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The trip

The trip was organised by Colin for his xxth birthday! We had 12 people in our party, including three non-divers.

This was an absolutely out of this world trip. Check out the Phuket website for more details on the surrounding area.

We had a week on Phuket followed up by two days on Bangkok on the way home.

Being good divers we had plenty of rest days. The most we had was three consecutive days of diving.


Diving is such hard work. Honest.

All together now

Carl took all the underwater shots you see on this page

Phuket

Phuket is absolutely beautiful. It is approximately one hour by plane south of Bangkok.

One of the main towns is Patong with its famous beach.

Patong is situated approximately 30 minutes drive from our hotel. It has a very active night life in addition to the beach where you can go jet skiing as well as having a massage or just chilling out.

Our daytime impression of Patong was coloured somewhat by the fact that it was Thai New Year that day. More later...


The Hotel

For the trip we were staying in the Cape Panwa Hotel.

The hotel itself is beautifully open with really only the bedrooms being enclosed rooms. The reception and dining room are open sided.

The hotel sits on the side of a hill with all the rooms overlooking the hotel's private beach and the sea.

Don't worry about climbing hills though - there is a funicular railway from the beach to reception!

The hotel has two restaurants; one behind reception, and another on the beach front, plus a beach bar serving drinks and snacks. The main restaurant has a good selection of Western food for those who find Thai too spicy.

The pool complex at the hotel is complemented by another pool at the beach.

The hotel also sports a health spa and an internet cafe for those who can't leave technology behind for a week!

   

Thai New Year

The Thai New Year happily fell during our trip. We all enjoyed a splendid poolside meal at the hotel in the evening, but during the day some of us went to Patong to experience the real Thai New Year. Underwater cameras would have been advisable! We were lucky. The only electronics damaged managed to dry out OK.
The poolside extravaganza put on by the hotel staff was very impressive. Apart from the meal we had traditional Thai dancing, boxing and singing. All the staff were dressed in traditional costumes. At the end everyone was invited to jump in the pool fully clothed.
The Thai New Year is supposed to be a time of clensing. This got a little out of hand, but in a nice way. Everyone was having fun, and it was so hot you didn't have to worry about being damp. It was a bit of a relief. The streets of Patong were dotted with these huge barrels of water that anyone could refill weaponry from. The only people to watch out for were the "drive by shooters" in their jeeps. A lot of them had ice in their barrels!

Sea Bees Diving

Sea Bees were recommened to Colin by a neighbour who used to run a dive school in Thailand.

They certainly lived up to their recommendation. The staff in the shop were extremely helpful, including organising Nitrox fills, and allowing us to cancel two days diving (total of four dives) and go on their Super Sunday special offer which is four dives in one day including two on Phi Phi island.

Our dive guide was called Steve. Sea Bees have two boats, Excalibur and the "Number 2" boat. As there were nine of us and the Number 2 boat can only take thirteen divers we were on that boat every day. Some days we had some company...

There was plenty of room on the boat, partly due to the fact that it had its own compressor on board so there wasn't a need to store two cyclinders for each person.

Food was cooked while we went on our first dive, and was very good. Only on the Sunday did we have a non-Thai meal. There were always several main courses on offer, so you didn't have to eat the spicy one.




Dive Sites

For various reasons we did repeat dives on several islands, especially Koh Boc Mai. However each dive was planned for these sites so we had something different to see.

Phi Phi island

Phi Phi island is where the 2000 film The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. We visited the island as part of "Super Sunday" which was a four-dive day. We did our second and third dives on two of Phi-Phi Le's outlying islands. Our lunch surface interval was spent in the lagoon used for the film's backdrop. It is absolutely beautiful.

I can truly say that these photographs don't do Phi Phi justice. They are too dull. The colours are much more vivid in reality.

 
The entrance to the lagoon is well hidden from the sea despite the obviously large entrance. The Beach (minus the palm trees the film company felt were necessary to enhance the view)
The two outlying islands where we dived. Phi Phi on the way home

In the water...

These pictures were taken with an extremely simple underwater camera rated to 20M (it went deeper!).

My thanks to Carl who took all of these. Mine packed up on the first day and the only usable shot I got was the one of him at the top of this page!

As you can see the wildlife and the coral were spectacular.

 

Safari

On our last day in Phuket most of us went on a Safari tour.

This tour comprised canoeing, visiting a rubber plantation, a demonstration of Thai cooking, an elephant ride and some spectacular scenery.

Those who didn't join us on the safari went canoeing in Phang Nga Bay, most famous as the setting for the finale in the 1974 James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun.

Bangkok

We basically had a day and a half in Bangkok on the way home. The city itself was very nice, but after a week on a nice quiet island paradise I just wasn't ready for it. Bangkok is one of those cities travelling at warp speed where you don't get the chance to slow down.

Still we had two enjoyable tours plus a visit to the markets and a very nice "last night" meal at Cabbages & Condoms!. These restaurants were founded to help the Thai government with their family planning campaign - their slogan is "our food is guaranteed not to make you pregnant!" In reality a very nice rooftop restaurant.


Our riverboat tour took us past many temples and a lot of traditional houses built on stilts on the riverbank.

The King's Palace was a spectacular sight. Home of the emerald Buddha the number of buildings was vast. And all that glitters is gold...

The Emerald Buddha. You are not allowed to take photographs, and to be honest the you don't really get close enough to be able to get a good shot anyway. These files are linked from here.




Last Modified: Friday, 30-Aug-2002 22:48:04 BST
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