One place remaining on the Rainbow-Scuba Liveaboard to Similand and Surin islands Thailand. Price approx. 432 GBP 4 days 4 nights. Please see the web site for more details  www.rainbow-scuba.com

Happy bubble blowing, Adam

All,

I received this today from the DFL (Diving for Life) organisers:

We are excited about Diving for Life at Phi Phi Island in Thailand October 18-25, 2008. The trip is selling well, and we have booked enough participants to have exclusive use of our section of the resort. (Thai hospitality dictates that a small section of the resort be available for other guests.) However, we still have capacity to add more particiapnts. Please go to our website, http://www.divingforlife.org/ for more information about this year’s trip and to obtain registration forms. We also have some wonderful add-on trips on the website, if you are inclined to stay in Southeast Asia a little longer.

Please pass along information about Diving for Life to other diving friends. We are pleased to have registrants who have never been to Diving for Life this year from all over the world, and it is always nice to expand our community. We hope to see you in Thailand.

Kelly Thiemann and John McCall

DFL Co-Organizers

I am still in the land of “love you lots” (Thailand) - getting back to Guernsey tomorrow. I will have a couple of spaces available for this sive trip at the end of May. If anyone is interested, pleased drop me a note and I will give you further details. Unless I don’t have any replies within a couple of weeks, I will open this up to my dive club - but would really prefer to keep this a GLUG trip if possible. This is the third year this trip has been organised - with fantastic feedback from all who have dived and stayed on this magic island.

Hi Everyone

I hope to go to Thailand next February, to do my Dive Master qualification, on Ko Samui. I have also been discussing doing a trip with Adam at Rainbow Scuba

He has suggested that we might want to try and fill a liveaboard with both, GLUGies and others, from his rainbow network. We are looking at two specific charters namely:

http://www.moby-dick-adventures.com/m-v-nautica.htm

http://www.diving-thailand-phuket.com/diving_thailand_liveaboard/colona_liveaboard_introduction.htm

As well as this 4/6 day live aboard, Adam can also organise land based trips on this fabulous island-check out his web wite. As a lot of you know, Fred Wyn has just left Thailand after an amazing and successful time and spoke highly of his time with Adam and Rainbow-scuba.

At this stage, I would like to gauge your interest, in this idea and then, with enough interest, Adam can put the trip together for us.

On a different note, The Red Sea September trip has now been opened up to some other G & L dive clubs who are showing keen interest. You may want to have a think about booking shortly if you are interested.

See you on Tuesday (4th) committee meeting and social or at LIDS

Charlie

Hi everyoneWell, I am pleased to let you all know and share my good news. After two full, intensive weeks on an IDC course in Koh Samui, Thailand – I am now also a PADI Instructor. Sleepless, late nights, preparing and instructing confined and open water presentations, as well as taking five theory exams and a PADI standards exam ! It has been a hard two weeks, made easier with some great folk, some from China, Austria, England and the Netherlands.  The course Director is based here in Samui, with the IDC staff, both from Egypt – good contacts for future dive holidays !If you are interested in seeing the write-up, http://padidivingidc.blogspot.com/A huge party tonight with all the guys and girls and then I can continue to spend the next month or so around Thailand and the Pacific.Best , Fred.  

Diving for Life 2008 has just been announced - it will be on Phi-Phi Island, Thailand from 18-25th October 2008. We hope for a huge GLUG uptake on this one!! Keep your eyes on the DFL (Diving for Life) website : www.divingforlife.org
where in the next few days/weeks bookings will open.
I have emailed Adam at Rainbow Scuba (also Thailand) to see if he can arrange a liveaboard for the week preceding - if you’d be interested in this please email me direct so i can keep a head count. (stephaniebutcher@aol.com),

Chris L on behalf of Mark B - I have booked 4 nights/5 days on a live-aboard from Phuket, Thailand and am looking for a buddy, preferably with someone that I could meet beforehand. I do have a partner, but unfortunately he’s not into diving and will be staying in Phuket whilst I’m on the boat - it would be good to meet with like-minded people who fancy sharing a twin cabin for a few days.
The dates I have booked the live-aboard for are the 27th Nov - 1st December, will be in Thailand from the 23rd Nov, until 12th Dec, arriving in Phuket for the live-aboard on the 26th. The link here is the company that I have booked with, went earlier in the year with them and they were really good. The trip I have booked is the Similan & Richelieu Rock Live-aboard, the cost of these 5 days is £395 - however you can stay for longer or shorter periods of time, but it does have to be on certain days - the website explains this.
Many thanks
Best wishes Mark B
Contact on: mark(at-symbol)lancashirebarlow(dot)com

If anyone is interested in a dive trip to Tenerife in November perhaps they would like to email me as I,m pondering getting a group together.All welcome.

No firm details as yet but understand those that went last year had a good time! Drop me a line.

Still have my ski trip in the offing for those interested…pricing now around £350 (half board) for a week in the Austrian Alps for March 23rd.Bargain!

