Similan LOB Dec 07

Diving~ diving~ Liveaboard the Moskito to Similan~

Please click here : Michelle's Similan Photos for all photos. Please go to that link to download your photos. The photos here are small size version.

See we got a huge trolly for all our gears. haha. This is Phuket airport.


We were onboard~ This is the upper deck. Laura and daddy Freddie.

Me, Gabriel and Winnie.

Guy, Laura, Freddie and me.

Our guides, Alain and Champ, George, Tiffany, Andy, Doreen and Philip.

Alex, Guy, Laura and Freddie.

The star of the trip~ Manta~!!! This is from Gab's camera. I was so caught in surprise, as we saw the manta 2minutes into that dive... and the manta went off quite fast. Vis wasn't good. My first time seeing a manta~! happy ~ :D

Guy.. saw a manta? happy face? hahahaha...

2nd star of the trip~ turtle! They were so friendly. This one kept coming back for more watermelon, even longgg after we ran out of it. Everybody got to touch it and it wasn't annoyed by us at all! Amazing! Guy and Alex jumped in the sea and played with it till they were tired.
There was another turtle came asking for food on another day! Amazing!

Everybody marvelled at the turtle.

Lots and lots of moray eels in Similan.
Why were we always made to swim for long distance? When we were on MV Grace, we had such a longgg distance surface swim, I thought that was the last. Then at Sipadan, long surface swim and also long swim to find the reef.... I thought that was the last. And now this is the best, swam 20minutes, a full 20minutes to see this stupid wreck! Swam at 20m deep! When we reached there, I never bother to see the deeper part of the wreck at all. Everybody was cursing underwater..... man... i hope this is the last.

Similan has this pretty, soft looking sea grass. Very nice~

This is from Gab's camera. Similan has lots and lots of lion fish as well.

Don't you just feel like giving the rock a push? hahahahah....

Someone pushed Andy into the sea when we were still playing with the turtle. hahaha...

Gabriel shooting video.

The turtle was still around when we ran out of fruits for it.

Alex and Andy trying to pull Tiffany into the sea! Too bad I didn't manage to get Tiff into the pic. hahaha!

Gabriel, army man's habit? hehe.

Similan's sunset.

BIG BIG lobsters!

First time I got to see so many octopus~ happy!



I thought I was the only one who took a photo of this one-tooth-less triggerfish. Turned out that everybody has the same shot and almost exactly the same pose! hahaha.... First time I was this close to a trigger fish. I will never do this in Tioman.

Super big crab~!!

Gab called this "kuku-diver". hahaha.. The "cowboy" diver. I was totally stunted when I saw him!

The act-macho-wearing-only-swimming-trunk diver. The water was cold, man. Lots of thermocline. And we think he was cold. Serves him right for trying to be macho! wahahahahaha...

And pink diver!!! George and Tiff saw "zebra diver"!! A diver with a black and white horizontal stripes wetsuit!!!! Can you imagine that??? Too bad I didn't see him else I sure follow him and take a photo.

Hawkfish always make good picture.

Don't you just wanna lay in the grass with the stonefish? It looked soooo comfortable. Well, on second thought, you DON'T wanna lay beside a stonefish. hehe.

Chill out at night.


Alex secretly drew a birthday "board" (not card) for Andy.

Party time, eh?

Birthday boy~ It's one week earlier, but doesn't matter~
Happy Birthday Andy~

Last day before leaving.


Me and our guide Alain. He's from Belgium. He came to Phuket 2 years ago for holiday instead of California as his father strongly suggested Phuket. And he decided to stay~! Good choice Alain! Good choice!

Everybody~~! From left, Guy, Winnie, Freddie, Laura, Tiffany, George, me, Doreen, Philip, Andy, Gabriel, Alex and Alain.

Our boat, Moskito~
A 5 day trip, gone. Looking foward to Tioman diving when season open~

p.s. I will be editing video for the trip and burn into CD. Hope it'll be good~!

Gabriel's cast

Gabriel was so careless to hurt himself again. Just 3 weeks before our Similan trip, he hurt his arm/wrist. During the last check doctor said cannot see fracture lines in x-ray, but it doesn't mean confirm no fracture. So he'll have to go x-ray again. Hopefully there is no fracture.

This is his photo when his arm needs to be in cast.

The cast has been taken off few days back. HOpefully he'll recover soon. :)

Kusu 11th Nov 07

Our Kusu dive~ after so long... (2 yrs to be exact) A special thanks to Hantu blog's Debby for kindly giving us the bumboat's contact.

It was quite nice dives on Sunday. Hardly any current on the first dive, but current started picking up towards the end of the second dive. I was thankful it didn't rain. The water was quite cold that day.

View all photos here : Kusu's photos

Here's Freddie, our newly certified OW diver, YookSau, Winnie and George.

The long-time-no-see Ivan on the left, and Philip and Gabriel. Sorry, in this photo nobody was facing the camera :p My fault. I didn't inform them.
Tiffany and Laura-new OW diver. I didn't realise Tiff has straighten her hair until just now when I was editing their last Tioman photos. haha....

I remember there's a cartoon who holds a leave just like Philip. Was it Mashimaro? That's Philip's dive flag by the way. kekeke...

There were more feather stars this time. They said there were supposed to have sea grass growing around this time but we only see tiny ones.

Check out this squat lobster~ The vis wasn't superb that day. We had much much better vis on our first time to Kusu 2 years back. And there were lots of particles. Anyway, this crab was quite big, nearly 2 inches I would say.

Somehow the water behind wasn't totally green and yellow but green/blue, which makes a nice contrast to the red feather star. The lobster had climbed out from the center. When I was editing the photo, Holy crap~ the was another lobster beside! We never noticed! Take a good look! Different colour. I am guessing it's the offspring of the bigger one, but just guessing.

Flat worm. Very cute.


Tiny nudibranch. I like to take tiny nudi photos but camera always focus on the wrong thing.

Surface interval time.

Laura and me.

This, is a nudibranch that I have not seen before. It looks like a dragon, doesn't it? But it swims like a fish!! It's true! This nudi reminds me of the "gay mandarine fish" in Sipadan which was attracted to Andy. This nudi started to swim after I took a couple of photos and it swam towards me! And as it swims like a fish, it was rather fast compare to other nudibranch. It kept swimming towards me and it was so fast, I couldn't get Gab's attention in time. I was afraid that if it sticks to me, I might hurt it. In the end it reappeared, I don't know exactly where but somewhere around me....

Again, somehow the water becomes blue like Tioman.. instead of yellow and green. So disappointed this photo was not really in focus. But then the nudi's head faced the other way. But I like the background. George and Tiff saw this nudi as well.

Ohhh I was soooo happy to see whip coral shrimp in Spore water~! Never expected that. It's only about the width of the pointer!

Too bad something wrong with Andy's DSLR. Else we would have impressive photos of the "dragon" nudi and this shrimp.

There were 2 nudi in this photo. Can you spot it?

This flat worm is quite big.

p.s. Below is some interesting thing that I feel like putting here. Not what I saw in the wild (I
wish!)

I went to the zoo lately. Trying to find sea lions but we saw no sea lions. The place that used to be sea lions performance place had become manatee's home! They are soooooo darn cute!

I supposed this is still a baby. So nice and lucky that it came near the glass. There was a fence there so I wasn't able to go nearer to take photo to eliminate the reflection.

Check this out. They were really really playful~ Kept hugging each other. Really hugging each other oh~ so heart warming to see~ I wanna hug them toO!!!



Go to the zoo to see them!