Having a mind-bogglingly good holiday in Khao Lak at the moment, and I say that as someone who's holidayed in Thailand quite a few times.
Went on a couple of island scuba dives in the Similans today. My group descended into vast schools of fish from the surface to the eighteen metre deep summit of a large coral pinnacle. There was a ridiculous amount of action, felt like more fish than I've seen on the Great Barrier Reef, the whole ocean was teeming. We circled this beautifully decorated pinnacle (aka "Yellow Rock") down to thirty metres deep, popping up over its back ridge. I was surrounded by schools of smaller reef fish, with hunting packs of trevally and jackfish skimming around the outside in the deeper blue.
Out off the sea floor I guess, this six metre manta ray suddenly billows up, moving like a black and white pennant in the breeze, flapping gently like a magic carpet. Everyone in my group of four divers gets super excited ā¦ it's the right season to see mantas, but it's still far from a common thing.
I think I had about three minutes pure interaction with this creature, hovering over it ā¦ don't reckon I ever got closer than about 3ā5 metres away, but I could see it looking at me, checking me out. I was tracking it intently during this whole period, after which I realised I'd chased myself about thirty metres from my group and drifted up 5ā10 metres (which is not so good), and had to deflate my buoyancy vest like mad to go rejoin the crew.
Talk about experiences you never knew you needed ā¦
