It will be very hard for me to talk through our experience on the MV Similan Explorer day by day. Most of the days rolled together and we entered into a daily schedule of dive, sleep, eat, repeat. The liveaboard was run by the dive company Similan Diving Safaris and promised us 18 dives in the beautiful Similan and Surin islands, as well as the World famous dive site that is Richelieu Rock. We knew the trip would be more at the budget end of liveaboards, but it didn’t feel that way for most of our trip.

After organising our kit and filling out paperwork we transferred to the boat. Khao Lak had been giving us some pretty impressive rain in the afternoons and this day did not disappoint. We had to run from our minivan to the boat and by the time we got there we were all soaked to the bone. We were shown to our 4 man room, which was teeny tiny to say the least, and as we were soaking wet when we got there, our room smelt and felt a little damp for the next 4 days despite us drying it out wherever possible. That night was all about orientation and were told how the next few days were going to pan out.

7am -first dive

11am – second dive

3pm – third dive

7pm – fourth and final dive

We had a briefing 30 minutes before our dive time and then we kitted up and waited to jump in. In between dives we often had opportunities to go ashore and explore some of the islands. We went ashore on our first day to one of the Similan islands, explored the beach and attempted to climb up to a viewpoint. Simon and Joe managed to get to the top, but Loveday and I went back after we realised we were being severely eaten alive by mosquitoes. Lets just say, a lot of us had a lot of bites after that trip. The beach was beautiful though and Simon and Joe said the viewpoint was worth it.

We decided to not go ashore the next day at Donald Duck Bay (the rock looks like Donald Duck). We all chilled out, napped and read instead, which was becoming necessary after 4 dives a day.

We did go ashore for the last surface interval trip, which was to a sea gypsie village. At Morgan Village, hundreds of Moken people live a semi nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle. Moken people live in islands around Thailand and Myanmar, but their way of life is under threat. There have been many attempts to assimilate them into Thai and Burmese culture, but most of these fail. I was interested to hear that the Moken people do not officially have a nationality. They life off of the land and the ocean, but are also struggling with health issues due to an exposure to sugary and fatty treats from tourists. The Moken people gained media attention in 2004 when the tsunami hit this area. As they are so familiar with the sea they knew that the tsunami was coming and managed to preserve most of their lives by going inland. Compared to the loss of life elsewhere, they hardly lost any at all. It was really interesting to see this village and as we walked around we could see how happy everyone was. We were introduced to the village drunk who showed us pictures of the Moken people from books and Simon got a chance to play some football with some of the local kids.

Let’s get back to the main point of our trip, the diving! Simon, Joe and Loveday all completed the full 18 dives. Unfortunately, I only completed 17 due to an ear problem that developed into a full blown ear infection (7 days later, I’m still struggling with it). Some of the the dive sites we visited were: Anita’s reef, Koh Bon, Richelieu Rock, Koh Tachai, Boonsung Wreck, Premchai Wreck, Elephant Head Rock and many more. Our two dives at Koh Bon were the favourites for all 4 of us. We were lucky enough to see the same manta ray on both of these dives. It was a very magical experience and I don’t think I will ever forget the electricity we all felt when we first got in the water on this dive. It felt like something big was in the water, and it was! The first time we saw the manta ray, she zoomed past us from about 15 metres away and the second time we were doing our safety stop at 5m and saw her from below us for about 3 minutes. I can’t think of a better way to spend a safety stop. She was breathtaking. The photographer on board got some pretty close up photos of her. I’m not trying to trick anyone. We did NOT get that close, but it’s great to have some clear photos of her.

Other highlights included Richelieu Rock. Ranked in the top 10 for dive sites in the world, it did not disappoint. We were lucky enough to dive here 3 times and we finally got to see one of my favourites. A seahorse!!!! It was AMAZING!! I love seahorses and I had never been able to see one in the wild so this was a treat. Richelieu rock was named by Jacques-Yves Cousteau after the colour of Cardinal Richelieus red/purple robes. The whole horseshoe shaped reef is covered in purple soft, hard and fan corals, as well as purple anemones. It was like there was an interior designer for the reef. Unfortunately, the colour didn’t come out very clearly on the professional photos.

So, what else did we see? Pipefish, ghost pipefish, 2 x white tip reef shark, 2 x turtles on the surface, 3 x baby cuttlefish, mantis shrimp, blue spotted rays, endless clownfish, cleaner shrimp, moray eels, tuna, trevallies, barracuda, octopus, trumpetfish, cornetfish, jellyfish, crown of thornes starfish, other starfish, fish and lots more fish. We saw pretty much everything and it was amazing. What did we not see? A whale shark! Even though we were there during whale shark season, the chances of seeing one is still very very slim and we were told they were hanging out more near Myanmar this year for some reason. We weren’t surprised we didn’t see one. I guess it just gives us an excuse to do some more diving. I’ll add a selection of photos below to sum up the trip. Professional photo credit goes to Rich Carey who did a great job of capturing our trip. Try not to laugh when you compare our go pro photos to his.

We experienced some very beautiful sunsets whilst on board.

I would definitely recommend this liveaboard to anyone who loves diving. We’ve been told it’s one of the last remaining untouched areas of Thailand to dive, and I think they’re right. There is a lot of destruction of the coral, due to the tsunami, but some of the sights are just breathtaking.