The Junk Trip to the Similan Islands
January 30 - February 4, 2001 Written by Aaron

"The ocean, during this cruise, offered us an incessant and infinite display of its most marvelous treasures. There was a continuous change of décor and scenery, as if staged to please our vision, and we were called upon not only to contemplate the works of the Creator in this vast expanse of liquid world, but also to delve into the most redoubtable mysteries of the sea."
        --Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Skip to the pictures!              I forgot, where the heck is Thailand, show me a map!

On Monday, January 29, 2001 we arrived at the Bangkok train station and caught a train that would take us down to Surat Thani. From there, we could get a bus to Phuket. The train was nice, no mice or roaches, but there was an Aussie monk on board, going to a monastery, and he wasn't quite in our world. We talked religion for awhile, and then Laura and I escaped by going to sleep. He stood in the aisle of the train, squelching his feet in his sandals for most of the night, communing with some force of nature. The remainder of the night, the monk then reorganized his extensive collection of plastic bags. All of this he did quite loudly. We didn't sleep much, and before we knew it, we were in Surat Thani, waiting at a little restaurant stand to catch a bus to Phuket. With India still in our memory, we were suspicious of everyone, but the Thais just took it all in stride.

In Phuket, we caught a taxi over to the Patong area, more sex clubs and prostitutes, but this time it was all along the beach. We signed up for the dive trip, tried on all our gear, and wandered around, waiting until we could get onto the Junk. I had a bratwurst at a German travel agency/restaurant, Patong is a popular travel spot for Germans & Swiss. We first heard about the Junk live-aboard from Ed, the guy at the Visa dive shop at Koh Phi Phi. We had mentioned we might want to do a live-aboard dive trip, and Ed said that the Junk had good food, and the coolest thing about it was that we got to be on a converted Chinese Junk. Junks were the ships the Chinese used to sail all over the seas of Asia. If it weren't for their fear of marauders from the Mongolian steppes, the Chinese might have colonized the new world far sooner than the West. As it happened, the Junks mainly stayed around Asia and the eastern coast of Africa. Centuries after the golden age of the Junk a Dutch entrepreneur in the 1990's found this old Junk, retooled it, and started running dive trips in the Andaman Sea using this refurbished boat.

The people at Warmwater Divers helped us in planning our route to Kuala Lumpur, and they were all so nice. The whole operation was so organized! We met the other passengers on the dive boat, and for me, there was that awkward, oh no, are they going to like me feeling. We met our bags on the Junk, and were blown away by how nice everything was. It was really first rate! Here is a quick rundown of the staff & passengers on board:

Mick - the dive master and the boss, under the captain of course
Jerome - the other dive master and our guide for all of the dives; we joked that he had missed his Navy Seal training because the Swiss don't have an ocean. He was energetic, atheletic and just plain nice
Felix and Christina - part of Jerome's group, a German couple that had met in Lagos, Nigeria. We got to know them very well, and hope to meet up with them in Frankfurt. He is a Lufthansa pilot, she is a Lufthansa stewardess, and they were kind enough to find us a hotel, and they agreed to take a big, coffee table book back to Frankfurt for us. They were great!
Dave and Anook - the other part of our group, they were Dutch, he worked for HP, and she's a teacher at a university! Dave had the ability to channel rays (the large marine creatures), and he was the one who saw the Manta Ray first (more on that later....)!
Hermann and Elina - More Dutch, they were a part of Mick's group, but they, like us, were traveling the world. And like us, the Junk Trip was an added expense, a luxury, but well worth the cost. They had been diving all over the place, and he was a master diver as well. They had even taken an ice diving class, but before they could put their class to the test, all the ice melted!
Nick and Jo - Brits, he was a travel writer for the Sunday Times doing an article on the Andaman sea, the Junk, and the Similan Islands, she was his travel companion.
Jim - Another Brit, he was a dive master who was taking a little vacation from leading dives. He had spent a lot of time in Southeast Asian, especially Thailand, and was actually a retired teacher, bumming his way around. Not bumming, seeking wisdom and knowledge in the East!
Frederick - A Swede who was in the other group that we didn't get to know all that well
Roberto - An Italian in the other group, who joined Frederick in the anonymous department.
Ian - a Kiwi in the other group, who brought books about New Zealand and who convinced us that we had to visit his islands if not emigrate there.

