Scuba Diving Similan Islands and Boonsung wreck

In december 2014, the winter didn´t show up in Europe. So we thought we go looking for it!
In Thailand we found the "winter" to be not all bad with 26°C air/ 28° C water temperature in the Andaman Sea: Similan Islands off of Khao Lak on the thai west coast.

I´ve dreamt of diving here for many years - I should´ve come earlier!!!...
The infamous "Similan Islands" are said to have been an underwater paradise of beautiful coral landscapes once with an abundance of fish (small and pelagic) but are now a minefield of dead coral and very little fish (well, much less than expected) with an okayish visibility.
Coral bleaching and a the Tsunami (that hit Khao Lak in 2014) have done great damage to marine life here 60 Km off the coast.

The mass tourism in Thailand - on and off shore - didn´t really help obviously...

So considering one has to sail for 2-3 hrs one way to get to the islands
you might reconsider if it´s worth the effort. You might also take some sea sickness pills with you ;-)

The "Boonsung Wreck" is a nice little dive site, here we found some more fish, quite a few moray eels and more scorpion fish than I´ve seen before.

We went with "Sea-Bees" dive center, Khao Lak. They did a very good job organizing the trips and the staff is super nice, at the office as well as on the boat.
The rental equipment is okay, not Top notch but I´ve seen worse.

Well, been there, done that- after years of dreaming Thailand is off the list.