If there is one place in Thailand where you can find good wreck dive sites, it is around the island of Koh Chang. The underwater bottom there is full of corals, there is a great deal of fish, eels and sea turtles and the best of all are the ship wrecks which lie a few neutical miles west of the island.The “HMTS Chang” is the biggest shipwreck in Thailand and was sunk on purpose in November 2013 in order to attract sea creatures and divers to the place. In just a year the place has become full of both. I was so lucky to get to do my wreck dive speciality, side mount speciality, navigation and photography speciality for my Advanced Open Water license in these waters and must say that if it wasn’t for the bad visibility (5-10m) it would have been one of my all time favorites.
The highlight of the wreck dive was to swim through the outer hallways of the ship and to get to go inside one of it’s big storage chambers. I was also impressed with the big amount of crabs that had seeked shelter on the deck of the ship and how well the Thailand flag in the back had been kept, fluttering in the “breeze” of the underwater current.
The photography dive got me the pictures attached to the post, which even though did not look much professional provided me with good souveniers from my dive. The side mount speciality was something I would highly reccommend for anyone doing their Advanced OW, as having one tank on each side provided twice the air and a much greater flexibility allowing me to move more freely in the water.
Had I had more time I would have loved to do a dive in another wreck which was sunk last week. I heard from other divers that this dive site had no underswater life at all, so that the ship wreck had quite a “haunted” feeling to it. This, together with diving the outer island can be on my wishlist for future travels to Thailand.
