Diving at the Similan Islands

Out there, somewhere off the Andaman coast of Thailand, are nine chunks of granite scattered like a careless god’s afterthought. The Similan Islands. Remote, wild and blissfully ignored by the sunburned herds sipping cheap cocktails in Phuket. This is where you go when you crave the silence of the deep.

You come to the Similans for that fleeting feeling that the world might still be wild and untamed. That under all the plastic, all the noise, there’s still wonder to be found. If you’re willing to sink for it.

Koh Similan.

The islands are all covered in dense tropical jungle vegetation, but I’m more interested in what lies below the surface. The perfectly crystalline blue water is luring me into the depths to explore the corals and say hello to the fishes. Anybody seen Luca Brasi?

The Similans are a diver’s fever dream. Massive rock formations litter the sea floor like an alien playground, draped in soft coral and crawling with life. It’s not the tidy aquarium stuff one see on postcards. This is nature, raw and unfiltered, with challenging currents and lethal striped sea snakes. I see white-tipped reef sharks cruising in slow-motion arrogance and schools of fish so dense they darken the water above my head.

Diving near Ko Payu, Similan Islands.

While spending time above the surface to remove residual nitrogen, we stop by at Koh Similan and get ashore using a small rubber boat. The beach is made up of coral sand, smooth and blazingly white. We walk up to the spectacular rock, making up for the name Donald Duck bay.

Humid evening at Ko Miang.

Back on deck, the sun sets like it’s auditioning for a cliché, bleeding orange into the sea. I think I hear something in the wind. I may not be as crazy as the Frenchman Jacques Mayol in Luc Besson’s masterpiece Le Grand Bleu, but Éric Serra’s soundtrack from that movie is always on my mind.