Fun diving from Phuket on Koh Bida Nok and Turtle Rock on Koh Phi Phi Leh

Logged Dives #1601-1602 February 24, 2019

Our dives today were here

Our dive sites, Koh Bida Nok and Turtle Rock, just north of Maya Bay on Koh Phi Phi Leh, are described at the link from which this map was taken, with attribution:
https://www.phiphidiving.com/phiphi-diving-map.htm

We decided to dive today with Sea Fun Divers, https://www.seafundivers.com/.  We chose them because we wanted to dive at Koh Phi Phi this Sunday and they were one of the only shops with their own boats going there. Also they immediately answered my email which I sent out on return to Patong from our half day diving with Merlin Divers in Kamala. I sent the mail while we were getting cleaned up from our diving with intent to go walking around to different dive shops in Patong, but I was able to arrange to dive with Sea Fun via email without leaving my hotel room. So instead of working up a sweat, we settled our next day diving with no hassle and celebrated with cheap beer from the downstairs 7/11 up at the pool on the roof of our Patong Mansion hotel, where we liked to enjoy the sundown from the lip of the waterfall pool there.

Sea Fun Divers had only booked a baker's dozen of divers on the trip. Dive groupings were made in teams of two to four divers. Bobbi and I were concerned at first about the other divers we were paired with but on the 2 hour trip to the site we got to talking to them and our concerns evaporated (they seemed to know what they were doing). Meanwhile our dive guide Jurgen had told us that if there was any disparity in air, since I was carrying a surface marker buoy, Bobbi and I could just carry on with our diving. In the end none of that was necessary, but it was nice to know that Jurgen was flexible enough to accommodate such contingencies, always appreciated when pairings are potentially inappropriate. Ours turned out to be fine.

Koh Bida Nok

Jurgen telling us what to expect at Koh Bida Nok

Fortunately there was a professional photographer aboard the boat, named Johan Torfason. Johan was working for an insurance company in Sweden when he decided to take a leave of absence for 6 months to try making a living at underwater photography in Thailand. One Christmas day a snorkeling boat he was on sunk in high waves and he and 35 others were rescued by sea gypsies who live in south Koh Lanta. He stayed on Lanta for a while, must have liked it but went back to Phuket, went back to Sweden, asked for another 6 months leave, was refused, so he quit and returned to Thailand and now he is the resident photographer for Sea Fun Divers. His Facebook page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/PhuketUnderwaterPhoto/

Johan asked everyone aboard, one by one, if he could take their pictures. When he came to chat us up he figured we'd be taking our own photos, and we thanked him and told him we were unlikely to want a complete set after the trip. Two things changed my mind.

The first was, as I was standing on the platform, all kitted up, about to make a giant stride into the water, I pulled my camera out and switched it on and got an error message, no memory card. This reminded me that when I was backing up photos the night before on my computer in our hotel room I had forgot to replace the memory card in the camera. Duh! I instinctively slapped my forehead. This jarred me back to the present so I left my hand where it was to hold my mask in place, and took a giant step into the water. Mai pen rai!

The second thing was, after the dives, when Johan showed everyone aboard his photos from that day in the dry cabin amidship, they were superb. He got some great shots of Bobbi and I after all. And he also got some excellent shots of the sharks many of us saw on that first dive. I had had missed an excellent chance to video black tips up close, but Johan got them, and us watching them.

These sharks were reminiscent of the black tips we used to see frequently in very shallow water at Dibba Rock in UAE, but the ones in Dibba were more evasive. These were on patrol. And Jurgen knew where they would be and manipulated our route, despite an unexpected current change that caused us to switch direction with reef on the left, not on the right as we'd been briefed, he made sure we ended up where the sharks were.

The sharks at Koh Bida Nok were the high point but there was more to see there than sharks

Turtle Rock on Koh Phi Phi Leh

Turtle Rock was kind of a set piece dive. Diving is always great, and this would be a great site if you had it to yourself, but there were many other boats all congregated on the same spot so that there were dozens of divers in the water, making it necessary for us to be micro managed, for example when a turtle was found, we had to wait our turn to come around it. Johan got some great shots though; here are just two of many :-)

We anchored for lunch and surface interval off Maya Bay, now closed with a rope across it with floats, to try and get it to come back after the depredations of so many tourists since Leonardo de Caprio made it famous as The Beach. There were dozens of boats, speedboats etc. not just dive boats, all anchored at the edge of the rope. Here is one of the islands there.

