Similan Diving

The weekend before our English classes ended at R35, Wilson and I began a PADI Open-Water Diving course. Day 1: Watching modules and taking quizzes. Day 2: Getting familiar with the equipment and skills in the pool and taking the test.

The following weekend, after our office closed, we and Emily, who was already PADI certified, boarded a boat for the Similan Islands. We stayed in the Islands for 3 days and 2 nights, with the opportunity for 10 dives.

Battling some serious motion sickness from day 1, I only got in 9 dives, but they were awesome. The first 4 completed my PADI certification (whoo!) and each one after that had something special about it too.

I think these pictures from the trip will explain it better than I can. We rented an underwater camera, but our instructor took better pictures than we did, so many of these came from him.

P.S. Wilson took most of the pictures that appeared on my last two blog entries. He has a fabulous blog as well. Check it out at http://wilsoncecil.wordpress.com/ .

And now for the diving pictures...

Emily and Wilson





There were many different kinds of coral and fish. It was an underwater garden!

Can you see the top whisps of the Lion fish?

Camouflaged Rock Fish!









Giant Moray Eel



This encounter confirmed that they are in fact as grumpy in the wild as they seem in tanks.

On our last day we saw several Giant Manta Rays! They must be the most graceful animals on the planet. Drifting out of the blue and disappearing back into it, they were completely in control of the situation and actually seemed quite curious about us too.

This is me a bit startled and not really sure what to do one particularly large ray appeared right behind our group.

Here are are some videos too!