Going down in the Similan Islands

I felt very, very square compared to our English dive master Giles, and made a mental note to get both nipples pierced, my naval too, and get a couple of Masai-warrior like earrings inserted into my ears as well. That would give me some sort of, er, street credibility in these diving circles. But it would have to wait, as we were now a good hour or so out to sea, west of Phuket in the fabled Similan Islands.

It was my first dive in Amazing Thailand (below water at least) and I'd always heard 'Similan, Similan, Similan' whenever I'd enquired of divers about their preferred spot. The talk had been of leopard sharks, napolean wrasse, even manta rays. So I must say there was more than an ounce of expectation.

The Sea Bees boat -- a massive bright yellow mini-ship -- cut an impressive sight at the wharf. It had 'serious dive boat' written all over it. And once on board, that was confirmed. With Teutonic efficiency, each of us was presented with a blue crate with our names on it, replete with all the dive equipment we'd requested, in the sizes we'd indicated. Then there was a mountain of scrambled egg, etc, by way of breakfast.

The first dive was on Anita's Reef (named after the favourite dive spot of one of the royal family, said Swedish dive guide Patrick.) 'It's a good example of a Similan dive,' says Giles, 'with its sloping coral.' He warned us about a resident moray eel which took someone's thumb off a couple of years ago when he was feeding it sausages. As you do. Jing jing! You can YouTube it. I made another mental note to not feed sausages to any moray eels I encountered.

The water was as though the butler had drawn me a lovely hot bath. 'The visibility's as good as Tahiti,' said Rod, only underwater it sounded like 'Bllbblbluubbbbllublblulbbubbub.'  The season here runs from the middle of October to the end of April, during which there's an average visibility of around 20 metres.

Huge fans were a delight, lots of clown fish ('Hey, send my regards to Nemo') and even an eel forest. Eel forest? Yes, literally that, a thousand or so eels protruding vertically from their sea-bed holes. Just kind of hanging around, swaying in the currents. Ram-rod straight. Imagine meerkats with aqua-lungs.

Lunch was another mountain of food ... Thai style this time, all kinds of meat and veggies, but with notably sausages on the menu.  After that huge lunch I wouldn't be needing the lead weight-belts. I was quite happy to settle into a nice siesta when Patrick called us up for our second dive.

'Boulder dives are less obviously beautiful,' said Giles in his briefing about East of Eden on Island #7, 'but they are the other type of dive we have here in Similan.'

Sure enough, the ocean bed here was less obviously beautiful. There was so much sand they could've shot Lawrence of Arabia here. The boulders added some topographical relief as we drifted around. (Just an aside: after lunch, Rod seemed to be blowing bubbles from both ends of his wetsuit!) Then came the wall. A really impressive wall, chock-a-block with the who's who of underwater stuff. And a couple of really fun bommies (that's dive talk for 'bomboras', towering columns of coral) which are home to all manner of colourful fish and fans.

A wrasse swam gracefully by, blotting out the horizon with its piscean vastness.

I spent a good couple of minutes watching a black-and-white banded sea snake out for a little afternoon swim. Then, before I knew it, my oxygen was reading in the red zone. Time to surface. Aah, that second dive was even better than the first.

'Yeah, for fish and visibility, Similan for sure,' said Patrick, who's spent nearly nine years in Thailand. 'For wrecks maybe Pattaya.' I made a mental note to go down next time I was in Pattaya ...

Pattaya -- SUMMERTIME, AND THE LIVING IS SLEAZY ...

Ok, let's just put it on the table straight: Pattaya is Soddom and Gomorrah by the Sea.

Thailand's sin city has carried this reputation ever since that fateful day in April 1961 when the first 100 war-weary Americans arrived for some well-deserved R&R at this stunning and sprawling bay. That invoked a rapid-fire change from sleepy fishing village to fishy sleeping village. To this day, the US Navy uses Pattaya as a R&R port, the arrival of aircraft carriers marked by fleets of girls swimming out to the horizon to meet the boats. Jing jing!

Little known fact #628: the name Phatthaya actually means the wind which blows from southwest to northwest at the beginning of rainy season. That in turn comes from Phraya Tak (not to be confused with Friar Tuck) who captured Pattaya in 1767.



Walking Street -- at the north end of the bay -- is a looooooong stretch of nothing but clubs, bars, pubs, restaurants. Notably, a lot of rowdy Russian-run establishments. It is called Walking Street because to call it $#&ing Street would be just too sleazy ... even for Pattaya. It has made local neon sign makers some of the wealthiest people in Thailand. Walking Street is a daily carnival of decadence and debauchery (I mean that in a good way) where lady boys and bar girls hustle the passers by, and shameless spruikers for strip clubs hold up 'menus' that would make medical students blush, and even make a seasoned gynecologist raise an, er, eyebrow.

But there is something in the human spirit that makes this compulsive viewing. Like a reality TV show. It is real - duh! Which is now why busloads of otherwise innocent tourists are drawn to the place to have a walk and a wander (or perhaps that should be 'wonder'). And with that it just becomes a commodity. Like Patpong. Like the Reeperbahn. A tourist attraction.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the gentrification of Pattaya. If that's the case I'd hate to have seen it before (no, actually I would've LOVED to have seen it before, who am I kidding?)

However ...

Pattaya is a schizophrenic city. The southern end, and generally the area of Jomtien, is where the big new investment is going into, capitalising on the the 5 million-odd tourists (some of them very odd!) who venture the 145 km 2-hour drive (or flight) from Bangkok to Pattaya each year. Pleasant promenades, beautiful beaches, tasteful family-friendly resorts. Gee, there are places I'd be more than happy to bring my mother to. A flash new Central Mall has just opened, replete with Japanese restaurants, electronics stores, usual middle-class mall fare. Then there are the new wave of hotels: the Hard Rock Hotel, the Dusit Thani D2, the amazing Centara Grand Mirage is now open (see next blog about this), and the Hilton Pattaya is slated to open any day now. Not to mention Ocean One Tower, which, at 367 metres is slated to be the tallest residental tower in Thailand, if not the world. Setting a new tone, a high water mark.

Amazingly in my 23 years of travelling to Thailand I'd never set foot in Pattaya. So I arrived with a trolley-load of mental preconceptions and baggage about Pattaya; mostly beaten-up Samsonite suitcases and backpacks admittedly. I left with new baggage, mostly fake Louis Vuitton -- oh, and some vivid mental snapshots from that show in the upstairs bar. How does she do that???