That night, Tuesday, January 30, 2001, we boarded the June Hong Chian Lee, the name of the junk which translates into "Respect Wind Travel Forever." The June Hong Chian Lee is a refurbished Junk that had everything one could imagine. The central room was spacious and comfortable, the decks were wide and just as comfortable, with plenty of places to sit, and cabins were nice and came complete with individual bathrooms and AirCon! Laura had to fight to get toilet paper, but she did get some. And well, we were very, very lucky! We got our own cabin to ourselves! The boat wasn't completely full, if it were we would have been shacking up with another couple. We checked our gear, settled in, set sail, well actually turned on the engines, and off we were towards the Similan Islands. One bummer was that the central mast had broke, so we didn't get to do the ceremonial sailing on the way back, but most of the time we would have used engines anyway. Getting a replacement mast for a Junk is not the easiest thing in the world nowadays!

Like I said, meeting all the new people was a little scary for me, but Laura took over and soon we were chatting it up with everyone. We traveled all night that first night, and the next morning, we started what Felix refered to as, "Navy Seal Training." We had done three dives a day before this trip, but not four. Basically, we would get up at 6:30, and either it was Jerome shouting, "Good morning!" or it was one of the Thai crew who would bang on doors and cockle-doodle-doo us out. However, it wasn't cockle-doodle-doo, it was the Thai version, and really, it was better than the English. We'd be up on deck, eating fruit, toast or yogurt and in the water by 7:30. After our 1 1/2 hr dive we'd wash off in the warm fresh water kept in a huge pot on the deck (a very nice luxury) kept next to the AirCon unit, whose engines kept the water warm, and in the evening, the water was hot! Then a pancakes & bacon breakfast. The pancakes were amazing, and all the food during the whole trip was incredible. Ahh, and bacon, sweet bacon. A Russian Tzar at some point in history could not decide between Christianity and Islam, and he chose Christianity because it would allow him vodka. For me, it's the bacon, luscious bacon, beautiful bacon, oh thank you friend swine. At this point of the day, I would take a nap (Laura would chat of course), and then, dive briefing at 10:00 for the 10:30 dive. I'd hear the bell ring; they had a bell for meals and dive briefings, and down in our AirConned room, I would wince. But then, we were paying to dive, and dive we did. After the dive, we'd eat again, of course, and then dive again in the afternoon. Then dive again at night. Four dives a day! So the joke on board was that we were either eating, sleeping, or diving. We met with Felix and Christine after the trip, and we laughed that it felt odd to not be eating, sleeping, or diving. We had a computer, so for all the PADI readers, we were safely within our Decompression Limits.

It was four days, and five nights of fun, and we only left the boat once to stroll around on the actual Islands of the Similan Islands, that first day, Wednesday, January 31. After that, we were either on the water or in it. The Similan Islands are due west, off the coast of Thailand, and directly south of Burma (as Seinfeld's Peterman would say, "I know, I know, it's Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me"). The islands are rather dramatic, long beaches, green fronds, huge rocks, but underwater, the channels and rock formations are striking, more for the actual landscape (waterscape?) than the fish. At one time, they were one of THE diving places in the world, especially for seeing whale sharks, and Thailand has been trying to save these islands, from dynamite fishing, from over fishing, and the Similan Islands themselves are a National Park. But we shall see. Whale Sharks have begun to be hunted by the Taiwanese because of their meat; it's called tofu shark, or something like that. A LITTLE ECOLOGICAL NOTE: DON'T EAT SHARKS! SHARKS ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED FOR THEIR FINS FOR SHARK FIN SOUP, AND SHARK POPULATIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE SUFFERING! THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CAN'T PROCREATE FAST ENOUGH BECAUSE THEY ARE SUCH A COMPLEX ANIMAL. STICK WITH THE CHICKEN OF THE SEA! DOLPHIN SAFE TUNA, OF COURSE!

We spent two days diving up and down the Similan Islands, East of Eden, Elephant Head, Christmas Point, Twin Peaks, and then we left the Similan Islands for the Surin Islands and dove Ko Torinla on our way up to Richelieu Rock, still a fantastic diving location, even though we heard these teeth-clenching explosions underwater. Myanmar fisherman still use dynamite to fish, and we heard them blowing up the coral to shock the fish, so then they can just paddle around and collect the stunned fish. Good for them, bad for the environment. So the next time someone tells you that it's the first world ruining the earth, well, there are poor folks doing the same, only they are doing it for food, and we of the first world do it to get the newest SUV (SAV, if you buy BMW's SUV). And we do it on a grand scale, but anyway, for more of my thoughts, you can go to that other page, not sponsored by this page in any way. We turned around from Richelieu Rock and headed back down the Similan Islands where we dove at Shark Point, on February 3, and on our last dive, we saw a Sea Turtle.

