A week diving safari with the MV Bavaria

Upon arriving in Khao Lak, I checked into an inexpensive hotel for one night directly across from the dive center in the middle of town. At the dive center, I was able to calmly take care of the formalities for the upcoming tour.

In the evening, I enjoyed a good meal followed by a beer with live music; what more could one want?

Breakfast was from a street vendor: very fresh, hot, delicious Salapao (known as Baozi in China, stuffed dumplings, in this case filled with pork and egg yolk).

Since I was kindly allowed to stay in the hotel room until the afternoon, I was able to spend some time at the beach until the first raindrops fell. Afterwards, I had to pack up to take only a small amount of luggage onto the boat. I also managed to fit in a very good massage. Departure for the harbor was at 6 PM.

The boat itself, the 'MV Bavaria,' was only half booked, so I had a double cabin all to myself for the first half of the tour. After welcome drinks, a boat briefing, and dinner, it was soon time for bed. I didn’t get much of the four (or six?) hour journey to the Similan Islands, but the heavy splattering rain woke me up a few times.

This was followed by six days of safari with mostly four dives a day with a fun group from Bavaria as well. The first dive was each day at 7 AM, the last one at sunset or shortly after.

Unfortunately, storms were forecasted, so we couldn't reach the more difficult but beautiful dive sites up north, but stayed mostly in the protection of the island chain. It rained from time to time; I definitely did not need to bring sunscreen. It was still beautiful, with an extremely large number of fish, snails, ...

Dolphins could only be seen briefly from the boat, but underwater there were turtles, large and small morays in many colors, snakes, and even a young blacktip reef shark on one occasion.

The food was, of course, also good, plentiful, and varied.

I will only be able to download my underwater photos from my old camera at home; I will share those here later.

Unfortunately, I was caught out in the middle with stomach and intestinal problems and nausea (probably from eating too much and too spicy), and I had to skip three of the 22 dives in total. But that was nothing compared to the flu with 40° fever I had the last time on this boat. Everyone helped me bounce back quickly with all kinds of remedies and tricks.

On Tuesday, we returned to land early in the afternoon.