If you’re young, go out into the world and jump into the ocean
Before I tell you about diving in Phi Phi Island, Thailand, I want to write a little bit about two types of diving so that anyone who has never played this can better understand: one is snorkeling, two is diving – Scuba diving.
?♂️?♀️Snorkeling: You will float on the water, breathe through your mouth through a snorkel, wear glasses, look down into the ocean to watch corals and beautiful schools of fish swimming around.
?♂️?♂️ Diving: Every person who dives deep needs to wear a diving suit and wears a very heavy oxygen tank on the back, but you can be sure that there is a way for us to wear the oxygen tank into the water without feeling great pressure on your body whether you are big or small. You will dive deep into the ocean, get acquainted with fish. Diver is the word for a professional diver. These people have a diving license (like a driving license, train driving license, pilot certificate).
My husband and I have never learned diving, and have only experienced snorkeling once in Phu Quoc. After the first snorkeling, I was fascinated because I am a water addict myself. It is great to be able to swim around, immerse yourself in the crystal clear water, below is the wonder of the ocean with hundreds of types of corals and schools of colorful fish that I cannot afford to name! Therefore, when I was about to go to Phuket, I was extremely excited to find the snorkeling tour on Phi Phi Island, I thought I must reserve two slots immediately to try that feeling of freedom again.
❤️And now I’ll start telling stories. According to Wikipedia, Koh Phi Phi is a large archipelago off Phuket and in the Andaman Sea off the Western coast of Southern Thailand. This is considered a quite famous beach for tourism activities and is one of the cleanest beaches in the world. Phi Phi Island consists of 6 islands: the most significant and famous are Phi Phi Don Island, Phi Phi Leh, and Maya Bay which are located 54 km Southeast of Phuket Island. Looking down from above to the South, Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh islands are like two P’s so the Westerners call them PP and the locals give them a name – Phi Phi.
❤️The schedule of our scuba diving tour was as below. I will write carefully for everyone for reference:
?? Early in the morning, at around 6:30 am, the shuttle bus picked us up at our hotel and went to Ao Chalong port.
??All visitors gathered, the team leader checked the list of registered tourists, divided tourists into the diving group and the snorkeling group. The other tourists also booked a single day tour like us. In total, there were about 40 people, young and old, men and women, from many different countries. Among them, 36 people were in the diving group, the remaining 4 were in the snorkeling group (we, a 10-year-old British girl, and a middle-aged Italian woman). There was one person in the tour company to be responsible for each group of 4-5 tourists.
?? After dividing the groups and introducing everyone to the tour leader, everyone was taken from the port to the train by tuk-tuk, went aboard, stabilized the seat, wore a life jacket, and listened to the team leader to report the schedule and headed for Phi Phi Island!
?? The ship left the port safely, everyone could take off their life jackets. Onboard, they began to serve a breakfast buffet. It would take about 2.5 hours from Ao Chalong to Phi Phi by boat, so everyone should bring their favorite books, music, or movie along for entertainment.
??The train would stop at 3 different points around Phi Phi Island. The scuba diving journey was divided into 3 stages. At each stage, everyone had 30 minutes of diving and 30-45 minutes to rest on the train. After the first stage, they served a lunch buffet. After stage 2 and stage 3, they served snacks: pancakes and fruits.
??After 3 scuba diving times, everyone returned to the ship, changed clothes, rested while the ship returned to the mainland. Standing on the bow of the ship watching the sunset was romantic!
?? The train arrived at the port at 6:30 pm. The private car took everyone to the hotel.
❤️Particularly for the diving section, I guess I’ll have to talk a little bit longer, right? When nearly approaching Phi Phi Island, the ship did not approach the shore but only landed in offshore diving areas. 36 diving people wore diving suits, oxygen tanks, and jumped into the sea one after another. We – the 4 snorkeling people also wore glasses, propellers and breathing tubes in turn. Those who were confident of swimming should not wear life jackets (our tour leader said so). But the 4 of us chose to wear a life jacket because we were not confident wearing the propeller (???).
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1,2,3! Jump! Ah-ha! Jump into the sea. Extremely refreshing feeling. We all started to swim, swim, swim, and swim … More and more away from the ship. After about 10 minutes, we were really in the middle of the immense water, looking up at the cliff on Phi Phi Island. “That’s incredible!!! There are lots of fish swimming around us! Oh so beautiful! Hey fish, can we get to know each other?” I whispered to the fish by… thinking, believing that they all understand!
Swimming for 30 minutes continuously in the middle of the sea was exhausting, but recently I listened to my husband’s recommendation to have exercised a little bit, although I was not very diligent, it kept me from being exhausted. The 10-year-old girl in our group was slender, and she was swimming well like a mermaid. I admired the little girl very much. There was independence, confidence in her that were rare among little Asian girls at her age.
If you do not know how to swim, you can still join both snorkeling and diving, and you just need to wear a life jacket. The type of life jacket for snorkeling will help you stay afloat. And the type of life jacket for diving can be customized, when it is necessary to be floating, the life jacket will be inflated. However, I still think that if you know how to swim, you will probably be more confident when swimming or diving deep in the middle of the big sea, because the sea is very different from the pool. It is more likely to have an accident in the sea and there is no guarantee for your own safety other than yourself. For example, during a snorkeling session, my breathing tube had a problem, and water penetrated the snorkel tube, but because I knew how to swim, I was still possible to handle by swimming stand and adjusting the breathing tube.
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In the 2nd snorkeling stage, we decided to remove our life jackets to immerge in the clear blue sea. I originally didn’t like being tied down! We only carried a buoy along, just in case there was a cramp or something underwater that prevented us from swimming. At that time, the train stopped at the area where many young sharks often roamed. When I swam near the cliff, I saw a shark deep in the ocean. She didn’t look scary either. Unfortunately, she was too far away to take photos for everyone to see. I heard there were turtles in that area but we didn’t see them there.
Different from the scuba diving tour I had participated in Phu Quoc, this tour could be called THE TRUE DIVING TOUR because the entire time was only for preparing for diving and focusing on diving activities, no lying on the sand or relaxing with coconut juice. This activity is probably not strange to people in developed countries. But we were a bit unfamiliar and needed some time to adapt to this type of diving tour. Another Italian woman (the Italian woman in my group’s friend) was a diver. She said that after this tour, she would go on a scuba diving tour to another island. Ahhh! That’s how divers travel – spending two days to dive deep, exploring all the corners of the vast ocean.
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Upon boarding, a British tour leader who had been living in Thailand for 4 years and took daily dive like this, showed me some videos he shot in the ocean. Many species of sea creatures from beautiful to scary appeared in front of my eyes enchantingly ????. Oh my god, it was the first time we fell into a group of professional divers. So admirable! We’re still young and there are still so many things for us to see and explore! After this trip, the two of us determined to arrange time to enroll for diving lessons rights away when arriving in Vietnam.
Land trips always teach us many interesting lessons. How do you know how small you are if you have never stepped into the world? The vast ocean will surely have many things waiting for us to discover. The sound of sea creatures is so hauntingly. How can you know what is in the ocean if you don’t go diving, right? If you’re young, instead of forcing yourself to learn a lot of theories, LET’S GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND JUMP INTO THE OCEAN!
??? Tour information for your reference: http://bit.ly/2usHDcR
In addition to the tour fee, you should prepare extra cash to pay the entrance fee to Phi Phi Natural Park. This is a mandatory fee because the diving area is located in Phi Phi Natural Park, however, due to the difference in diver and non-diver fees, this entrance fee is not included in the tour fee!
