Since our friend Malin has been working in Khao Lak in Thailand for the last few years, we thought we'd go for a diving holiday, catch up with Malin and get some warm weather all at the same time. Oh if only it were that easy!
It turns out the cheapest and shortest trip from Beijing to Phuket was three (3!) legs. First from Beijing to Guangzhou, then Guangzhou to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Phuket. Once our plane to Bangkok was late, it basically screwed us up completely. We rushed through immigration and customs, got our bag and found that the flight was closed. Crap. They also couldn't guarantee us a seat on the next flight, so we had to wait around for a few hours. Next, I didn't get a specific address for our hotel. Malin had organised it for us, along with a cab from the airport. I cancelled the cab but that was it.
After the end of check in, they said we could get on the plane (which was nice) and said we needed to hurry (which was not). We made the plane and we were off. Arriving in Phuket was OK until our bag didn't arrive. We only had one between us and it's pretty obvious (bright green). After touring the airport with the baggage lady, we got to the form filling out stage. Uh oh. She said she'd try to get it to us before we left. We said we were leaving to go out on a boat the following day (a Monday) and weren't coming back until Friday. She said she would try.
Next we went out to find a taxi. No one seemed to know where we were going. I said I'm not leaving with anyone unless they know where we're going so naturally they lied and said they did. We then went to their office where they spent about 45 minutes finding our where we were going (it was about 1:30am by now). Jane ended up calling Malin who called the place, got the number and our room sorted.
We finally convinced the guy to drive us to Khao Lak and then he just started aimlessly driving around while Jane tried to get him to call the hotel owner. Finally she had to get his phone, dial in the number and hand him the phone. 5 minutes after that, we arrived at our hotel! We had the room number, there was a key in the door, and it was 3am so we went to sleep.
We got up early the next day to try to sort out what had happened to our luggage, find the dive shop etc. Malin came to get us for breakfast and it turns out the airline had called her to let her know that our luggage was on its way to the dive shop (those being the contact details we had supplied). So we had a relaxing breakfast, checked out and went down to the dive shop. There was our luggage, safe and sound!!
I paid for our trip and noticed that the numbers didn't add up. The guy had just added them up on a piece of paper (that was sitting next to a calculator and behind a computer) and come up with about 25,000 baht over, then punched that into the machine and duly charged me. I brought this to his attention and he laughed and said these things happen. No they don't. Except when stupid people do them. He took about half an hour to fix his mistake (he spent the rest of the time we saw him whining about how he had to work so hard) so we got our gear sorted. I can say that aside from the guy serving us, everyone else who worked for the dive shop was really fantastic. He was definitely an anomaly!
Finally we were almost ready to go. We packed the stuff we didn't need in a bag, dropped it in the lockup and went outside to wait for the bus. After some bus complexity, we all made it on the bus then to the harbour (we saw elephants on the way!!). The boat was nice, decent size and fairly well laid out. Our cabin was compact but comfortable enough. We got the brief then Malin rushed us up the front to the best spot for watching the launch (complete with firecrackers), exiting the heads, and then the sun go down.
Basically we ended up doing 14 dives in the Similan Islands, Koh Bon and Richelieu Rock. We got in a few visits to different islands, some swimming and climbing. We saw manta rays, octopus, squid, scorpion fish, barracuda, everything you could want from a diving holiday. I don't have any underwater photos because my underwater housing is in Sydney but here are the photos:
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| Thailand 2012 |
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