In the Maldives, I had used bigger tanks, and my air consumption was just fine. I have big lungs, you see, and I use a lot of air. For the Junk trip, I had to use normal sized tanks, 10 or 11 litres and not the 14 litres I was using in the Maldives, and so I had problems with air consumption. They had some literature on being a better diver, and I used it, and changed where I put my pauses. On land, we breathe in, breathe out, pause. In diving, it's better to breathe in, pause slightly, breathe out, pause. You can't hold your breath while diving, you can over-inflate your lungs and die, but pausing, it was enough to really help me. I still don't have the buoyancy control I would like, but I am still learning. Below are more excerpts from the dive logs of Laura Lewandowski:

DIVE NO.29
January 31, 2001, Elephant Head, Similan Islands, lead by Jerome
Dive time: 31 minutes (Aaron's Note: See, my air consumption woes!)
Maximum depth: 29.2 meters
Description: Beautiful! Big granite boulders - wonderful swimthroughs, wonderful fish, clown fish, big schools, lots of things I hadn't seen before. Best dive so far. Loved all the fish and soft corals and the swim throughs. Saw some big fish too!

DIVE NO.34
February 1, 2001, Surin Islands, Ko Torinla, lead by Jerome
Dive time: 47 minutes
Maximum depth: 17.6 meters
Description: NIGHT DIVE! Another Close Encounters dive. This time, with a Barracuda! We were looking for shrimp on the sand and rocks. We took the dinghy so it was a lot darker than our last night dive, no light from the boat. Then Aaron noticed a 1.5 meter long, huge, barracuda checking us out. He was alone and kept circling us the entire dive. He came very close, 5 meters close and even touched Christina's fin! We all got very scared and we kept low. He would disappear and return right next to us. Jerome charged at him a few times to show him who was boss. It was really scary! I just waited to surface and end the dive. He was on the hunt, checking us out for prey. Also saw a lot of colorful shrimp and a red, red crab! (Aaron's Note: Later, we learned that Jerome, our leader, was as scared as we were! He had swam with sharks before, but was briefed, and the people he lead were prepared. A lone barracuda hunting, we didn't know what it was going to do. At one point, I watched as Jerome wrote on his clipboard, STAY LOW! complete with the exclamation point! I knew that would freak Laura out, and I just shook my head! The hardest part was the darkness. We had flashlights, but when you moved the light, you lost everything in the dark. And in that darkness, we knew that there was a fish out there, with long, sharp teeth, looking for something to eat.)

DIVE NO.36
February 2, 2001, Richelieu Rock, lead by Jerome
Dive time: 63 minutes
Maximum depth: 20 meters
Description: Very beautiful! Saw many batfish, many, many pufferfish, and some Oriental Sweetlips. The coral was amazing and the most pristine I've ever seen, so much, meters and meters. The first half we just watched all the fish dart all around the corals, tons and tons of small fish. In one overhang saw a large lobster. Saw a lot of different kinds of hard corals, all shapes and sizes and colors. Some soft corals mixed in. Many crevices to hide many fish! The 2nd half, we swam to an area covered with branch coral with either blue, white, yellow, or green tips. Stunning. And full of fish. Felt like heaven. The visibility was perfect. The sun shone through brightly, truly a spectacular sight. All of the coral was perfect, none of it broken!

DIVE NO.38
February 2, 2001, Richelieu Rock, lead by Jerome
Dive time: 47 minutes
Maximum depth: 24.7 meters
Description: Another Close Encounters Dive! Heard dynamite blast from off the coast of Myanmar. Visibility wasn't so good, a bit like swimming in pea soup. The colors weren't so brilliant, and I was disappointed at first. We separated from the rest of the group, somehow we were ahead of everyone. Then while Aaron was ahead of me, looking the other way, I saw "IT" coming towards me from the deep blue. A 3.5 meter (10 feet) wide MANTA RAY was heading straight for me! Aaron was too far away to touch, I was torn between getting Aaron's attention and not taking my eyes off of the manta ray. His belly was white as was his mouth. There were fish swimming next to him to the side and at his mouth. It is the largest thing I've ever seen, and I was scared to death. I sucked up my air quickly while screaming for Aaron. Finally he turned after the ray had turned to the side and headed back into the deep. I was stunned by how big it was, and then Aaron took off after it. I was scared, and I didn't want to follow, and then I saw the rest of the group swimming as fast as they could to follow it. I then followed, and it came toward Aaron, and then went off again.

