Two lovely group onboard to end November in Myanmar
November 2015: trip review The past few days have been amazing, thanks to everyone at the smiling seahorse  Merci pour cette super semaine de plonee, de bonne humeur et de decouverte au milieu de ces iles superbes.      Our second cruise to Burma just ended and was as good as the first one. Only 6 divers on-board and 4 of them doing a course, a very studious group start studying right away to be ready for the first dive on the next morning.  Mike is doing his Deep Specialty, Marc his Nitrox course and Sofia and Bjorn their Adventure Deep Dive. If you want to have some beautiful species as a classmate, join us for your next diving course.  To have a good start, Chewy, the most important man in the boat, our wonderful cook prepare us some crepes “french style”. We can allready smell the good taste of this trip in the virgin and well preserved Mergui Archipelago.  And there it is, on the third day, in North Twin, after only few minutes reaching the bottom for their adventure deep dive skills, Sofia and Bjorn saw this huge manta rays swimming around them. What an amazing feeling to have this spectator while learning new tricks! Luckily this specimen didn’t forget to come and meet the other group of diver during their safety stop at the end of the dive, nobody was left behind :-)  We even had the chance to spot some mating cuttlefishes during the day, and some shy octopusses on a night dive. And of course we had the usual stuff that we have the chance to see in Burma, sleeping marbled rays and bamboo sharks, devil scorpionfish, some funny frogfishes, smililing seahorses, and even a beautiful banded sea snake.  This time we even had the chance to spend a moment in the middle of curious eyes looking at us while wandering around this small typical village of Kyun Phi Lar with this nice temple on the top of the fishermen's bamboo houses.  Everybody went back to Ranong happy and we ended up this week with some dolphins to accompany us on the way back. This was a first time to see a manta for some of us, and Mike was so happy to see the long expected seahorse.
Keep tuned for more fishy stories...  We had a great start with some instructors and divemaster from Big Blue in Koh Tao and with a French couple freshly certified in the Leman' Lake, without forgeting Emilie, part of The Smiling Seahorse Family :-)  We had a busy program during the cruise, repeating the "dive, eat, sleep" routine: 4 dives and meals a day, nearly as many naps, time spent logging dives or discussin serious matter like the name of the tiny creature spotted during the last dive that no-one ever saw before... Everything ran smoothly, the boat is looking great after 2 months of pampering in the shipyard and we enjoy a few improvements onboard. But what we were most happy about: the diving is still as good! pfiu!!!  We were on the Burma' Sea for 6 days, away from the crowd, and we are glad to say the coral is still stunning in color and diversity, the fish are still around and we were even lucky to spot 3 Eagles rays on the first day, 2 on the 3rd and 2 on the 5th... Our enormous nurse shark was still taking a nap in his usual cave, bamboo sharks were hiding in the cracks, nudis, shrimps and crabs were still roaming around: Burma as usual. We'll never get enough!!!  We met plenty of different kind of nudibranches and had some amateurs onboard! Thankfully we had several ID booked to search to find the right names to write in our logbooks. Tapestry shrimps, squat shrimps, mantis shrimps, lobters and so many different crabs especially during the night dives: orangutan crabs imitating pieces of coral to camouflage, without forgeting the weird looking Frogfishes, stonefishes, pipefishes, octopuses, cuttlefishes and lots of Scorpionfishes!... we had a blast!  Then we are glad to confirm that the seahorse keep on smiling! No less than 8 seahorses smiling at us on the last dives, probably happy to see some company again after the last 6 months far from the flashes of camera ;-)  It was an amazing trip to dive away from the crowd and thanks to all of you who came visit us! we hope you comeback soon! |
The Smiling Seahorse Diving BlogA blog about our diving adventures in Burma and Thailand. Diving trip reports, guest reviews, fishy stories, wildlife fun facts and much more...
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AuthorsThe Smiling Seahorse has been running dive cruises from Ranong since 2012.
Our team of instructors are reporting with a short blogpost after every trip. Camille, Franck and some guest writers also contribute during the off season writing on various topics. Keep tuned for more fishy stories :) 
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See also...- About Myanmar liveaboards
- Best Burma dive sites - Marine life in Andaman Sea - The Mergui Archipelago - Best dive site in Thailand |
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