Oli Reveals: XVI (16)
Another installment of Oli’s round-the-world emails:
Still going strong….
Dropped into Thailand at the end of January, flying into the tourist
favourite of Phuket. Spent 4-5 great days here, booking into a clean safe
Phuket town hostel and then commuting around via the public bus and my
lovely scooter. The weather’s been blissful, so I spent a couple of days
lazing on the west coast, did some snorkelling too, and met a nice Danish
girl to spend some time and dinner with.Also did a day trip to the famous island of Ko Phi Phi (actually 2 main
islands plus some smaller ones), where a Bond movie was shot, along with
that surreal movie “The Beach”. A lot of speedboats were scattered around
the various bays I visited, but still didn’t mar the sheer stunning beauty
of these stark limestone islands, covered in forest, huge rock faces
plunging into the turquoise waters. Here, the snorkelling was great too,
loads of schooling fish dancing around me (probably expecting food).
Managed to spot 6 reef sharks when I snorkelled another island, Koh Khao,
but the highlight of the Phuket region for me was the scuba diving.Managed to fit in three, not crippling my limp budget, I did a wall dive
along “Flower Island, where I saw a banded sea snake, Moray eels, angel
fish, boxer shrimps….the works, with a depth range of 30 metres. My
second dive was on a car ferry that was scuttled/ sank (captain’s just got
outta the clinker), with some sceptics reckoning the dive operators paid the
captain to sink his boat and give the tourists a wreck to dive. Anyways, it
was quite intact and had some cool larger fish lurking around it like
Trevally and Jacks, the Moray eel living in the u-bend of the boat toilet
was fun to see. My final dive was the best “shark point”. Here, there was
a huge array of fish swarming around the whole water column, creating a
kalideoscope of colour that bewildered me. The anemone and soft/hard coral
gardens were really beautiful to see, subtle shades of purples, greens,
creams, oranges and reds to create this huge flowing natural carpet for fish
to duck and dive around, their sanctuary- covered most of the dive route!!
Here I saw the docile Leopard shark, a nocturnal predator being 2-3 metres
long and not really giving a toss that I was so close to it. Another
highlight to the dive was the final coral pinnicle at the end, where there
were 1000′s of different fish cork-screwing around the coral/rock outcrop,
pulsing to the gentle current of the sea. Sea fans and corals were
overhanging everywhere and the whole experience made me wish I had gill,
just to watch in silence indefinately…..So yeah, a great time spent in the south west of Thailand. Now have to
decide on my route north and maybe even start to think
about…..England…..still time!!All the best,
Oli