Railay Beach Day 2-Lion fish and Sharks

After our first night at the resort on Railay East Beach we woke to an alarm, dressed in our swim suits, ate breakfast at the resort and headed to the meeting point for our day on the water. The day would begin with a 2 hour boat ride to the dive/snorkel site. The water was somewhat rough the whole way. About 30 minutes into our ride the captain yells "SHARK" from above and we all ran to the side of the boat to get a better view of the dark shadow swimming around and the black fins that came in and out of the water. When it was determined to be a bull shark several people went for their fins and snorkels and got ready to jump in the water. "Are you crazy?" I asked one eager boat mate. "Sure," he responded, "it's just like a big cow in the water." A cow in the water huh? He didn't convince me to wanna jump in. I decided to see if the others got eaten first before I was going to volunteer to be shark bait. About 5 people jumped in as the captain tried to circle around and keep up with the sharks. Unfortunately, by the time they jumped in the sharks had moved on their way. They climbed back into the boat and we continued on.

The sun was already high in the sky at this point. The feeling of the breeze on my skin beaded with perspiration from the hot sun felt nice. I sat on a bench watching as we sailed past inhabited and uninhabited islands. I could see the change in depth of the water close to the shore as the water color changed from dark to light as the sea turned into beach. The landscapes along the way were lined with palm trees, white sand beaches and inviting blue green water.

At long last we reached the dive site, Bida Nok. I dressed in my wet suit, placed the weight belt around my waist, donned my Buoyancy Control Device attached to the air tank, placed my feet in the fins and giant strided into the water. The waters were rough and visibility wasn't terrific. It didn't help that I had forgotten to spit in my goggles to keep them from fogging up. Once at the bottom of the sea there was a variety of fish and sea creatures including box fish, moray eel, crab, scorpion fish, mantis shrimp, sea stars galore, crown of thorns starfish, sea wards, and trigger fish to name a few. I even found Nimo! But the highlight was taking a look at the lion fish, a strange looking fish with these spiky fins. A glorious, wonderful sight. I felt so privileged to enjoy its crazy company. If that had been the only dive of the day I would be happy just to have seen the lion fish. But NO, I still had another dive to look forward to.

We took a break to eat lunch and rest. I was sad to learn that the snorkeling experience for Cheri and Nate hadn't been good. The equipment inadequacies mixed with the roughness of the waters made for a much less enjoyable experience. They decided to give it another try when it was time for dive number 2-Maya Wau. Dive two displayed many of the same fish and creatures as dive one sans the lion fish, unfortunately, but in it's place some puffer fish, porcupine fish and you can imagine my surprise when several feet in front of me swam a black tip shark and then a leopard shark! And you can imagine my nervousness knowing that they were out there somewhere but I couldn't see them! It was exhilarating to see such marvelous sea kings on their turf, in the wild, and not in a glass box at the aquarium. This diving stuff is pretty terrific. The dive soon came to an and it was time to surface and swap stories with the other divers.

I was happy to hear, as the boat began to make it's way back to shore, that Cheri and Nate had enjoyed a better experience this time around and that they too enjoyed a swim with a shark. I happily pealed back the layers of my dive gear and welcomed the warmth of the sun to dry me off. I made sure to keep fairly covered both in sunscreen and in my blue sarong to avoid the unwelcome effects of too much sun exposure. I had lent Nate and Cheri my jelly fish repelling sun screen which they lathered on multiple times. However, to our surprise both had the craziest, diseased looking sunburns. We learned the hard way that while the cream may be good at repelling jelly fish, it was terrible at sun protection. Oops.

Back on shore we enjoyed mangoes and sticky rice...mmmmm. And when that was all gone we planned our next adventure. Tomorrow, elephant trekking!