March 21st, 2024

Another hot day with clear blue skies. Today we were anchored and they sent big boats out from Phuket to pick up the passengers. They also brought a big floating platform to attach to the side of our ship and it made it so easy to got on the boats to take to shore. We had diving scheduled and it was with the same 3 guys I did Bali with. Kathy was going to come with us and spend the day at the beach. The dive company had a taxi pick us up at 8:30 and drive us to another side of the island where we were meeting our dive guide and getting our gear. We were doing a beach dive.

One of the beaches in Phuket

Phuket has beautiful beaches all over the island and they rent out chairs and umbrellas for small amounts of cash. Once dropped off we used the ATM to get some local cash and then walked down to the beach. A lot of dive companies do beach dives. The companies drive up and unload all the equipment and then they have to move their vehicles so the next company can come in.

Kata beach when we first arrived. It got much busier as it got later.

We got all set up and then had to walk down to the beach with all our gear on and tanks and weights. You have to swim out past all the boats before you can start going down to dive. It is a long swim both going out and coming back in. These dives were not deep dives. The maximum was 30 feet. On the first dive it was so cloudy you could barely see 10 feet in front of you. If you stopped to take a photo and took too long you could not see where the other divers went. We were swimming around for about 15 minutes when the dive master started looking around and realized there was only 3 of us, one of our divers was missing. Our dive master followed protocol and surfaced and then the 4 of us started swimming back to shore and we were a long way from shore. Our 4th diver, Roger, surfaced about 15 minutes later and we all swam back together. He said he lost us pretty early into the dive. So our first dive was cut very short.

In the meantime Kathy had picked a shaded area to sit and had a steady supply of cold beer.

Kathy’s view

We went for an our second dive around noon and one of the divers decided he did not want to do the second dive since it was so murky.

This is us walking on the beach with our gear. I am in the middle with the pink on my sleeves. we had to swim out past the boats.

The second dive was a little better. We did all stay together and even though still murky there were some cool fish. Nothing big here, all little. I will post the dive pictures on our sea day tomorrow.

After the second dive we loaded back up into the taxi to go back to our beach. Everyone went back on board but Kathy and I stayed out and walked to Hard Rock Cafe but they did not have a lot and their sizes were small and they were out of stock of most items.

These cute little trucks are all over the island and they take you from beach to beach. We did not use one of these we had a very nice van with great air-conditioning.

We were both a little hungry and we love Thai food so we stopped at a restaurant and had some drinks and a meal.

Kathy had a Singha bear and mixed vegetables I had chicken Pad Thai and a margarita or 2 or 3

The food was excellent. We spent a little more time on the beach taking photos of the beautiful colored boats.

I love all the colors

You can see our ship in the background on the left and the boats they use to bring us to the dock in the back.

More boats

There was a cool boat that had a bar, swimming pool, lounge chairs and trees parked out in the bay. These colorful boats take people out to it and they also had jet skies you could rent from the floating island/boat.

The floating entertainment island

The boats lined up outside all the resorts on the beach.

Once we were back on board our neighbor called to let us know there were schools of fish off the balcony.

Not sure what kind but we could see a lot of silver and they were in a frenzy so not sure if eating something or being eaten.

We had a nice sunset.

We are also at the 7 week mark for how much of the trip is left. We now have 2 sea days to sail to Colombo, Sri Lanka and while it will be hot it is another place we have never been so excited about that.

I have to say that the diving in Phuket was okay but if I had to chose between going back to Bali or Thailand to dive Bali would win hands down.