When it was time to dive we moved a few hundred meters toward the north end of Koh Phi Phi Leh and dived from there to the south. Here's Jurgen explaining the plan. 

I took this photo. All the other diving pictures on this page were from Johan's collection

We dived as a pack on this dive. Here are Bobbi and I swimming with the pack (green fins and black fins)

One of the first stunts was to have everyone swim through a tunnel. Johan had positioned himself to take pictures of all the divers passing into the tunnel. I decided to show off. These pictures, and the shark ones, are the reason I decided to buy Johan's pictures and put them here with his permission.

That's me, mask and reg back in place, disappearing down the rabbitfish hole

and completing the manouevre

One thing that I missed filming, and Johan missed it as well, in fact only I saw it ... was a huge crayfish in a cave I discovered by shining my lamp inside. It was easily as long as my arm. It looked delicious, but there you are.

Next day, after a 24 hour surface interval, it was time to say goodbye, Phuket to Penang on Firefly, in one of these birds (my picture again). This saved us two days on buses, Phuket to Surat Thani to Hat Yai, overnight and from there next day to Butterworth and Penang.

Fun diving Phuket on Whale Rock and Tin Lizzie with Merlin Divers Kamala

Logged Dives #1599-1600 February 23, 2019

Today we decided to dive from Kamala Beach, which appears in the upper left on this a map of our diving from Phuket Feb 22, 23, and 24, 2019,
https://www.screencast.com/t/YufC3nOPd0

Annotated after borrowing, with attribution, from this web page

http://www.phuket.com/diving/divingsites/phiphiisland.htm

Why Kamala?

When we were making last minute arrangements in Siem Reap to go diving somewhere we could get into and out of quickly, and I started writing to dive shops to see what I could line up, Robert Klein, owner of Merlin DIvers in Kamala, was first to write back. I had focused on Kamala as not too far from the airport and possibly a less developed area of the island than some of the others, possibly a comfortable place to stay. Indeed we eventually found that it had a nice beach with some low key food and beverage establishments shoreside and reasonably priced accommodation inland from there. However, as I started to get more replies to my emails I came to realize that Merlin were booking us with other companies for trips to the standard dive sites shown in the map above, and we decided to base ourselves in Patong because there was a large cluster of dive shops there where I could negotiate prices directly with the ones who had their own boats, whereas there were only two or three operators in Kamala. 

On the other hand, Merlin divers offered diving from long-tailed boats to sites off their beach, a very different flavor of diving from the crowded cruises heading out to the busy dive sites, and a chance for a later pickup at our hotel in the morning (a chance to relax over breakfast) and earlier return from diving than that done from Chalong harbor, so we decided to set aside a low-key take-it-easy day for them.

What we found

Merlin divers had a pleasant and professional setup in a cluster of shops fronting the busy main street but opening at the back of the shop right on the long sand beach. Accueil, preparation, and execution of the diving was up to the expected standard. There were few diving customers that morning, only Bobbi and I and perhaps one other. Most of the dozen or so divers on the boat with us were in training for divemaster or on other professional level internships, which meant we were in good hands, almost too well looked after. But once we'd been in the water for a few minutes we were pretty much left to get on with the diving. The guides were good at pointing out creatures so we had no interest in doing anything but follow. 

As usual I'm with my favorite dive buddy Bobbi Stevens, today wearing a yellow mask. Bobbi is not to be confused with dive guide Luke, a South African who wore his long blond hair in a pony tail and was also wearing black mask with yellow trim face frame, similar to Bobbi's :-). If there is any problem with the video embed, the direct link seems to be working: https://youtu.be/jSLNAJSuvCM

We went on two dives. The first was on Whale Rock, resulting in the video above. The site isn't listed on Merlin's list of dive sites

https://phuket-diving-thailand.net/scuba-diving-kamala-beach/kamala-dive-sites/ but it was a nice site for relaxed, unhurried diving, and here is what we saw: young barracudas right at the beginning of the dive, puffer fish, clown fish in the anemones, scorpion fish lurking on the rocks, nudibranchs, a cuttlefish, schools of snappers, a moray, and some Pearsonothuria graeffei cucumbers toward the end of the dive, among many other creatures of the not-so-deep.

