I play the board game Go, and recently won a trip to Japan to play in a minor world championship. I decided to use the opportunity to get some diving in, and so came back via Thailand.
The Go tournament was good fun. We beat France for the first time, in a completely undeserved victory. After this, there was a Friendship match whose aim is to promote international understanding. We needed to wear national costume for this event. I showed my deep knowledge of history and politics by dressing as a Crusader.
Then onto Thailand, although en route I discovered that it's a really bad idea to leave big scuba knives in your hand luggage when leaving Japan. I had 4 days diving, 11 dives in total, in the Andaman Sea.
The first two dives where day-dives on a wreck of a tin dredger which sank in around 1985 in around 20 metres. This is an exceptionally good dive. The wreck is huge. It was in 1 part prior to the 2004 tsunami, which split it up into 3 smaller bits. There was very good wildlife on these dives, with lots of smaller fish and a few groupers.
Then I left on a 3 day liveaboard with Wicked Diving. We started off on the Surin Islands, went to Richeliu Rock for the second day, and then headed to the Similan Islands for a night dive and a couple of dives on the final day.
The diving was all very good. It was strictly recreational stuff - max depth 30 metres, 29C water, single aluminion 80 tanks, max dive time just over 1 hour. We weren't lucky enough to see any big stuff, but the soft corals and little fish were brilliant. I saw a sea snake for the first time on the night dive (a banded sea snake).
I haven't got around to uploading my photos yet, so here are some of my buddy's:
Surin Islands
Stingray
Me and some yellow fish
Loads of batfish
Richeliue Rock
Little fish shoal
Cuttlefish
Lionfish
Similan Islands
2 lionfish
All in all, an excellent holiday and Wicked run a good trip.
On the final day, we went to see monkeys. Here's one in a tree eating an ice lolly, desparately trying not to share the spoils with her offspring: