Day 1 - Hin Daeng & Hin Muang
To the south of Phuket there are two rocks in the middle of the ocean. One breaks the surface, Hin Daeng - while Hin Muang is 8 meters at it shallowest point. "Daeng" means red in Thai, and "Muang"....purple. "Hin" is "rock". So we were starting off at "Red rock", and "Purple rock".
Hin Daeng is the easier dive as it's shallower and if there is a current it's easier to hide from. This was where our guides - Steve & Paulo - wanted to do our first "check-out" dive....to make sure weighting was OK....have a look at the skill sets in the group etc etc. It was a good job too as we had one lady from Hong Kong who was an Open Water diver with 8 dives.....the last one in 2005! I think Steve had to more or less clip her to his harness for the whole dive. There was work to do there.....
For my part I had my own concerns. In truth I'd hardly been diving at all since having surgery more than a year before, just 5 times....and I'd put on around 20 kgs too!
I was pleased I could actually get into my 3mm wetsuit still, and my guesstimate about the weight I'd need was a bit much, but easy enough to deal with. This was also the first time I'd seen Maggie in the water....but she looked great....no problems at all. All in all it was a good first dive and we saw a lot....... ornate ghost pipe fish and peacock mantis shrimp among the highlights. Unfortunately though I'd left my camera on the boat to keep potential task loading to a minimum in case of unforeseen problems so some good photo ops were missed.
The second dive of the day was on the much more challenging site of Hin Muang. The lady from Hong Kong was politely told that the dive was too deep for her certification level and she'd have to sit it out. Hin Maung can have quite a current as well. It's not a place for a complete novice, especially one seemingly lacking several basic skills. The current wasn't actually too bad and we had a nice dive exploring the rock.
Then at the end of the dive the Mantas arrived....two of them.
We were actually already on our ascent to the safety stop when they appeared. This was the signal for the water above us to suddenly fill with bikini clad bodies leaping into the water from another boat that had arrived as we were underwater. It was chaos. The mantas didn't seem to mind though, just swimming circles round the proceedings.
We finished our stop and got back on the boat for lunch.....
After lunch I realized that the mantas were still there. I saw one nearly breach, and they appeared to be swimming around the boat. Plans changed and this was going to be our third dive too, so we suited up and jumped in again.
This time the current was fierce, and the plankton was so thick it reduced visibility considerably. I also found out during that dive that plankton stings on exposed skin. I didn't know that before.
But now the Mantas were everywhere, and there was a lot of them!
It was impossible to get "clean" shots so the following pics have been considerably worked on to produce something to look at. Sorry...it's the best I could do!
We actually spent the whole dive in the same spot - either hanging on to the mooring line, or hiding behind the top of the rock to stay out of the current. The Mantas did the rest....what a show!
When we surfaced the boat moved to the Phi Phi islands for the sunset dive. Steve needed a nice safe ite so he could do a quick refresher with his Hong Kong lady. I passed on the dive as after the Mantas I was sure it would be an anti-climax. Luckily, no-one saw a Whale shark or whatever so I didn't miss anything!