Thailand 2021

First day on the boat passed, consisting of four dives and an island visit. Last night we were sailing towards Koh Surin most of the night and our technically comfortable private cabin is just above the engine room of the boat. It wasn't exactly a calm night either, so half the night we attempted to sleep in the loud marine diesel noise and rolling in bed as the boat passed through large waves. Maybe around 2am we finally reached the island, the main engines were shut down and the waves disappeared so we were even able to sleep a couple of hours before 6am wakeup.

The dives of the day were nothing so spectacular, Koh Surin is not the best area for diving on this trip. Some nice smaller fish and coral, though. Tomorrow weather permitting we should reach Richileu Rock, which has way more marine life and other things to see.

Today the last dive was definitely the most interesting, as it was a night dive in complete darkness. Actually the night dives are becoming my favourite. It's pretty much as close to being in space as you can get.. Pitch black dark everywhere and you only see what you point with your torch, with beams from other diver's torches scanning the darkness. Many nocturnal animals are out, which you don't get to see during the day. Crabs, octopus, jellyfish and so on.

It's time to depart to the Andaman Sea, so until Friday we will be completely out of mobile phone coverage and Internet. Seems like it will be full dive boat (20 passengers) but so it was last time and it's not too crowded as the boat is relatively big.

Other than getting to the dive center we didn't do much today. Iryna feels better, we slept long, swam a bit in the river and collected our stuff from the hotel to the dive center, leaving most of the bags in storage here. We also did the corona home tests given to us at the airport and which were required to do on the sixth day in the country. Negative both.

Traditionally someone has fallen ill on almost any trip, and this time doesn't make an exception. I felt my ear being blocked for some days and hurting a bit from the morning, so I decided to visit a familiar clinic in Khao Lak in the afternoon. The ear was not critically hurting yet, but thought it might be a good idea to check before the diving trip.

Unfortunately when I reached Khao Lak by taxi the clinic was actually not open. The door said it should be open every day from 05:30pm to 08:00pm and it was already well past the opening time, but the door stayed closed. I decided to wait for a moment more, had dinner in the nearby restaurant and got really lucky with the doctor visiting the clinic to pick up something. He told they had not been open on Sundays since the pandemic begun due to less clients, but was able to inspect me now.

My favourite Thai doctor Chusak inspected the ear, ("Ou"), and told the ear specialist (his wife) would come in a moment to clean it. He even remembered some Finnish, "vasen korva, paljon vaikku". :)

The ears were washed, a huge load of wax removed and I got some antibiotics for mild infection in the ears. During my doctor visit another unhappy patient had been suffering in the hotel room, as Iryna also had some temperature. I brought her a corona test which was negative, so let's see how her condition develops until tomorrow.

Other than that, not that much was done today either. We just swam across the river to the other side and spent time around the hotel, in addition to a beach dinner.

Today we continued onwards from Phuket to Khao Lak, in preparation for our diving trip which would start from here at Monday afternoon. The accommodation style also changed quite a bit, from luxorious resorts of the first days to a simple non-airconditioned bungalow in jungle. Well, this is not a bad option either, here's a huge amount of vegetation and wildlife all around as we are basically located in a rainforest next to a river mouth. Insects making continuous noise and monkeys crossing the river by swimming, not to mention the lizards hanging around in the room.

Taking taxi to here and just generally being lazy took most of the day, so today not much else was done either. Just a walk on the beach, a quick swim and a massage. Tomorrow we could maybe try to explore Khao Lak a bit more, although it's quiet area and here's not too much to see besides the Tsunami memorials. This bungalow hotel was mostly destroyed by the Tsunami by the way, and they rebuilt the houses to be higher than where it reached.

Another slow day, like predicted. After laying on the beach for a while and gathering sunburns we moved to an another hotel nearby. Iryna spent the rest of the afternoon working, so I took a taxi to the town to visit some dive equipment shops and purchase a bottle of anti-fog for our diving masks.

For dinner we missed the kitchen closing time by some half an hour, so had to find alternative options. There's a local food delivery platform Grab which had delivery available from a lot of nearby restaurants, just the menus were all in Thai.. We ordered some pizzas, thinking it would be better to take three different ones as they were marked S size in the menu. Well, they definitely were S size as you can see in the picture, more S than I would have ever expected. We finally ordered two more pizzas from a different restaurant, this time M size...

Time zone difference is still felt strongly, so in the morning it was not that easy to get up at decent time. The breakfast closing time finally forced us to drag ourself to the hotel restaurant a minute before the official closing time to get at least a cup of coffee. Luckily it was obviously not so strict time, so we even got a full breakfast.

The rest of the day was equally lazy. Laying on the excellent hotel beach, getting sim cards for the phones and having a massage after dinner were just enough program for today. Tomorrow won't be much more busy I guess..

Arrival to Phuket was surprisingly easy and the new restrictions obviously were not put into effect yet. Everything went organized and fast according to the original terms of the Thailand Pass permission.

Basically they just first checked the Thailand Pass forms and test results followed by the usual passport control. After fetching our (fat and heavy) luggage we exited the terminal through the mandatory PCR test and were guided to the hotel taxi, and that's it. In the hotel we still have to stay in the room for a couple of hours waiting for the test result to come.

It's sunny and warm outside and we have a sea view from our nice hotel room, so not much to complain about the short quarantine. Should be clear of it by the dinner time.

By the way, Finnair finally managed to be 3h21min late on arrival so.. Seems like Finnair is paying the trip due to the EU standard compensations. Sent an application, let's see. :)

Hmh. This is getting a bit interesting. Thailand just suspended the Test&Go program to enter the country without a quarantine, but obviously the existing approvals will still be honored and we should be allowed to enter the country with existing terms. There will most likely be a second PCR test required with no additional cost, but nobody knows yet when and where.

Well, time will tell. Now we are just hanging around at Arlanda airport waiting for the delayed flight. Two more hours here, some twelve hours in flight and we will see what awaits us there. Two years ago we entered Guatemala for our homebound flight just hours before they closed all the borders due to corona, and seems like this will be equally tight. :)

It has been almost two years since the last longer trip due to the pandemic, but now it's the time to travel again. During the pandemic I was using our company sports allowance to buy gift cards of Koh Tao Divers in Thailand, so now as the situation with all the restrictions is getting better we are on the way to utilize them and dive a bit. We will also return to M/V Andaman and the Andaman sea for a four night diving trip. Cannot wait for that, as it's -11C outside..

Thailand eased the quarantine requirements and such restrictions in the beginning of November, but some paperwork was still needed. Covid test in Finland before departure, another one in Thailand, a pre-booked hotel for the first night and a couple of forms for permissions. Well, all of that has been sorted now, I hope.

This time we will be flying on Finnair, outgoing to Phuket via Helsinki and Stockholm and return directly from Bangkok to Helsinki. So far Finnair has only announced a two hour delay on the Stockholm departure, so.. Let's see how this develops.