We booked the trip with the Water World Asia dive shop in Patong. They set us up for a day trip where a van would pick us up from the house and drive us a little over an hour to a dock on the mainland north of Phuket. From there we caught a speed boat for a 1 ½ hour ride out to the Similan Islands where we would meet up with the dive boat.

All sounded great but there were a lot of divers. There were two separate speed boats each holding over a dozen divers. Some of them were going to the dive boat to do a multi-day live-a-board but most were like us doing just a day trip. That meant that the poor live-a-board was overrun with divers and it ended up being a fairly unpleasant experience. Trying to gear up on the super crowded dive deck was extremely frustrating. Gear was hard to find, we were always bumping into other frustrated divers and tempers were getting strained.

Once in the water it was better. The huge mass of divers were divided up into small 4-5 person groups each with a divemaster. That was definitely a welcome relief but then once underwater the disappointment resumed. The dive sites chosen weren't the best. There were a lot of fish but the reef itself looked really beat up and fairly devoid of nice coral.

The second dive was a little better because there were huge boulders but again we felt rushed out of the water because we were already behind schedule and the speed boats needed to get back to shore soon. So we packed up our stuff quickly and got back on the speedboats for a very rough 1 ½ hour ride back to shore.

You can also check out the dive logs for these dives. Dives 248 and 249.

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Snorkeling

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