The following is a description of my trip that I submitted to the Freedivelist .
The best dives I did were near Phuket, in the Andaman Sea. My first diving day there I was registered to go on a scuba charter boat to do a wreck and then a couple of off shore reefs. Before the dive we all met at the divestore to pick up gear and stuff and I thought I'd better mention to the divemaster that I was going to go freediving (it is more or less unheard of there). I walk up to the divemaster and realise to my surprise that he's already arguing with another guy who wanted to go without tanks. Basically the divemaster said that he couldn't do that because there was a current and because the wreck was really deep (it started at 15m). Finally he agreed to let us hang on to a line behind the boat and look at the wreck from the surface, he didn't want us to do the nightdive later on though. It later turned out that the other guy was another member of freedivelist, Bruce Nelson, from California ! Quite a coincidence, a lucky one for me since I learnt a lot from him during the next two days, it was my first opportunity to study the technique of a more experienced freediver.
When we actually got to the wreck we decided to "forget" about the rope and quickly donned our gear and slid into the water. The wreck was an 80m catamaran ferry that sunk just a few months ago, it was lying in 30m of water and the top of the ship was about 15m from the surface. The water was crystal clear (30m viz) and the sight of the wreck when we got in was fantastic. The wreck turned out to be great, it was largely intact and was not stripped at all, almost everything was still there; curtains, machinery, telephones, everything. I was so amazed with the wreck and all the marine life on it that I soon found myself doing dive after dive down to 15-20m with a fair bit of bottomtime without even thinking about it. Since the water was so warm (29C) and clear it didn't seem like a big deal at all. I actually did my deepest dive ever (26m) without even planning to, it just happened. Bruce became a photo model for the tank divers when he entered the steering cabin and picked up the telephone reciever.
After the wreck we did two pinnacles nearby, it was really nice diving, lots of sea life and pretty coral. These dives were great dives for me since I was really enjoying my newly found capability of doing 20-25m dives without much of an effort.
In the evening we did a night dive near an island. The whole perimeter of the island consisted of sheer cliff, dropping vertically down to between 15 and 50m. Swimming up and down that wall in the balmy, 30 degree water surrounded by complete darkness, seeing only the starkly coloured corals and animals where the beam from my torch hit the wall was simply magic. It was as if I were one with the ocean, talk about zen of freediving !
The next day I was supposed to go tankdiving and I did one dive with a tank. It seemed so dull though after what I'd experienced the day before that I decided not to bring one on the second dive. That was the same island that we'd done the night before. When the boat had anchored there was a bit of a tidal current and while the scuba divers waited for it to settle Bruce and I went in and swam up to the island. When we got there we found huge schools of small fish fighting the current on the side of the island. There were also lots of fish in the 1-2lb range that were feeding on the smaller ones and occasionally barracudas shot past. Once I saw a couple of cuttlefish and swam down to them, when I was down I realised that there were actually three of them, no five ... then I realised I was surrounded by a school of cuttlefish that must have contained thousands and thousands of them. It was a really exciting dive.
Before I went to Phuket I spent a few days on a beach near Krabi (south of Phuket). They had some nice coral reefs off the islands down there and I spent all my time diving. Viz was not quite as good as in Phuket, around 15m, and below 10m depth there was lots of suspended silt in the water that reduced viz further. That interface was a good place to hang out and wait to pelagics, I saw lots of barracuda and a few other big pelagics, they might have been wahoo but I'm not sure, they always swam by extremely fast.
It would have been fun to bring a speargun, I saw lots of coral trouts (or groupers, I don't know the difference) and some sort of rock cods in the 5-15lb range, and it seemed they hadn't been hunted, some of them were quite lethargic. The reefs we dove near Phuket were protected so I don't know how representative they are though. The reason I left my guns at the airport this time (I continued to Australia afterwards) was that I wasn't sure about local regulations, also spearfishos are very unpopular with the local dive industry. There are some charter boats who do deep sea fishing for marlin and sailfish and so on, I might talk to them next time I go.
All in all, I think Thailand is an excellent dive destination. The water is warm and clear and there's lots to see. I saw more big animals (rays, turtles, sharks) in the Red Sea and on the Great Barrier Reef but Thailand makes up for that by offering stunning scenery above the surface, really nice people and excellent food. Also it's great value, if you stay off the main tourist haunts you can get an excellent meal for $1-2, basic accomodation for $2 and decent accomodation for $5. Going as a snorkler on a regular dive charter boat is $20, including food and for shorter trips you can charter a longboat that carries up to 10pple for $15 for the day. There are also special "snorkel trips" to nearby reefs that cost next to nothing. The only bad thing that happened was that I contracted an infection in my right foot that spread to my blood and I ended up having to go to hospital and get penicillin injections to stop it from turning into septic poisoning. I'm fine now though.
If anyone considers going there I'd be happy to supply more details, just send me an email.