WD 31 WICKED DIVING - with some old friends!

We took off on the Parinee for this trip with some old and new friends from Sweden, some friends from Austria, a divemaster from Koh Tao with his twin tanks (go Craig!), and a family member from home ...along with a star appearance by SONWAN!- dive medic and instructor of many talents. Church was the trip leader...watch out... with Robyn and Sonwan along to teach and guide!





We welcomed Gabi and Johanna, hailing from Austria and stopping in to see Church on their tour of Thailand...after a long haul through Khao Sok, and a full day of sun at the pool, they joined us for their first ever live a board.





Team Sweden with Ville, his brother Alex, father Per, and girlfriend all jumped in for the first dive at Koh Bon....and were the only group to see a MANTA! Ville also managed to share with us his magical talents at JENGA..well, almost magical talents.... too bad the boat was moving while you were balancing that last block!


The next stop was Koh Tachai Bay.. our new "secret" spot here at Wicked, where we seem to find all the leopard sharks playing and mating! Not bad for dive 2 of his open water course for Pascal... some skills, and then some shark action!

We spent the night in the bay, and set sail at 3:30am for Richelieu Rock! Unfortunately, we were not the only ones on this path...we arrived to find some other boats jumping in, so we stayed put for a while and waited for them to come up from their dive....AMAZING, ornate ghost pipe fish everywhere, schooling snappers to play around in, little yellow boxfish to keep Sonwan and Robyn happy, and a great morning dive! Up for breakfast, and then dive 2 of the day at Richelieu again.....great visibility, more schools of snappers, giant barracuda's, a few new nudi's and a great morning!


From Richelieu, we headed to The Surin Islands for a dive and found ourselves alone in the beautiful bay next to Turinla. P'Pa, So Pit, and Lit and Po set out the beach blanket on the dive deck for a little lunch bread while Pascal did his swim and floats for his course and everyone else relaxed a bit before our next dive. Team Austria seemed to have the shark luck on this dive and took the current for a ride to find a few black tips along the way before thier safety stop...needless to say, they all came up from the dive with HUGE smiles on their faces!

Back to Koh Tachi for our sunset and night dives... we found at least 3 juvelnile oriental sweetlips and much more on the sunset dive with Gabi, Johanna, and our new OPEN WATER Diver..Pascal! Team Sweden, Sonwan's group, and Church and Craig found some cool octopus, and other night dwellers before coming back on-board for a huge dinner of mashed potato and pork chops...yumm!

Day 3 aboard the Parinee brought us to the Plateau at Koh Tachai, with leopard sharks, 3 Napolean Wrasse, some kuhls sting rays and more. Then we headed off to Koh Bon to try our luck again with the Manta's...



Sonwan and Robyn lucked out and finally saw something Church didn't! We were extremely lucky to spend at least 30 minutes of our dive with a manta at the cleaning station....playful and curious, what more could you ask for! ...to be fair....Church, Dan and the girls did see a manta while doing their safety stop..so in the end we all got the rare opportunity to see these magnificent creatures.












-Tuk




If you would like to learn more about our upcoming dive trips - just send me your informaton and we will add you to our newsletter - info@wickeddiving.com

We are proud to announce that we will be running year round!
Our Schedule now includes trip to the Phi Phi Islands from May through September. Why not visit the Phi Phi Liveaboard page for more information.

We will also be doing a special Phi Phi Divemaster course during this time - with more diving on the liveaboard!

-Similan Diving