Then we made an exploration dive around Koh Rok before going south to Tarutao National Park.
Great trip starting from Khao Lak with 13 guests coming from US, Belgium, Canada, England, and French. The first place we dive was in Koh Chi in Surin National Park were the wonderful pikachus welcomed is in colours and after that, we went to Richelieu Rock for 3 more dives that first day! Then we moved south towards Similan National Park for a day split between Koh Tachai and Koh Bon. We saw a nice school of pickhandle barracudas in the blue and on the reef found Maldives sponge snails, the eggs of Spanish dancer (aka the reef rose) and a beautiful green turtle. The 3rd day, we were at three trees, elephant head, and west of eden for some great dives. We saw a curious octopus, a couple of blue ribbon eels sharing the same hole, and loads of beautiful nudibranch. I still wonder why two blue ribbon eels shared the same house as color usually determine the sex of these drag queens... if you know or wanna guess, let us know in the comment section! Similan delivered some fantastic dives but so did Lanta National Park! We got lucky to see our first manta ray of the season but unfortunately no photo this time! sad... Then we made an exploration dive around Koh Rok before going south to Tarutao National Park. Full day around Koh Lipe to dive 8 Miles, Stonehenge, Koh Yang East and Sawang. 8 Miles dive site was amazing with huge school of trevallies (some were huge!!!), barracudas and for the two frogfishs hiding in the middle of it all! Congratulations to Timothy and Emmanuelle for your Advanced Open Water certification, to Le and Stewart for your Enriched Air Nitrox certification and to Michelle for both ! That night was black water night and was really good, Franck managed to catch a picture for the first time a Tonguefish. Last day, first dive in Bida Nok and second in Shark point. We saw some black tip reef sharks, cuttlefish and beautiful tiny squat shrimps. Thank you Timothy and Emmanuelle for choosing us to celebrate your honeymoon! wishing you many happy dives together!
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Another great trip diving in the Andaman Sea in Thailand. 14 guests from all around the world embark with a big smile on the boat in Phuket and happy to start cruising South. Congratulations to Sari from Finland and Blake from Australia, our two students from this trip, started straight away to study and managed to be certified Advanced Open Water Diver and Nitrox Diver after few days only ! Thank you to Koh Lipe and its beautiful dive sites and their beautiful creatures. We were lucky to discover a stone fish, two frog fish, plenty of coral catsharks, seahorses, razor fish and some colorful Nudibranchia. Time to cruise North and look on and in between the big granite boulders of the Similan National Park. Another frog fish, a ribbon eel, a curious eagle ray and some black tip reef sharks were spotted in the middle of millions of fishes swimming above the reef. The Blackwater dive from this trip was great, and we spotted many tiny and strange critters. Back to the limestone type of rock with the famous Richelieu Rock and its school of barracudas, trevallies, emperor for four dives. You don't know where to look, in the blue for the dancing fishes, on the reef, covered by thousands of glass fish, for the beautiful peacock mantis shrimp, ghost pipefish and seahorse. Thank you for this amazing trip and looking forward for the next one already.
Welcome to 72 Aquatics from Tucson, Arizona for this great trip.We had the pleasure to welcome this group, all the way from the United States to dive with us in the beautiful Andaman Sea of Thailand. Checking in on the MV The Smiling Seahorse and starting this trip in Ranong, we cruised to the South of the country and dove the best dive sites of the Andaman Sea from Myanmar's border all the way to the Malaysian border. bAfter our check dive on the north of Surin, we headed to the famous and beautiful Richelieu Rock for the rest of the day! Loads of glass fishes, trevallies, barracudas and bat fishes were swimming around us and the purple rock. When we looked closer on the reef, we found a seahorse, two baby ghosts pipes fish and the first pair of harlequin shrimps of the season! Time to head for the Similan National Park and dive there for a couple of days. Colorful Nudibranchia and their eggs were found on the big boulders of granite. A huge and old green turtle came to visit us during our surface interval, and some guests were happy to swim with it for a while. After those two great days of diving, it was time to navigate south overnight to Hin Daeng and Hin Muaeng: two dives sites of Lanta National Park. Time to change the types of rocks we are diving on and explore a pinnacle made of limestone and basalt with a full mix of soft and hard corals. We celebrate the full moon and witnessed the lunar eclipse from the boat, while some of the guests were trying to blackwater dive for their first time and loved it. Next day we went close to the Malaysian border and dive the underwater pinnacle of 8 Mile Rock and around Koh Lipe at the famous soft coral garden of Stonehenge. We found a frog fish, indian walkman and some cute cuttlefish. After this great day of diving, we headed back toward Koh Lanta National park to dive on Koh Haa and ended the trip with Phi Phi for the last day of the trip. Thanks again to 72 Aquatics Tucson for joining us on this amazing trip. We are looking forward to diving with you again very soon!