I'll never forget it! Never!

DIVE NO.41
February 3, 2001, Sharkfin Point, lead by Jerome
Dive time: 50 minutes
Maximum depth: 27.5 meters
Description: Hard corals were spectacular. Colors, pink with white tips, and tons of little reef fish swimming above. Very, very pretty - over a large area. The slopes were fantastic. Aaron spotted a turtle sitting under a coral ledge. We were all happy to go down and peer in while it peered out at us. Then, amidst 10 divers, he popped out and went up for a fresh breath of air. Very cute, and Anook was thrilled (she had been waiting for so long to see turtle). Gargantuan fans, huge, wider than my arm span. The largest we've seen. Very beautiful. Final readings from our dive computer: Do not fly for 22 hours. Nitrogen Desaturation Time: 35 hours, 15 minutes.

The dive logs capture a little of the beauty, but Jules Verne said it best, ""How can I possibly remember and describe that excursion under the waters of the ocean? Words are so inadequate to describe such marvels! If the brush of an artist is incapable of reproducing the extraordinary effects to be seen in the depths of a clear sea, how could a pen describe them?" We started reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in India, and it was fun to keep tabs on Monsieur Aronnax, Captain Nemo, Conseil, and Ned Land as we both traveled. I would like to point out, though, that Captain Nemo could never have become PADI certified. I don't think he was using the dive wheel to check his dive depths and times. Eight hours at 10,00 feet down would have put him off the decompression limit charts!

After our last dive with the sea turtle, dive #41 for Laura and I, we headed back to Patong, that cradle of Thai culture on Phuket. I must say there were a few dives I thought about skipping, but then I thought about Laura having more dives than I did, and it drove me to put on the wetsuit, one more time. That last night, Saturday night, we stayed in the harbor at Patong, and I sat up with Jim, Nick, and Jo, while they drank whiskey and beer. As people went to bed, I was amazed that they could leave the show. It was the best comedy I had ever witnessed, but there was one serious moment. Jim turns to me, still fairly sober, and we start talking about culture and what not, the world and economics, and he says, "Here I am, I have my pension from teaching, I have my little business back in England, my furnished apartment, all of that, and I look into the eyes of the Thai, with their poverty and struggles and families, and I think, 'I have all of this, but they are better off than I am.'" He said it again, "They are better off than I am." I will be haunted by that forever, I think.

But then, the topic turned to Katoys, the transsexuals of Thailand that make up a portion of the sex industry. For under three thousand U.S. dollars one can get breasts and a vagina, and all of it looks and feels as real as can be, according to the reports of some. You can easily see where the conversation went after that. As people left, I felt sorry for them; they were missing the greatest show on earth. The drunker Jim and Nick got, the more British they became, and we were reduced to "Pip, pip, jolly good", "Another pint, Old Boy", and "Pass the Yorkshire pudding." I thought at any moment we would break out the "Dippy eggs and soldiers" that Gail had requested in Goa. But then, we kept going back to the Katoys and how real their genitals could be. Surgery was surgery after all. If Nick and Jim had been ten years younger, we would have highjacked one of the dinghy's and had gone straight away to the Ocean Princess where the Katoy's dance. I am sure of it. The highlight, though, of the night, was passing around jokes. I was stone sober and I like jokes, so I had plenty, but Jim was trying to tell us his favorite joke, but it took a while. He kept pausing and saying, "I can't tell it. You might at least respect me a little, but after I tell this joke, you'll lose all respect for me." It took twenty minutes, and we kept laughing, and he kept warning us, and we kept drawing him out, and he kept laughing, and then, well, here it is.

An elephant and an ant are walking down the road.
The elephant bends down down to the ant and says, "Why are you so small?"
The ant replies, "I've been ill."

We sat in silence, until Jim said, "See, I told you so. I told you so!" We then had to dissect the joke until we all went to bed, around 3 a.m.

