We had an amazing day yesterday scuba diving off the islands of Ko Phi Phi.  Not cheap but worth every penny.  Not having dived since we qualified 4 months ago, naturally we were a little apprehensive – but we needn’t have been!

A coral and fish dive off Bida Nai and a shark dive off Palong.

Bida Nai: two minutes in, the apprehension just drifted away, it seemed like only days since we had dived previously and all the skills became second nature.

It was breathtaking, so much better than our four previous dives.  Within minutes a leopard shark drifted past, then a bamboo shark and a barracuda, wow!  The area was amass with colourful fish, the only names we remember were lion, snapper, trigger, clown, brown marbled grouper – and many many more.

We dived a depth of 19m but only lasted 34 minutes – showing our lack of experience, but that will improve over time.  Visibility was around 20m.

Sadly, our camera played up yet again – as soon as we entered the water ‘memory card error’ – and we could have got some amazing shots, what a pain in the asshole.

Palong:  As it was a shark dive, the area and conditions were somewhat different, little colour and very few fish.  Low and behold, the only sharks we seen were on the first dive – damn!

We dived a depth of 12m and lasted a whopping 55 minutes, a big improvement.  Visibility was a poor 10m.

Luckily we had a spare memory card and the camera behaved, but the pictures are disappointing – next time eh!

The rest can be seen here, no.39.