Trip 029 Similan Islands

Trip 29 has successfully returned back to land and what an epic trip it was with some (mostly) awesome company on board, multiple special sightings and some unforgettable dives along with delicious food and classic Blue Dolphin evening antics. It was a pleasure to welcome back some old friends and we’re also super happy to have made new ones.

Departure day was unusually smooth as we settled on to the boat and headed out on our way to beautiful Similan Islands.

Dive one and we were straight in to it, a grey reef shark was spotted by most groups, as well as a Napoleon wrasse, green turtle and another white tip reef shark made a showing on a lovely calm dive at Elephant Head Rock. Three Trees was a lovely calm dive and the slightly spicy Three Rocks worked up our appetite with some stunning scenery, but a little current, we earned our evening beer for sure.

Waking up on day two to a stunning sunrise we dropped on a very currenty Christmas Point / North Point for lots of giant granite boulder action before the start of the pelagic sightings, a manta ray seen by one group at the South Ridge of Koh Bon. There was some awesome octopus encounters too! Tachai was it’s usual stunning self with epic fish action and lots of hunting along with some pretty cool macro sightings including a peacock anemone shrimp and a few slightly scary visits from a very big barracuda. After a lovely sunset viewed from the roof in great company we played a very well narrated game of Mafia before heading off to bed.

The Surin Islands provided more epic surface scenery in the morning and Turtle Ledge was the stage for a very relaxing early morning splash to set us up for what was to be an epic day of diving at Richelieu. And it did not disappoint, all groups saw the lovely manta ray that was flying around on dive two of the day and some very memorable encounters for all. And we got the usual wondrous mayhem of the famous rock for the other two dives with lots of glass fish, hunting trevally and barracudas rounding off a great day of diving.

With the last two dives of the trip we ventured around Koh Bon to box off what was a fantastic trip!

Thanks to all that joined it was a pleasure to lead this trip and having such lovely people on board makes it all easier so for that I’m very grateful.

Congrats to our new Advanced diver too keep diving!

Finally thanks to Nick for leaving Will a very appropriate tip of 20THB, I think he owes you some change from that though ;)