May be a Thailand dive trip straight after next xmas too in 08…again email me (on both)!

Ray the “Chef”.

Please choose a report from the following:
Similan and Surin Islands and Phuket - Shore and Liveaboard - 2005
Koh Samui - 2005

Similan and Surin Islands and Phuket - Shore and Liveaboard - 2005

by Alan Larsen

After three trips a year to the Red Sea over the last three years I was keen to dive in a different (but similarly warm and clear) location. A conversation at the end of another of Steph’s excellent trips on Emperor Fraser in June last year thus led to organising a GLUG trip to Thailand - a four-day liveaboard trip to the Similan and Surin Islands, followed by nine days in Patong Beach (organised through Oonasdivers). The details were finalised and deposits paid before the tsunami, which then caused a change in hotel (and location) and some indecision about whether to continue with the trip. However, five of us decided to travel - although now with several different plans for the second week.

We arrived at Patong Beach midmorning and boarded the Colona VI that evening. Contrary to our “post tsunami” expectations, the boat was almost full and after the usual briefings and setting-up up our kit, we set off for the Similan Islands.
It takes seven hours to get to the Similans from Phuket, so we travelled overnight - which wasn’t a problem given that we had slept only for a couple of hours in the past thirty-six!

The five of us dived as a group throughout the next four days with Mark, a British dive guide. The first dive was East of Eden (Island 7). Within two minutes we spotted an octopus on the sandy bottom beside a small coral head and similarly disguised. The main feature of the site was a sandy area at around 25 metres that was covered with Blue Spotted Rays, some resting half hidden in the sand, and some swimming around. The dive finished with a turtle; a gentle but promising start.

Next was Barracuda Point (Island 9), which really showed the underwater topography of the area, starting with huge boulders, sparsely and prettily covered with colourful soft corals, and ending with a coral garden that comprised a huge number of table corals.

The next two dives were a bit of a disappointment. The first involved twenty minutes of finning against an unexpected strong current, missing the intended reef, and ending up on a different reef. (That’s diving, I guess!) There followed a twenty-minute rapid drift over the reef, which redeemed the dive a bit - with shoals of barracuda, milkfish and batfish and a baby reef shark resting/hiding under an overhang.

The last dive of the day was the night dive at Beacon Point (Island 8 ). I don’t usually do night dives, but I did this one! There was nothing to see and I was glad of the agreed forty minute time limit!

After a (much needed) good night’s sleep the first dive of day two at Three Trees (Island 9) was for me one of the highlights of the trip. We descended down the mooring line through a shoal of Batfish to a Leopard Shark sleeping on the sandy bottom at 30 metres. We then wound our way up through an atmospheric seascape of massive long, smooth boulders minimally covered with large barrel sponges, gorgonians and other soft corals. Then another shoal of batfish and a shoal of fusiliers, ending up on the reef that we had drifted over (unplanned) the day before. This time we had a more gentle fin across the reef - spying a lobster under an overhang then being attacked by a Titan Trigger Fish that I got too close to while trying to get a goodphoto!

The Colona VI then sailed north out of the Similan Islands and into the Surin National Park. The next two dives were on the West Ridge of Koh Bon. Quite different from the Similans, limestone and not granite, there was an abundance of hard and soft coral, huge table corals and vast expanses of soft corals. Visibility was noticeably less good here too; in fact, from this point on it was quite murky on most of the dive sites. However, we saw several more Leopard Sharks sleeping on the bottom at 30 metres, a couple of Egg Cowries, Red Fire Gobies, Scribbled Filefish and lots more.

That evening we moved on again to Koh Tachai for a dusk dive. We descended down the mooring line in a very strong current into a pile of huge boulders looking like an underwater ruin. The start was dramatic - like going down a ruined processional stairway; at the bottom were two huge baitballs of juvenile fusiliers trying to take shelter for the night and being herded by several large trevallies looking for food. Thereafter there was less to see as we finned round the granite boulders which were disappearing eerily in the fading light.

For day three we moved on to Richelieu Rock. Discovered and named by Jacques Cousteau, it’s a horseshoe shaped rock, the tip of which just breaks the surface when the tide drops. This was for me the highlight of the trip, and was so good that we agreed to stay all day for four dives. The value of a good dive guide was demonstrated by some of the things we saw: a Tiger Tailed Seahorse (my first); Harlequin Shrimps (very rare); an Ornate Ghost Pipefish (rare and difficult to find); Durban Dancing Shrimps, partner cleaner shrimps, White Banded cleaner shrimps (which I let into my mouth to clean my teeth!); several Frogfish; vast areas covered with anemones and several different types of Clownfish; four huge Potato Groupers lazing and being cleaned in the late afternoon; fantastic hard and soft corals near the surface in the sunshine! Truly a great dive site!