We started this new adventure from Phuket on a very windy day, heading towards our very first dive at Koh haa lagoon. After we went down to Hin Deang and Hin Muang for the next 2 dives and the night dive at Hin Deang, it was really nice! Boris Mekler, the photographer featured in this blogpost played with UV lights which gave these funky colours to coral and anemones. The following day was planned to be around Koh Lipe area but we could only have 1 dive at 8 miles due to wavy conditions. We found shelter for dive 2 and 3 at Pattaya corner and finished the day with calm conditions at the brightly coloured Stonehenge with a magnificent dive full of barracuda and 20m visibility! After that it was time to go back west to Hin Muang and hin Daeng hoping to see some giant flap flaps... no luck with pelagic this time but we still had some beautiful dives with great visibility and no more waves! Our 3rd dive of the day was at koh Haa Neua before setting sails for the Similan Islands, this part was really nice as we were cruising we had some nice drinks watching the sun go down… It was a beautiful moment to share with our guests! 1 Next day started at shark fin reef, followed by West of Eden. After that we made a stop at our beloved Donald Duck bay for some beach hopping before the 3rd dive at 3 trees! At night we offered the option between a Blackwater dive and a sunset dive at Koh Bon, both were amazing! Sunset divers caught a glimpse of 2 white tips and a guitar shark and Blackwaterdivers saw a seahorse and 2 paper nautilus (male and female) during floating offshore! It was amazing!! Next day we did 2 dives at Koh Bon which were both amazing with 2 white tips again and an eagle ray! Then we moved to Koh Tachai with great conditions and a massive school of black fin barracudas! We wrapped up the day with our infamous bbq night taking this occasion to celebrate Marco’s birthday with some delicious cakes! Did you know Paper Nautilus are actually not Nautiluses at all?
The trip ended in Richelieu Rock for the next 4 dives… We found even more ghost pipe fishes than the previous trips, they seem to be everywhere these days. We were amazed by the abundance of macro life! In Koh Bon we found another white tips shark before saying goodby to the islands and heading back to shore. Big up to Anka for completing her advanced open water certification as well as the nitrox specialty and to Emma for the nitrox specialty too! Thanks to our lovely guests, we had an amazing time once again :) Don't forget to subscribe to our blogpost to receive regular updates and more illustrated fishy stories directly in your inbox. We had, once again, a Fantastic trip on the Andaman Sea this week. Joining us from Switzerland, a lovely group of fun divers chartered the boat and brought a lot of good vibes with them! Aurélie, Eva, Yan alias Loudou, Coranda, Tanguy, Damien alias titi, Marilyn, Gilbert, Alex, André, Roxane, André, Jean Louis,Thomas et Nadia: Thanks for joining us! The cruise started late on the 4th of January as the group just landed in Phuket in the morning and were waiting for their PCR test to clear. We visited on this cruise the best dive sites of the Andaman Sea from Richelieu Rock to Koh Lipe over 8 days of fun. The highlights of this trip were certainly the dolphins and whale sharks!! The cruise started very well with excellent visibility at Richelieu Rock. We had the chance to witness emperors, trevally and tunas hunting the glass fish covering the reef. Unfortunately Franck wasn't in the water this week so we have less underwater photos than usual but a lot more surface photos :) We continued our journey in Koh Tachai the next day, where we had 2 wonderful dives on the pinacle, one in company of a Magestic Whale Shark!!! On the way to Koh Bon, we got lucky to see a pod of pilot whales from the boat! It was so exciting! The next day we visited the infamous Donald Duck bay and viewpoint! The weather was super nice and we had amazing views on the beach. During our surface interval we had the surprise visit of a huge green turtle checking out the boat which allowed us to swim with it for a few wonderful minutes. In the South Andaman, we did some nice dives around Hin Daeng and Hin Muang and a cool blackwater dive; a first experience for most of our guests!! Hin Muang was amazing with crazy visibility and no current at all: just a pure delight! And speaking of delight, we enjoyed our special barbecue night surrounded by Koh Ha scenic islands, with our traditional "aperitif" to start what became a wild evening, some threw ourselves into the water in the middle of the night on Koh Phi Phi and others who had not asked for anything, were thrown into the water... poor people. We ended our journey with nice dives at Bida Nok and Shark Point with amazing visibility once again and some curious Blacktip sharks. We caught a glimple of Tigertail seahorses, a perfect way to end our cruise! Thanks again to our amazing guests! We loved this trip and can't wait to welcome you onboard again! :)
Don't forget to subscribe to our blogpost to receive regular updates and more illustrated fishy stories directly in your inbox. The best Christmas gifts ever: 2 whale sharks!Have you been good this year?? What did you get for Christmas? We have probably been very good this year, cause Santa brought us a whale shark!!! This trip was just awesome! We left Phuket on the 18th of December with 15 fantastic guests and explored Thailand's 4 best Marine National parks. We started down south, near the Malaysian border with Tarutao National park next to Koh Lipe, also dived in Koh Lanta National parks around Hin Daeng, Hin Muang and Koh Ha before going around Phuket island to explore the North Andaman National parks of Surin and Similan islands next to Myanmar border! What an adventure! The 2 whale sharks were not the only gift we got on this trip, there were a rainbow of criters in all shapes and colours from this wonderful Batwing sea slugs (top right) to pretty Harlequin shrimps (below) read more about these Anibal lector of the sea in this dedicated blogpost. We found a Mama Clown fish (clark to be precise) eye to eye with her nearly hatched babies. Several Ghost pipefish on our North and South route as well as Napoleon fish and reef steaming with life! Black water diving on every trip: We love it!!!
There was also plenty of schools of fish to keep our eyes and cameras busy around the reef. But I must admit my favorite this week were the two whale shark and this shy tigertail seahorse. Subscribe to our blogpost to receive regular update and more illustrated fishy stories directly in your inbox :)
As you may have heard by now, our itineraries have changed greatly since Covid-19 separated us from our beloved Mergui Archipelago and the biggest news for us is to dive down South all the way to the Malaysian border were we met a lovely Devil ray on 8 Miles!!! But that's not the only reason this cruise was so wonderful! read more... For various reason, this trip was a lot more lucky than the previous one: better weather, better visibility, better sightings!
Why we loved diving around Tarutao and Koh Lanta national parks? We got lucky at 8 miles where we had a friendly visit of a mobula ray and lucky again in Koh Ha where a 7 meters whaleshark came to say hi. What graceful animals!!
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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 :) Want to receive the next articles via email?
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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 |