Phuket - our best bits are underwater

After a gruelling 11 hour journey from Penang by minibus, and being held up at the Thai border by the weirdo hippy guy on our bus in a rainbow outfit and dredlocks being questioned, we finally arrived in Phuket. We stayed in Karon Beach in a beachfront hotel. The beach is gorgeous but the place is quite touristy. Practically everyone was western and quite a difference from our experience in the jungle of Borneo!

Our main reason for coming here was for the scuba diving. As luck would have it we stumbled upon a great dive centre - Sharkey Scuba where we got our own guide for all the dives - Oui - and personal friendly service throughout.

Us in our new dive masks:We did 4 dives around Phuket and 2 around Koh Phi Phi. They were amazing and we saw tons of great stuff. We have gone a bit overboard on the photos below, but it was so fab.

Stingray:

Loads of Durban dancing shrimp: (look at their cute faces! - who would ever have thought shrimp had a face like that)

A banded boxer shrimp:

Our highlight - seeing a few leopard sharks resting in the sand:

(look how close we are!! We got about 1 foot away - they are vegetarians though)

A little sea horse (about 2cm):

We also saw other types of sharks, a turtle and loads more. We would have loved to stay longer, but lots more places to see.

Apart from scuba, we also did an island tour to visit the famous island where James Bond was filmed (Man with the golden gun) and bits of shopping. Now off tonight on the overnight bus 12hours to Bangkok - not looking foward to it!