South East Asia trip 2014: MARCH 15, 2014: DIVING WITH SEA DRAGON, EXPLORING LE MERIDIEN SOME MORE, BEACH, POOL, LUNCH-HOTEL, STORM

March 15, 2014

SEA DRAGON Up early as Richard has his first dive and pick up is 6:45-7:00 am. I give him money to tip the dive boat staff. He will have breakfast on the dive boat. Even though he says I should go back to sleep I want to see him off. This is what I've done on every trip where he's gone diving over the last 30 yrs. A girl in a taxi picks him up to take him to the pier. This is different as on other trips he usually would get picked up by the dive center's van, mini bus, etc.

Breakfast buffet wasn't a dream as it's as good today as it was yesterday. Today there's a new item in the sweets area-banana bread and it is very good but I must confess-my heart belongs to the sugar donut!

I get my sun beds set up at the beach and at the pool. I spend all day at the beach and at the pool. Around 1:30 pm I decide to have a light lunch. I go to the lobby area and order a chicken club sandwich with fries and a coke for 450 baht-10% service charge included. It starts to rain-light but rain it is. I decide to do some quick checking with my I Pad for e-mails, etc. All of a sudden it starts to pour. The rain is coming down so hard I can't get back to my sun beds to retrieve my stuff that I left there. It lets up at 5:30 pm so I go down to the pool but my clothes that I left are gone. I find them in the towel service hut. The nice guys who hand out the beach/pool towels got them out of the rain and had them at the hut counter for me.

Chicken club sandwich and fries

Rain, rain, go away!

Richard gets back around 7:45 pm. He is the last one dropped off. He said the storm hit around 4:00 pm when their diving was all done and they were all back on the boat getting ready to return to the pier. They did their dives in the northern Similans. Island #8 Koh Similan-Turtle Rock and island #9 Koh Bangu-Pinnacles. He saw fish, small mantas, sting rays, small shark. He had 49 and 45 minutes bottom time respectively on the 2 dives. Kate was his dive buddy. He said he did not like the long boat ride to get to the Similans. He said there were divers and snorkelers on the boat. He took pictures but this is the first time using this underwater camera. I bought it for him for this past Christmas. He forgot to set the camera to land so that's why those pictures have a pink/red hue. Some are blurry. He definitely needs to practice. He tells me it's not easy taking pictures 60' or more under the water with the current plus the fish don't stand still to pose!! We head back to the room so he can rinse out his gear. He has eaten on the boat so not hungry and I had a big lunch and I'm not hungry either. I take a nice long bubble bath and we watch a movie on TV-Battleship.