The most salient moment of the dive for me was when I came across a little head poking out of a rock and turned around in the surge to examine it. Bobbi was hovering above me, but the others had moved on, so I gestured for her to call them back with her tank-banger. But having taken my eyes off the hole, I couldn't find it again but then I spotted a carefully constructed hole rimmed with rocks that could only have been placed just so by the animal who lived there. So I switched on my light and shined it into the hole. This provoked the resident mantis shrimp to come charging up to the rim as if to complain about the unwanted lighting, or perhaps just to see what the source was. Now I had a great view of him, but I had my lamp in one hand and my camera not in the other, and he had withdrawn back inside by the time I got my camera into position. Bobbi had joined me by now and when I shined my lamp into the hole we could see the mantis in there. But I was never able to juggle the light and the camera and deal with the surge in such a way that I could get a coherent video from it. Maybe these few hundred words will suffice in lieu of a picture.

The second dive was on Tin Lizzie, which Merlin's web site says is"the remains of a Tin Dredger at about 14 meters. Tin Lizzy is absolutely covered with marine life. You can find large numbers of Bat fish, Lion fish, large Puffer fish, Scorpion fish and Barracuda here. Many artificial reef blocks are placed around the wreck dive site and have become home to many fish." Our boat crew referred to those reef blocks as "cubes". Here is how my camera saw it: https://youtu.be/FESKm5lWxlk

The dive begins with dive guide Luke helping Bobbi descend on the rope and at the bottom telling us to get together and follow him but leaving us alone after that. He leads us to several forlorn puffer fish, nests of lion fish, lots of snappers schooling in the 'cubes', a few scorpion fish, a few banded coral shrimp (Stenopus hispidus), an eel, tiny flounders, a nudibranch, and through a big cloud of silt that settled over us toward the end of the dive, though most of it was in relatively clear water. 

Overall impressions

This seemed to be a well-run dive shop, friendly, and well situated away from the madding crowd in Patong just over the hill to the south. The location was to our tastes, since we only drank beer at 60 baht ($2) in the tall 600+ ml bottles from the 7-11 near our hotel, the pleasant and quiet Patong Mansion. We avoided the 80 baht for half pint offerings in the bars and restaurants (120 for a pint, twice the price of the larger bottles in the 7/11). If like us, you're there for the diving and can do without the bars, Kamala struck me as a pleasant base, limited in scope and in diving, but earns points on relaxation. The two dive sites we tried were not the best Thailand has to offer, but we were happy with our half day out, nice to be catered for personally, and of course you pay less for that than you do on the boats going from Chalong Harbor. If you were staying in Kamala, the owner could arrange your diving on other days on the charter dive boats, with pickup from your hotel. 

About the videos

GoPro videography by Vance Stevens
PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor #64181

For best results, view these videos using highest HD setting on YouTube

Fun diving off Phuket on King Cruiser Wreck, Shark Point, and Koh Dok Mai wall with Local Dive Thailand

Logged Dives #1596-1598 February 22, 2019

Bobbi and I haven't been diving since we were on Tioman last September (http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2018/09/diving-from-salang-tioman-malaysia-with.html), so we were itching to get down and get wet. Our choice of dive location, meaning where on the globe, was governed mainly by ease of access in and out of the area. Having just come from the CamTESOL conference in Phnom Penh we were considering diving off  Sihanoukville in Cambodia, something I think we'll want to do at some point given the novelty of the sites there and the low cost of travel in Cambodia, but working out the time it would take to travel overland (from Siem Reap, which is where we were when making our plans) vis a vis the low cost of air fares in and out of Phuket from Cambodia and onward to where we live in Penang, we chose Phuket as our base for diving this time around.

It wasn't our first time to visit there. I dived in Phuket in my early pre-logged dive days way last century, but it's been some decades again since our trip to the Similan Islands which the four of us in our family reached on a liveaboard from Phuket in around 1990 (when Phuket was relatively cheap and not so built up), and its been a few years since we dived Koh Lanta, which brought us up to the southern reaches of Koh Phi Phi diving (http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2014/12/bobbi-and-i-on-holiday-fun-diving-on.html). So we thought we'd give Phuket a go, for convenience and for old times sake.

