Hello again,

Am now in the last two days of my three weeks here in Thailand. Since I last wrote I flew 720 miles south to Phuket (pronounced Poo-get). Called a province this is really an island with a trunk road connecting it with the mainland.

On arrival, compared to rural Thailand in the north, it is a mature and well developed tourist region with similar standards to countries in the Med. Patong, the resort where I have been based has a lovely white sandy beach with all the variety of restaurants you would expect in any major touristic centre.

I arrived late afternoon and next morning was transported out on a boast to the Similians, a group of nine islands in the Andamen sea, where I dived for three days.

For those of you not familiar with what happens on a live-aboard as it's called, I have outlined a typical day:

0646 - Wake up call
0730 - First dive of the day
0830 - Breakfast
1000 - speedboat arrives from mainland with any new arrivals
1100 - second dive
1230 - lunch
1400 - third dive
1500 - speedboat departs to mainland with anyone leaving that day
1700 - fourth dive
1930 - night dive
2030 - dinner
You can do a maximum of four dives per day out of the available five. Each dive is preceded by a briefing outlining where we will travel below the surface and outline what we are likely to see. For safety reasons we dive in pairs so on the first two days I dived with a guy called Salim from Abu Dhabi and once he left I hooked up with a German from Stuttgart called Daniel, who celebrated his 300th dive on the last day.

In between dives your time is your own, but most of the day is taken up with diving or preparing to dive. There is a sun deck for catching UV rays.Most of the dives we did are called drift dives, where the boat drops you off whilst moving and you drift in the underwater current and get picked up by the boat at the end of the reef.

We were fortunate that this is near the end of the season. The boat can accommodate up to 60 divers but there were 20 on the first day, and by the second evening there were only seven on the boat which was luxurious for elbow room. The Similians are a beautiful spot and the diving did not disappoint. In fact it was some of the best I have ever experienced. Highlights:

On my first dive in Thailand we saw four beautiful giant manta rays with spans of up to four metres. these are graceful creatures who swim along open mouthed feeding on plankton. A giant barracuda was also sighted on this dive.
On the second day after spotting a small white tipped reef shark we saw three beautiful leopard sharks which have a brown/green coat which sparkles in clear water. For those of you who probably think this sounds like madness, the leopard sharks have no teeth, so the danger is no worse than any 'grab a granny' night some of you guys will have been to. The leopard sharks put on quite a show for us, circling around in front of us for a while.
During the dives in the Similians I saw a number of fish I have not seen before. Yellow backed fusiliers which are half blue and half yellow split from head to tail, and a great shoal of circular bat fish spring to mind. All the usual suspects were also on show, e.g. parrot fish, groupers etc. I also saw some blue coral which I don't think I had seen before.
A spectacular dive site called Boulder City, which has huge rocks lined up like a city centre boulevard
Best was left to the last day. On the early morning dive we spotted a total of five white tipped reef sharks with four of them sleeping in a row under a giant rock. I have this on both photo and video so should be able to share it with you in due course. this was also the deepest dive I have been on, reaching a depth of 37 .5 metres and requiring a decompression stop.This site is rarely dived so the quantity and condition of the coral was superb.
All in all some totally sensational diving, improving both knowledge and experience. John, the dive master in our group took a load of photos and I bought a CD off him with the highlights mentioned above including some video clips.

Since coming back to the mainland I have been taking it easy on the beach. Other diving opportunities were available but I think the time has come to chill out for a couple of weeks between finishing here and seeing my brother in Auckland. I did go on a half day boat trip today to see Phang Nga, which is a beautiful archipelago where the islands spread out like massive shards from the sea, all covered with beautiful vegetation.

Other exciting news is that I had the fifteen films I have on me burned onto CD and was able to view them in the film shop. I am pretty chuffed with the results and hope to email you some of them when I reach Australia. I should also be able to make up a slide show for easy viewing on the laptop when I get back.

Anyway, that's my main news. thanks to all who wrote since the last time. It was especially good to hear from some who I hadn't heard from since I left. please keep the contact coming, it is much appreciated. Will be having a lazy time in Melbourne next week, but after that I hope to write you from South America.

Best wishes

Murdo