everything was okay when it clearly wasn’t. The same thing had nearly happened to me with a bad bcd that had it’s purge valve stuck open. This whole experience makes me want to dump half of my belongings just to make room for my bcd and regulator.


Some great things have come out of this trip too, though. I have seen some amazing, new fish and coral. The soft purple coral and the school upon school of literally hundreds of fish swarming gracefully around me as I dive is nothing short of enchanting. I did see a glimpse of a manta ray, but we haven’t yet seen a manta at a cleaning station or a whale shark or any sharks for that matter…some sting rays, though. We had a turtle hang out at the back of our boat for half of an hour while the crew fed him bananas and watermelon. I am not sure if that is really helping the turtle since I can't imagine he is used to eating fruit, but I guess at least it's not hot dogs and french fries. I took pictures above the water, but opted to buy a cd of pictures from the dive guides. They took much better pictures than I could have managed anyhow.

And, what I am most happy about is what I have learned about diving and about myself. I really faced some fears the first two days of diving - the greatest of which was diving for the first time without my husband as my diving partner. I am sure most of the people on the boat think I am a nut job for the crying I did the first day of diving when I surfaced with the dive master and the other two divers in our group did not follow us. I thought for sure they’d be in danger, but in the end they were perfectly fine and really relaxed about the whole thing. I am learning how to listen to myself and have received great advice on how to cope with issues under water. I am learning how to deal with different types of current.