Here is a map of our diving from Phuket Feb 22, 23, and 24, 2019,
https://www.screencast.com/t/YufC3nOPd0

Annotated after borrowing, with attribution, from this web page

http://www.phuket.com/diving/divingsites/phiphiisland.htm

Why we chose Local Dive Thailand for our first dive this century from our base in Phuket

We chose to dive today with Local Dive Thailand, who graciously offered me a professional discount and matched Bobbi and I with one of their best dive leaders, Born. The program for the day was one of the Phuket set pieces: King Cruiser Wreck, Shark Point, and Koh Dok Mai wall. There were about 35 divers on the boat and a dozen staff, or about 47 people in the water on each dive site from our boat alone. Though there were also divers from other boats as well, Born managed to ingeniously conduct our dives so that we were detached from the mobs and felt almost as if we were diving alone.

King Cruiser Wreck

Here are the videos I made from the first dive on King Cruiser Wreck (use this link if the embed doesn't work):
https://youtu.be/hWbBW0XkkDc

In this dive the overriding consideration was deco time. It can be a deep dive down to 32 meters, but we planned to take it only to 24 so as to not be annoyed by deco problems on the remaining two dives. We planned to surface when we reached 7 minutes no deco time and after achieving depth we were constantly easing upward, chasing our computers against the agreed upon limit (or at least I was, mine being more conservative than Bobbi's). Consequently we were back on the line after 35 minutes diving, but we saw a lot of the wreck and its resident creatures.

In the video you can see that we encountered several lion fish, swirling schools of yellow snappers, a big grouper, a fishball devouring a jellyfish, some large fish I think were mackerel, a concealed scorpion fish, a moray eel, and picturesque whip and colorful soft corals. It was overall a pleasant dive, but the best was yet to come.

Shark Point

The next dive was Shark Point, or No Shark Point as Born called it. She said there had been no sharks at that site for the last several years. As I mentioned earlier, Bobbi and I were just happy to be diving again, and this is what we saw (use the direct link if the video embed doesn't work): 

https://youtu.be/b9DlPJ_OF48

In this video we descend on a nest of blue spotted sting rays and watch them abruptly change locations. We encounter lots of schooling fish, clowns, a couple of cowries on the seabed, and an orange ghost pipefish which is hard to see, partly due to my videography vs. midwater buoyancy control and inability to see clearly where I'm pointing the camera. This is followed by video snippets of various morays, schools of fish enjoying a jellyfish dessert, crabs in the anemones, more schooling fish, several ominously lurking scorpion fish, gorgonian fan corals, a bemusing cuttlefish, some lion fish, a school of large barracuda, more anemone crabs, more jellyfish abuse, a HUGE scorpion fish resting on a barrel coral, a puffer, more barracudas, a green seahorse that I couldn't see and didn't know what I was filming till the very end of the clip, more lion fish, and even more barracudas and other fish at the safety stop. This was our favorite dive of the day.

Koh Dok Mai

Our final dive of the day was on Koh Dok Mai, on the dark side of the wall. Here's the video (and at this link in case of problems with the embed): https://youtu.be/JNFl8ev6Q50

The video begins with our lamps eluminating a free swimming moray on the dark side of the wall, a seahorse, a peek under a coral outcrop where there were 3 bamboo sharks that Born knew in advance would be there, a little eel that bites (Born demonstrated, and I mimicked; I can still feel the sensation of  tiny teeth), a ghost pipe fish, more white-eyed eels, some glass shrimp, another swimming eel, schooling fish, a trigger fish, fan coral, a couple of nudibranchs, a couple more eels, a scorpion fish, and Born being surprised by a sea snake while showing us yet another grinning scorpion fish on the safety stop. The end of the video shows us surfacing to the beauty of Koh Dok Mai halfway between Chalong harbor and the Phi Phi islands.

Overall impressions

Local Dive Thailand were a great outfit to dive with. They have their own boat, they conducted the trip competently, and there was a dive guide for every two to four customers, or maybe just three. The only problem was that they over-feed you on the trip :-). There's breakfast on the long journey out from Phuket halfway to Koh Phi Phi and something to eat between dives. The second surface interval is accompanied by a filling meal of delicious Thai food. And on the way back, if you can still consume more, there were pancakes. There was always watermellon and other fruits, and free flow tea coffee.

A few days later I saw their boat off Koh Phi Phi and snapped a picture of it there

About the videos

GoPro videography by Vance Stevens

PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor #64181

For more scuba diving videos 

like this one, see 

http://VancesDivebLogs.blogspot.com

For best results, view these videos using highest HD setting on YouTube