If I’m telling someone that I will be spending part of my trip on a liveaboard, most people look puzzled. A liveaboard? Yes, a live-a-board; a boat you’ll also sleep on.

Liveaboards are not cheap most of the times, but they enable you to get to places where it’s harder (or even impossible) to get over land. Another big plus: the food is amazing! At least on the liveaboards I stayed at. And liveaboards are especially perfect for diving, but if you like snorkeling it’s also a very good option. I’ll tell you about 2 great liveaboards I’ve been on.

Mergui Archipelago, Myanmar

I was very curious about diving in the Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar so I googled and found a company to book my 5 days liveaboard trip with. First, I flew from Yangon to Kawthaung. Trust me: already quite an experience. Not the flight, really. But mostly making sure to get onto the right plane.

The airport of Yangon was pretty unorganized, or at least so it seemed. At my gate there were several flights leaving, but not at the scheduled times. They kept informing about the take offs both in Burmese (really, nooo clue) and in English, which was maybe even harder to understand. The good thing was that everybody received a sticker to put on their chests with the flight information on it. So I just found a local with the same sticker, waited until he got up and then did the same!

The liveaboard was great, nice people, good crew and a clean hut. Even with air-conditioning, wow. We made 4 dives per day. The diving was impressive. Beautiful macro (for the non-divers, weird enough macro means the small stuff); nudibranches, crabs, harlequin shrimp, but also sharks, octopus, eels, frog fish, lion fish, turtles, sea horses etc. But the crew told me that the area used to be way more beautiful and diverse. Because of all the dynamite fishing a big part of the reef and fish died. Sad. During one dive I even experienced some of the dynamite fishing. I heard a sound like a big heavy table falling on the floor twice. Dynamite…

Apart from this last sad note, the trip was great and I was happy that I added this off-the-beaten-track-trip to my Myanmar vacation. If you like to see what trip through Myamar I made, you might like to watch my video:

Komodo, Indonesia

Indonesia is known for its beautiful reefs. That’s why I was convinced to spend part of my trip on a liveaboard. I decided to jump onboard a ship called ‘Lombo’, which I booked with Pirates Bay Cruising. The boat left from Gili Air (Lombok) to finish at Labuan Bajo (Flores) after a full week. This liveaboard would spend most of its time in the national park of Komodo.

After two nights in Gili Air I was finally getting on board, exciting! Besides me there were 6 other visitors and 5 crew members. I shared a hut with a Swedish girl. Our hut was not that big but the common areas of the boat were huge. Some relaxed seats inside and fatboys on the roof of the ship. Perfect for a dive-eat-sleep-repeat-week.

After an hour onboard we already saw pilot whales! And in the next week we saw amazing fish; white tip reef sharks, my first manta ray (!), and so much more! Sometimes we got off of the boat too, to see a beautiful sunset and to see the komodo dragons. And at the times we were cruising I just sat on top of the deck with a good book enjoying the jaw dropping landscapes. Does it get any better? Yes, because the food on this trip was insane as well. And a lot. Did I mention we had a fresh baked cake after every lunch?

So now you know why I love liveaboards so much!