| Thailand & Burma - Part 3 | ||
| by NLAVD | ||
| Date: 2002-06-24 | ||
| Location: Other | ||
Here is the third and final part of my story about diving in Thailand and Burma in April, 2002. Again, this is photo intense so be patient with the download. | ||
| If
you
ended
up
here
first,
click
here
for
part
1,
or
click
here
for
part
2. Next up was Stewart Island, which I described in my log book as a "close contact" dive and in the visibility column, I entered "no". This was a whale shark and manta heaven given the plankton in the water but you'd have to be riding the damn things to see them. We spent our time studying the small stuff and checking around for our buddies. Doc found a rock mover wrasse which was a very cool little guy to watch. You can click here to see a very bad photo of it. When we came up, we discovered that everyone had aborted the dive but us. Oh well. Now High Rock was another story. This was an excellent site that, not unlike Black Rock, was more or less a rock in mid-water. This one, however, was big enough to have one lone tree growing on it. Alain, in his characteristically enthusiastic way, gave a super detailed description of where to look for sea horses. I went directly there, found the described "cave-like opening", then the "white coral that looks like a small tree", then promptly found a sea horse. As dive briefings go, that's hard to beat! On the second dive, I'd been asked to locate the seahorse tree again. I went straight there only to find that the seahorse had been replaced by an ornate ghost pipefish! To top that, the others managed to find the seahorse not 30 feet from where it was. I took a myriad of photos of the pipefish, in fact I was so intriqued by the subject that I forgot to check if there were other divers waiting to see it. This is what gives photographers a bad reputation...shame on me. This site, like many of the others, has great things to watch all the way to the surface so we did our typical 20 minute safety stop before we surfaced from our last dive in Burma. Compared to the excitement and anticipation of the trip here, the ride home was filled more with pensive thought and the business of cleaning and packing the gear. Our way back out of Myanmar and into Thailand was uneventful and we found ourselves back at the hotel in Ranong where we had all assembled before the trip. After a few beers and many good-byes, those of us bound for Phuket packed into the van and headed south. Without question, the trip had been a resounding success. The following day, I did one last day trip out of Phuket to the Similan Islands. This requires a few hours of boat travel each way which is, in my opinion, a little much for two dives. The diving was nice but not quite the caliber of the diving in Burma. We went to sites called Shark Fin Reef and Elephant Head Rock. Both are made up of huge boulders and pinnacles with some coral but not a lot. The fish were the attraction, and they were indeed here. There were some cool wide-angle and fish portrait photo opportunities and I took advantage where I could. My last day and a half in Phuket was spent seeing the island, visiting the beaches, and picking up some souvenirs. I had plenty of other things I wanted to do here but they would have to wait for another trip. If (when) I come back I will definitely spend some time in Bangkok and maybe visit some other Thai Islands. I would also like to make it over to Ankor Wat which many have raved about. There are nearly an unlimited number of amazing places and things to see in the world and I've been very lucky to get to see a few of them. It is strikingly ironic that I and the others with me would spend so much money and effort to visit one of the poorest regions of the world and see something that was put there by nature. I spent what likely exceeds a Burmese fisherman's annual salary to come and look at what is, in effect, his back yard. Yet in the end, I felt like I got a bargain. It's not for everyone no doubt, but I consider it money well spent to visit a place where you can watch feeding crinoids, stare into the eyes of several different scorpionfish, photograph the worlds most venomous snake, see three different species of eels, watch gray reef sharks circle their territory, see magnificent anemones with resident skunk anemonefish, watch dozens of species of reef fish going about their daily routine, and see cuttlefish making cuttlefish babies...all before lunch on the first day. | ||
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