Smiling Seahorse Liveaboard, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma)

Day 1:
Meeting at our dive center headquarters between 9:00 am and 12pm.
At 2pm we will head to the immigration office to get the necessary exit stamps from Thailand and then make our way to board the magnificent MV Smiling Seahorse. Upon crossing the border into Myanmar, immigration officers will board in Kawthaung and do the necessary border crossing screening. Once the paperwork is completed, we will head out to sea!
At sunset we will hold a ceremony to launch our voyage. Then it will be time for your first scrumptious meal before being rocked to sleep by the waves.​
We will be back to Ranong around 3pm.

Day 2: 
Dive briefing! Wake up to the friendly call of the ocean (and your eager dive guide) as we start the cruise with a day at South Twin Island. Sitting in the outskirts of the Mergui Archipelago, this dive site is quite scenic with consistent crystal visibility and a topography of huge granite boulders. We have even been lucky enough the start the voyage off in style with a guest appearance from a majestic manta ray. Macro lovers will also be treated to chances of ghost pipefish, seahorses and frogfish! We end the first day of diving with a night dive searching for pygmy squid, candy crabs, cowries and nudibranchs!

Day 3:
4 dives around the very special Shark Cave, one of my favorites. In the afternoon we will find a bounty beach where we can get some sand between our toes and we might also pass by a local fishermen village.
​Here there are chances to see eagle rays, grey reef sharks, nurse sharks sleeping in their cave, blotched sting rays, frog fish, leaf fish, Spearing Mantis Shrimp and many more. Beautiful coral also makes this a very colorful dive site.

Day 4:
After a night of crossing, we will reach Black Rock, a small rock out in open sea. Here we are hoping for the big stuff like Sharks and Rays and whatever is passing… This is the place to go for "Manta Festival" with Manta rays coming in dozens from everywhere (no guarantee of course, but they are pretty common). The conditions this far in the open sea are a bit more challenging and currents make it a different style of diving to other areas of Mergui. This is probably the best dive site in Myanmar and is still seldom visited by divers.

Day 5:
Still quite far offshore we will spend the fifth day of the cruise at North Twin for more chances to cross paths with larger pelagic fish and megafauna. We love this dive site for the massive schools of tuna, barracuda and trevally out in the blue, as well as the wealth of tiny critters hiding among the giant sea fans and soft corals. There is also a sand patch where we can sometimes find sleeping zebra sharks! ​​

Day 6:
The sixth day will be spent ion the neighbourhood of Western Rocky. The first two dives of the day will be spent exploring the scenery of Seafan forest. The magnificent corals attract many schools of fish and the shelter of the topography is a favourite pace of ours to search for stonefish. The last two dives of the day will be in around the main island and islets of Western Rocky. Here we will also have a night dive where we can see a vibrant mosaic of yellow soft coral polyps blooming in the darkness. Spanish dancers and all types of crustaceans can be observed here.

Day 7:
The last dive goes into a volcano where a group of black tip reef sharks likes to hang around… this is also a special site where we can find seahorses and rare tropical fish like the longfin comet, the shaded batfish or the pineapple fish.

Routes can be affected by adverse weather conditions and unforeseen events, force majeure or other similar reasons