| Thailand & Burma -- Part 1 We took the freedom to add some comments, they are in in red. | ||
| by NLAVD | ||
| Date: 2002-06-20 | ||
| Location: Other | ||
When I first heard about plans for this trip I was a little overwhelmed. I'm certainly not new to international travel but BURMA for a dive trip? Ok, it was really more of a trip to Thailand with a 7-day liveaboard excursion into Burma (Myanmar)....and I simply couldn't resist. | ||
| I
balked
at
the
idea
of
going
on
this
trip
at
first.
It
wasn't
going
to
be
logistically
simple:
Tulsa
to
Dallas
to
LAX
to
Hong
Kong
to
Bangkok
to
Phuket...and
then
a
5-hour
bus
ride
to
Ranong
where
we'd
catch
our
boat
and
sail
into
the
country
of
Myanmar
, formerly
Burma,
which
would
require
a
Burmese
visitor
visa,
and
who
knows
what
else.
It
also
wouldn't
be
cheap.
For
this
kind
of
money
I
could
pick
one
of
many
locations
around
the
world.
There
were
the
good
sides,
of
course.
The
seven
days
on
the
liveaboard
would
be
shared
with
only
nine
divers,
selected
such
that
their
experience
level
wouldn't
limit
us
when
we
chose
dive
sites.
This
would
be
important
given
the
intended
itinerary
through
the
Mergui
Archipelago
and
the
Burma
Banks,
an
itinerary
that
was
the
real
selling
point
of
the
trip.
Mergui
Archipelago
is
group
of
islands
north
of
the
popular
Similan
Islands
and
within
the
country
of
Myanmar.
It
boasts
of
hundreds
of
uninhabited
islands
scattered
along
the
coast
in
the
Andaman
Sea.
This
area
was
largely
unexplored
except
by
local
fishermen,
and
seldom
if
ever
dived
until
the
mid-1990s
when
Burmese
authorities
gave
permission
to
let
some
Thai
liveaboard
dive
boats
visit
the
area.
In
the
southwest
part
of
the
archipelago
lies
the
Burma
Banks.
This
was
the
first
area
in
Myanmar
that
was
dived
by
tourists
and
is
the
most
well
known.
We
ended
up
not
going
there
on
this
trip. My travel to Thailand started Friday evening with a flight from Tulsa to LAX. I departed LAX at midnight on a flight to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok where I arrived at 10:45AM Sunday Morning. A short hop from Bangkok down to Phuket ended that section of my journey and by Sunday evening I was having dinner and drinks with John other members of our group. We unanimously agreed to let John (a 15-year resident of Phuket) order for us and we weren't sorry. The food was outstanding. I won't waste my time or yours trying to describe the variety of food I had throughout this trip. Let it suffice to say that I've decided that Thailand has the best foods in the world. The local beer, Singha, is a fairly strong and rich beer compared to other Asian-made beers. Most of the farongs (westerners) ordered Heineken which is available most places, but I preferred the local stuff. It seemed perfect with the spice and endlessly flavorful local foods. Phuket is a tourism oriented island on the south west coast of Thailand. I stayed in the town of Patong which is probably the most popular tourist stop on Phuket. It has a nice, if a little crowded, beach and plenty of hotels & resorts in most every budget range. It is also the center for nightlife on Phuket. Thailand is famous the world over for "entertainment for men" and this place didn't disprove that reputation. During the day it's just a nice beach by a small town with souvenir shops, restaurants, and such but at sunset the bars open their doors and the girls arrive. Let me just say Dorothy, you'd best stay in Kansas. With that I'll plead the 5th the grounds that...uh...well you know the rest. I should point out that while the nightlife of Patong gets a lot of talk, this doesn't represent all of Phuket. There are many other locations on the island that are more family friendly and in fact, I saw many families in Patong. I'm pretty sure however, that the ever-puritan Cleaver family from Idaho should probably find another beach. Monday morning four of us were picked up in a local version of a taxi which is more or less a pickup with a covered bed and benches to sit on. We headed down to Karon beach to meet up with Marina Divers for a two-tank trip to local sites. This was a choice dive boat. We were way less than capacity so there was lots of room. The boat had a nice indoor area with nice posh seating and a table in the center with fruit, water, coffee, tea and pastries for the duration of the trip. There was a nice sun deck upstairs with more posh seating. The diving on this trip was my first in Indo-Pacific waters so nearly everything was new. There were plenty of lionfish, bannerfish, and angels. The soft coral was beautiful but not too plentiful. This was a good precursor to the Burma trip to come. As you may know, the MV Faah Yai is one of the only Burma-bound liveaboards that doesn't leave from Phuket. Instead, it leaves from Ranong, Thailand on the Thai/Burma border. The 5-hour van ride to Ranong started way too early on Tuesday morning when a shiny new Toyota van pulled up with a driver, his helper and John. Leaving from Ranong makes for a shorter boat ride to the dive destination, but the ride down can be long even in a fairly roomy, air conditioned van. If I did it again, I would consider departing from Phuket and enduring the longer boat ride to Burma or just planning to fly directly into Ranong, consider also to stay at a hotel in Khao Lak, just two hours by bus to Ranong. Once in Ranong, we met the others and proceeded to the Thai Emigration office where we officially left the country. The next stop was the boat where we would go through the process of getting through the Myanmar immigration. Overall the process was fairly efficient and we had time to go into the little port town and buy some Myanmar Rum (for about $1 a pint) and try some food being sold on the street...ok, only Ivan and I tried the food and we agreed that it wasn't worth crossing the Pacific for. Big Americans are sort of a spectacle here and at least one of our crowd fit the bill. He seemed to amuse the youngsters. The MV Faah Yai is nice and has decent rooms, some with two twin beds, some with one twin one double bed. It's no Aggressor but all rooms are A/C and have private baths/showers. There was no evidence of fresh water limitations. The food was all Thai, all excellent (I love Thai food), and plentiful. There was unlimited chilled drinking water, soft drinks, fruit, nuts, etc available all the time. I ate mango, pineapple and cashews all day every day. We did a minimum of 4 dives a day including the night dive and often got 5 in. The dive master, Alain, had a small case of Jekyll and Hyde. He gave the most thorough dive briefings I've ever had but bordered on worthless when leading dives. The 'boat boys' on the dive deck were super helpful and really on the ball with the pickup boat. The dive deck was small but workable for 10 divers. The camera table is way too small , In the meantime upgraded to a much bigger area.. If I were to dive Mergui/Burma Banks again, yes, I'd certainly consider using the MV Faah Yai again but I would also take a look at the boats that leave from Phuket, The diving in Myanmar ranged from exceptional to "only" really good. I never came up from a dive wishing I had stayed on the boat but there were a few dives that had pretty poor visibility, maybe 10 feet, and one dive where we missed the submerged pinnacle and ended up fighting the current on a relatively boring dive site. Also, many dives came with currents that were quite strong and we were forced to stay on one side of an island or pinnacle for shelter. Other than the current itself, this isn't a problem since the sea life is so dense here you can enjoy a whole dive in a 100 square foot area. We awoke the first morning at a dive site called Three Stooges, Three Islets, In Through the Out Door, and Shark Cave Island...depending on who you ask. The boat was stopped near the middle and largest of three big rocks sticking out of the water, the only one big enough to have trees and other greenery on it. The dive briefing was very, very thorough, describing how we would drop in on a vertical wall, descend to about 65' and proceed along to wall until we got to a 'canyon'. This canyon would cut back into the island and has nearly vertical sides that are maybe 25-30 feet apart on average. The canyon will end before it cuts the islet in half, but you will see a swimthrough that exits on the other side where you turn left onto a coral garden. The briefing was as accurate as it was thorough, including the description of the group of gray reef sharks that live here. As we entered the canyon, we stopped, settled in the sand close to the wall, and watched for a while as they circled from one end to the other. The biggest of these was probably 8 feet long and quite hefty in the body. What a spectacular way to begin the trip! We did several dives at this site and only a few of them produced the sharks. The rest gave an opportunity to explore the rest of this outstanding dive site. As I dropped to the bottom on my first dive here, I immediately spotted a banded sea snake cruising the gravel & rock bottom. Bearded scorpionfish seemed to be as common as rocks (and in many cases were mistaken for them), crinoids, anemones and their resident anemonefish seem to be everywhere. Lionfish were around but not as common as in the Phuket area, other fishes, too numerous to list, were prolific. Second only to the big predators, the highlight here were the mating cuttlefish. This was so "Discovery Channel"-like that it was almost surreal. Their tolerance for divers getting close was so surprising and conducive to photos that I couldn't resist: Following is a brief description of the next few dive sites we stopped at. Any one of these sites could produce pages of descriptive text but there is simply too much to give in detail. Loughborough Pass -- Missed the submerged pinnacle and fought the current the whole dive. Got to see a fried egg nudibranch and some big sea stars. Certainly could have been a better dive but no complaints. Rocky Island 1 & 2 -- These sites are blanketed with anemones working with clown, skunk and other anemonefish. Also got to see more cuttlefish. Once again, I came up stunned by the density of sea life. Rocky Island 1 at night -- Basket stars, some as big as a laundry basket, were out in droves. Rabbitfish were, for some reason, pouring over the wall like a water fall, then back up. They were so thick it would leave me just short of vertigo ridden having nothing stationary to reference on the wall. At one point I spotted a fimbriated moray just in time to see him strike one of the rabbit fish. The fish was consumed almost frantically in the spot of my light. When the fish was gone, the eel was quickly on his way out of the beam of my light. Next -- more diving and more photos. Click here for part 2 | ||
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