Fun Diving

One thing that Beau and I both really wanted to do while we were staying on Ko Phi Phi was some fun diving. No skills. No training. Just pure enjoyment. On Ko Tao both of had focused our diving on skills development. Beau's Rescue Diving course was intense and even though he did go out in the ocean he didn't really get to enjoy it. While I was given some opportunity to enjoy the scenery, the visibility was pretty poor while we were there and I spent most of my time trying to make out my instructor's fins and not get lost. We heard that the visibility in the area of the Phi Phi islands was much better and there were tons of dive shops to choose from, although they were all in agreement and had a fixed rate.


We settled on a company called Princess Divers mainly because the dive master we initially spoke to, an Aussie named Kaila, was not only laid back and friendly but also really knew her stuff. We also liked the fact that we could rent a digital camera with an underwater casing to go the deeper depths (my underwater Olympus can only go 5m deep without a casing) and they burn all the photos on a CD for you. We booked our fin dives for Wednesday morning.

We woke up early and met at the dive shop at 7:30am. There were 6 fun divers in total including Beau and myself, an Aussie named Diana and 3 guys from Spain. We were split into two groups. The Spaniards and Diana got an Aussie dive master named Brydon and Beau and I got Kaila. She told us later in the day that they had split us 4-2 because she had remembered us talking about the poor visibility on Ko Tao and she wanted us to really get the most out of our fun dives. How thoughtful! On our way to the pier we stopped at Phi Phi Bakery and got yummy fresh breads for only 20B (about 60 cents). I got the cinnamon roll and love it so much that dragged Beau to that bakery every morning after that to get one!


We went on 2 fun dives in total at two different sites about a 20 minute boat ride from Phi Phi Don. The first dive site was off the coast of Bida Nok, the larger of two Bids islands just south of Phi Phi Ley. We did a multi-level dive ranging from a max depth of 18m up to around 5m for 56 minutes. I was definitely the rookie of the bunch and spent most of the time trying to get my buoyancy figured out - the objective of every diver is to be neutrally buoyant, where you hover in the water and neither sink nor float. That combined with trying to take underwater photos made me a little clumsy but both Beau and Kaila were patient and I got better throughout the day. I felt barely any nerves when before we went underwater and then I was completely distracted by the beauty all around me.

The water was crystal clear and the marine life was incredible! Some highlights of what we saw on this dive include:
- two different types of lionfish
- scorpionfish
- clownfish (NEMO!)
- cuttle fish
- small yellow pufferfish
- moray eel
- a small stingray

We rested on the surface for an hour and a half, docking in Maya Bay on Phi Phi Ley island. We had lunch, snorkelled and jumped off the boat. The bay was lovely and Maya Beach was where they filmed the movie "The Beach".

Our second dive was at Palong off the coast of Phi Phi Ley. We did another multi level dive at similar depths to the first dive for 62 minutes, my longest dive to date. This was my favourite of the two dives, in part because my skills were improving so I was able to spend more time enjoying the scenery and in part because we saw SHARKS!!! We saw a leopard shark, which swam right up close but then got spooked by all the people and swam off. We also saw several Black Tip Reef Sharks from a distance as they are much shyer. Still, it was incredible to see!

Some other highlights of cool stuff we saw include:
- sea snakes
- crown of thorn starfish
- more lionfish
- powder blue surgeonfish (DORY!)
- moorish idol (GILL!)
- more cuttlefish. This time, Kaila stuck out her pointing rod and the cuttlefish scurried away, changing colours. So cool!

We returned to the dive shop just after 1pm to debrief, fill out our log books and burn our photos onto a CD. I was exhausted but thrilled to have had such an amazing diving experience, which really was the point of my forking out the money and finding the courage to get the training and certification. We had a lazy afternoon but arranged to meet Kaila after her shift and treated her to dinner and drinks at one of her local haunts. It had heaping portions of yummy Thai food and tons of very friendly cats. Kaila told us that when the cats are hot, they scratch at the beverage fridge to be let inside to cool off. I looked over at the fridge and, sure enough, there were two nestled in a cardboard box on the bottom shelf! Hilarious!