We had one last breakfast on board, a little more bacon, a little more pancakes, and then we left and Felix and Christina were nice enough to show us where they were staying and get us a good deal. We were so grateful, and after a day of sleeping in our very nice room, we went out to dinner, and then, well, I had to see the Katoy's. I thought it was going to be like the sex shows in Bangkok, or in the other sex shows in the Patong, for that matter, and so I told Laura, Christina, and Felix, that we may want to pass, and we hemmed and hawed, bought some books, because Laura and I are weak in that area, and finally we wound up at the Ocean Princess. We went in, sat down, ordered the over priced drinks because there was no cover charge, right, and we had a great time. It wasn't the half-hearted pseudo-stripping, it was a full-on dance and variety show, and the women were beautiful. Now, these were men, pre-operative and post-operative transsexuals, but they were also beautiful women, and they had worked really hard on lip-syncing a variety of songs, complete with complex dance routines and outrageous costumes. Men were there, couples were there, groups of people were there, and there was little nudity on the stage. The Katoys went around to the men, however, and showed them their bodies and Laura had a little trouble with that, but then, Jim had said, "You have to leave all of your cultural biases behind. Go in with a heart full of acceptance and you'll have a good time." And we did! Laura thinks that Thai men make good transsexuals because already they are so finely featured and gentle. Jim and I both agree, people are people, and how good it is that we live in a world where, for some at least, one can choose one's own gender.

We missed Jim at the Ocean Princess, but we were tired, and we started back toward home. I was especially tired because I had gotten so little sleep the night before. I'm getting old, don't you know. As we walked through the tourists, prostitutes, vendors, hawkers, bar owners, the he-males and the she-males (as Shane McGowan of the Pogues might say) when we saw our dive master, Jerome, on his bike. He had already met up with some friends and was going home. It was his birthday, but he had to make sure he was in good shape as his girlfriend was coming into town the next day, and she wanted him feeling good and not to be hungover. They didn't get to each other very often; she was a dive master for another company and Jerome was always on the Junk. Jerome told us all of this as we locked up his scooter and we headed for a bar playing good 'ol classic rock and roll. It was an Australian place, there were no prostitutes, and the clientele just wanted to drink and sing. So, Jerome, a great Swiss guy, was ready to celebrate his birthday, and had been feeling blue, going home early when he really wanted to party it up on the anniversary of his birth. I drank water, which didn't go over so well, but then we started singing, and that did. We sang every world to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, my arm around Jerome, Jerome's arm around some drunk guy, and traffic stopped as we all we sang, the Thais, the Germans, the Swedes, every nationality present serenaded the world. Afterwards, I quipped, "And my mother said that smoking dope and listening to Queen would never get me anywhere in life." Since I don't drink, when our other singing partner bought us a round of drinks, Laura, our marriage's official liquor consumer had to take over. We had a great time talking more with Felix and Christina and Jerome, and we got home late, but it was our last night in Thailand, after all.

Monday, February 5, 2001, we flew from Phuket to Kuala Lampur. For all of you who might be interested in the junk trip, you can visit their website at WWW.THEJUNK.COM, or WWW.WARMWATERDIVERS.COM, where I stole the logo from the top! The Junk Trip was worth every baht.

Aaron and Laura Ready To Go

The Parlor - Notice that Dive bell!

Laura in the lap of luxury, and she is completely taken aback by the coastline

Aaron kickin' it on the Similan Islands with more longtail boats

June Hong Chian Lee in all her glory

Group Two, Standing By...

The skies of fire above the Andaman

A last Jules Verne quote...

     "You love the sea, Captain, don't you?"

     "Yes, I love it! The sea is everything! It covers seven-tenths of the earth. Its breath is pure and wholesome. The sea is an immense desert where man is never alone, for he feels life pulsating all about him. The sea is nothing but the means which permits man to lead an almost supernatural existence; it is all movement and love. It is the living infinite, as one of your poets has said. And in fact, Monsieur le Professeur, nature manifests itself by its three kingdoms: the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal. The last is well represented here by the four groups of zoophytes, by three classes of articubrates, the mammals, the reptiles, and numberless legions of fish, representing an infinite order, animals embracing more than thirteen thousand species, of which only a tenth belong to fresh water. The sea is a vast reservoir of nature. It was through the sea that the earth, so to speak, began, and who knows but what it might not come to an end through the sea! Here we have perfect tranquility, for the sea does not belong to despots. On the surface, they can still exercise their iniquitous laws, fight, devour each other, and indulge in all their earthly horrors. But thirty feet below its surface their power ceases, their influence fades, and their dominion vanishes! Ah, monsieur, to live in the bosom of the sea! Only there can independence be found! There I recognize no master! There I am free!"