Cambodia and Thailand - February 2011
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français Hop! To the water! We return under the surface. On the program: a small cruise to the Similan Islands, with Richelieu Rock, Koh Bon and Koh Tachaï on the way. They are the most famous diving sites of Thailand...
Sea of Fantasy
When I embark, in February, on the Sea of Fantasy of Eden Divers, I know more or less what to expect: it is with this boat that I had already dived, in 2009 (see → The cruise makes bubbles and other links at the end of this post).
Update : The story you are reading here is several years old... So don't try to book the same cruise at Eden Divers today, the company no longer exists! It went bankrupt, in the hands of a German man who was prosecuted in Austria for fraud, and who was arrested in Thailand in May 2014, if I am to believe the articles I have read on Thai sites ThePhuketNews and ChiangRaiTimes.
In the crazy Thai armada which embarks divers every day on a cruise on the Andaman Sea, this is one of the rare boats to propose individual cabins, which suits me well (I do not like to pay the exorbitant supplements singlenor sacrifice my sleep for snoring or snoring in a shared cabin).
Three years ago, I had appreciated the comfort and guidance, the Nitrox free of charge, the international atmosphere with divers of all ages and backgrounds... So I decided to return to them.
Lucky for us: for this cruise, we are only 5 clients on the boat, made to welcome 13. Enough to spread out without jostling each other! I was delighted.
The Thai crew is with the small care, as always. The dinner is ready when we arrive, there is only to put the feet under the table.
The program is simple: eat, sleep, dive. Eat, sleep, dive.
My four diving companions are all German. Thirty years old, open and nice. We will have a good time during these three days. The staff who supervise this cruise is German too. Essen, Schlaffen, Tauchen
Good atmosphere, again, but... more Germanic than international, this time! 😛
Bad luck: engine failure at the start. And since a spare diaphragm for the compressor is also missing... NitroxYou will have to dive "normally", in the air.
Okay. All this is not too serious, it will not affect the cruise, fortunately. We will leave after all the other boats, much later, in the night. Two Thai mechanics will spend long hours toiling and sweating, in the suffocating atmosphere of the hold, to repair the engine.
Plop!
I wondered, before diving, what state would be the coral, which suffered the bleaching due to water warming. And now that I've seen for myself, it's hard for me to judge, really.
This was my third dive-cruise in the Similan, but with three years between each one. My memories are not so precise and I don't know the sites by heart.
I think that it is near the surface, where there were real "coral gardens", that the damage is the most important. But frankly, deeper, on all the sites where we dived, I enjoyed myself.
The highlight of the show was (as the previous times), in the Surin archipelago, the sumptuous Richelieu Rock, teeming with life, covered with a profusion of purple soft corals, waving under the current. It was a wonderful dive!
We often hear that it was Cousteau (him again!) who gave his name to Richelieu Rock, the color of the soft corals lining the reef having evoked the purple of Cardinal Richelieu's robe...
In fact, this version would be just another beautiful legend. Charlie, from the diving center Seafarer DiversIn Phuket, he explains to me that it is not possible:
It's not true, Cousteau's "Calypso" has never been to Richelieu Rock, because I was the diving guide for this expedition during the shooting of the film "The Convicts of the Sea".
In 1988, no diving center had yet dived at Richelieu Rock and nobody in the area knew this superb site.
The English probably gave this name because Cardinal Richelieu had made them drool in the seventeenth century with his navy, and as this rock is treacherous to navigation, they could compare it ... the cardinal from Richelieu.
But in fact, the real explanation would be the following (thanks to Ludovic for having put me on the track, via an article in the Bangkok Poston the Wicked Diving blog) : Richelieu Rock would not take its name from any reference to the famous Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), but of a certain Andreas Plessis de Richelieu (1852-1932), who marked the history of Thailand.
This Dane, as his name does not indicate, was sent to Siam where he distinguished himself in several naval battles at the end of the 19th century. He was the first foreign commander to join the Siamese Navy, which promoted him to the rank of vice-admiral in 1902.
Underwater photos
Contrary to what some doomsayers predicted, I managed not to drown my 7D ! 🙃
I know that the idea of taking a camera like this underwater makes many people shudder... As for me, I am not too worried. I always prepare my housing very carefully, without rushing, preferably the day before. Anyway, I can't imagine diving without my camera!
But I still needed several dives to get my bearings and succeed in making the pictures I wanted. Small disappointment, during these three days of cruising: the rather gray weather, which did not help me much for the underwater pictures...
And my main dilemma, from one dive site to another: the choice of lens. Macro or wide angle? Small animals or big animals?
Yes, I know. I have big problems in life... 😛 Proof in pictures below.
Where the hell are the mantas?
In Koh Bon, obviously, no dilemma for the choice of the lens. Wide angle, of course. This is THE place for manta rays.
Alas, we did not meet them. It is not for lack of insisting. We dived and dived again at Koh Bon, even trying a foray into the blue, moving away from the reef. In vain. However, they should not be far away... (But I will have a little more luck a few days later, after this cruise, by going back to Koh Bon for a day dive, from Khao Lak...)
Finally, in the "big animal" category, we were hoping to meet a whale shark. But no. Not the tail of one. It was not our day. Neither that day nor the others.
I realize how lucky I was five years ago: several manta rays, and one whale shark for my very first Similan dive cruise!
All right, then. No mantas, no whale shark this time. But there was some "big" one, though. Lots of very impressive schools of jacks and similar fish. Our tour-leader, Karin, saw two swordfish, I saw an eagle ray, the Germans saw a blacktip shark.
This being said, the obsession with the "big one" would almost make you forget the rest: the "usual tropical fauna", as I write now in my logbook to go fast. Flying scorpion fish, morays, groupers, blue spotted rays, clown fish, butterfly fish, parrot fish, angelfish, puffer fish, trumpet fish, scorpion fish...
Them, they're still here!
My previous cruises
I'm putting back here links to the posts and pictures I had put online, after my previous liveaboard in the Similan.
My stay of 2006
It was with the diving center Sea Dragonbased in Khao Lak, on the southwest coast of Thailand. I liked the atmosphere at that time, rather young and backpackers, very good option for small budgets. I hadn't launched this blog yet, but I had posted pictures on the very first sites I had created at the time, Notebooks of Southeast Asia and Diving in South East Asia :
- Similan 2006 : "terrestrial" pictures
- Similan 2006 : underwater photos
- Video: Whale shark at Richelieu Rock
- Video: Manta ray in Koh Bon
My stay of 2009
In 2009, I discovered the Sea of Fantasy of Eden Divers (with which I chose to go back for this Similan cruise in 2011). Good comfort, one of the few boats offering individual cabins, free nitrox and a square German organization, but still relaxed...
Update : The story you are reading here is several years old... So don't try to book the same cruise at Eden Divers today, the company no longer exists! It went bankrupt, in the hands of a German man who was prosecuted in Austria for fraud, and who was arrested in Thailand in May 2014, if I am to believe the articles I have read on Thai sites ThePhuketNews and ChiangRaiTimes.
😎 👌 🐠
