Part 2 of our grand farewell tour of Thailand. I've talked a lot about how we travel and work. I wrote a post about what it's really like. Agi and I feel that we don't miss out on anything by working while we travel. However, we both felt that we needed to take a real break. We decided to do a 4 day liveaboard diving trip in the Similan Islands. We booked our diving trip with Khao Lak Scuba Adventures. The company was recommended by one of Agi's friends and they were amazing. At the end of our month in Phuket they picked us up and took us to their centre in Khao Lak. After picking up our diving equipment we got on board Manta Queen 1.
We were given a briefing and met our shipmates. We would be spending our trip with people from England, Sweden, France, Germany, Ukraine and America. A nice multicultural mix. The boat left dock and while we slept the captain took us out to the Similan Islands. We woke up in the morning to see small islands out of our cabin window.
We had told our clients that we would not be available for the duration of our trip so we felt free to relax and enjoy. The next 4 days were amazing. Our routine was:
- Wake up and have coffee
- Dive
- Eat breakfast
- Relax for 2 hours
- Dive
- Eat lunch
- Relax for 2 hours
- Dive
- Eat a snack
- Relax for 2 hours
- Dive
- Eat dinner
- Relax until bed time
Nice!
The diving was excellent and we saw tons of things: barracuda, mantis shrimp, grouper, reef sharks, moray eels. There were 3 highlights:
- On a night dive I saw another diver shining a light on something. I went over to see what was happening. All of a sudden, a lobster came running over the coral towards me. I have seen lobster in tanks in shops and hiding in crevices while diving but I had never seen one free swimming before. It was amazing, it looked like an insectoid horse galloping across the coral!
- We spent most of our time on the boat but on one day they dropped us off at one of the islands so we could climb up to the view point for a look around. Tourist boats come every day from the mainland but they don't arrive until mid morning so we had the island to ourselves. The view from the top of the hill was spectacular, the photo is at the top of this post. The beach was one of the most amazing I have ever seen:
- Perhaps the main highlight was the first dive on which we saw Manta Rays. We had been told to look out for them so everyone was constantly scanning the area. We heard a diver banging on their tank which usually signifies something worth seeing. I looked to my left and saw a dark shape emerging out of the blue. The Manta was about 4m across and swam slowly towards me before angling upwards and swimming directly over my head. I saw its silhouette against the sun shining down through the water. After that, 2 more Mantas appeared and the 3 of them swam around us for the duration of the dive. Spectacular!
This was our first proper holiday since freelancing. We did no work whatsoever and loved it. How do you spend your holidays while freelancing? Get in touch and give me some tips!