Day four comprised two more dives in the Similan Islands on the way back to Phuket: Elephant Rock (between Islands 7 and 8 ) and Shark Fin Reef (off Islands 1, 2 and 3). Compared to the highlights of Richelieu Rock, it perhaps wasn’t surprising that these two dives seemed fairly uneventful. Massive upright granite boulders on the first site, with huge shoals of fusiliers. The second dive (and last of the liveaboard trip) was over the more usual large flat boulders with Mark being attacked this time by a Titan Trigger Fish whose territory he (and we) needed to cross to show us a small (black and white) Ribbon Eel.

The seven hour trip back to Phuket was fairly rough; an early warning that the monsoon season was nearly on us - and maybe going to set in a few days earlier than hoped! Indeed our passage back was slowed so much that, rather than take another two hours to go round Phuket into Chalong Bay, we disembarked onto the beach at Patong using the Zodiac - giving some worrying moments as our luggage was hurled across the swell from the Colona VI into the zodiac!

The next morning the weather was calm and sunny again, so we wandered along the beach from our hotel in Kata Bay and booked dayboat trips for the next two days.

The first was to Koh Phi Phi - a three hour boat trip away. Although pleasant enough when we set off, the weather changed just as we arrived at the dive site of Koh Bida Nok, and we entered the water in driving rain and a huge swell, which turned out to be the start of the monsoon season. This and the next dive site at Koh Bida Nai both had potential: colourful coral, vast swathes of anemones, octopus, turtles, lobster, cleaner shrimps - but the visibility was poor, the swell was strong and a short surface interval didn’t leave much time to digest lunch - all of which took the edge off the diving for me. The three hours back weren’t pleasant either!

Fortunately the second day boat wasn’t going as far. We set off in the monsoon rain for King Cruiser and Shark Point - both renowned dive sites in the southern Andaman Sea. Visibility was even worse. The highlights of King Cruiser were a row of toilets with seats and lids that still move in the current, and an incongruous lone white nudibranchs on the vast filthy side of the boat in the murk. Shark point however was excellent - even through the poor vis: another Sea Horse, a baby shark, a Leopard Shark swimming past, Devil Scorpion Fish and great hard and soft coral. Then a wall dive at Koh Doc Mai; two metre vis (the worst I’ve ever dived in), but loads of small things - nudibranchs, Durban Dancing Shrimps, cleaner shrimps, small eels, as well as a huge lobster. Against all the odds it was a great day’s diving. It was also the last diving we did.

For the next five days we variously went trekking in the rainforest at Khao Sok, visited Bangkok, cruised around Patong, drank gin and tonic, and generally lazed around.

Apart from a lack of tourists, the effects of the tsunami were not obvious in Phuket or on the dive sites we visited (although on the way to Khao Sok we drove through Khao Lak, where the devastation was still painfully - and movingly - visible). Some dive sites in the Similans were closed, but this didn’t affect the quality of our diving. All the dive boats thanked us profusely for coming and begged us to tell our friends to go to Thailand, as what they need most of all is tourists.
What more can I say but go; you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Koh Samui - 2005

by Adam Preston

As a professional dive instructor living on Koh Samui for the past three years much of my time is spent teaching the PADI Open Water and other courses. It is a hard life - really Not so often I get to take my camera and make fun trips to some of the deeper dive sites
with other experienced divers. A few weeks ago I had such an opportunity
with a lovely gay couple from Netherlands.
We travelled north of Koh Samui by slow boat for two hours (more time for sun bathing) to arrive at Sail Rock, one of the best dive sites in the Gulf of Thailand. Only 5 meters of the Rock are visible above the surface but it is the 30 meters below the surface that is of most interest to scuba divers.
Schools of bat fish have made this area their permanent home and they are not afraid to get close to divers.The bat fish appear quite playful and swim around us like we were one of the family. Named bat fish or spade fish (Scientific name: Ephippidae) due to their shape they are quite flat in shape and grow up to 40 cm long/ wide but only 10 cm thickness.
The walls of Sail Rock are carpeted with anemones and soft and hard corrals so there is always plenty to see. The area is also home to some giant groupers. No scuba diver ever forgets an encounter with one of these true giants of the sea that can reach 900 pounds and nine feet in length.
We made two dives at the same area, exploring some of the “hidden” pinnacles around the main rock. And of course no trip to Sail Rock would be complete with out a swim through the famous “chimney” - a vertical swim though starting at 18 meters and coming out at 6 meters. A truly great day’s diving by any standards. I certainly enjoyed every minute!  Now back to teaching mask clearing in the swimming pool. Anyone seen that extra 6 kg weight belt ??

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Chair

Name: Chris Lee
Years with club: 2
Dive Qualification: PADI Advanced / BSAC Sports Diver
Years diving: 5
Nitrox qualified?: Yes
Warm or Cold Water?: Both
Favourite Dive Destination:Thailand
Occupation:Education Project Manager
Places on my diving “wishlist”: Cocos, Scapa Flow (Scotland in general), Farne Islands
Favourite Dive types:Drift, Large Marine Life, Small Marine Life
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