Day 2 - Koh Tao, Thailand

Snorkeling has been one of my favorite get-away activities since 8th grade when Trevor Nicholas and I jetted off to Bermuda and I swam around a private cove with a borrowed mask. The three or four fish I got so excited about back then are nothing compared to the schools Ming and I swam through today at Koh Tao.

We got up early and jumped in a van with 5 or 6 other travelers and we were off to the boat. Koh Samui itself doesn't have the best snorkeling, so typically people take the 1.5 hour boat ride to Koh Tao to get to the good stuff. It was pretty confusing at first because we were dropped off in the midst of throngs of tourists all standing in line for boat tickets. It took us to realize that there's really only one company that goes to Koh Tao causing Ming to mumble something about "monopoly" and "anti-trust" which I ignored.

In any case, they fed us a croissant on the shore, tied a pink ribbon around our wrist (I'm still unsure what that meant) and shoved us on the boat for Koh Tao. There was a TV on board so the ride was endurable... oh and the view wasn't bad. A few music videos and half of the animated move "Bolt" later, we were on Koh Nang Yuan (pic below) where we jumped to another boat for the short hop to a cove of Koh Tao.

The snorkeling was so-so at first, and I had a few frustrating problems with the underwater camera I brought, as evident from the fact that this is the best shot I got with it:


After this shot, it ran out of batteries, and when I went to change them I realized even the seemingly understated "water-resistant" descriptor on the packaging was a bit of a stretch. I made the foolish move of using the only memory card I had, rather than buying a fresh one for it. At first I was getting some "Memory card errors" after drying it off, but it seems to be working now. I'm thinking we got a defective one since dad has the same one and his worked fine.

Fortunately, there was a professional photographer there as well. His camera was pretty impressive. We bought a copy of the shot he got of us out in the cove. Some people got there picture taken with fish in the background, but they were cheating... they brought bread to feed the fish.
After about an hour of decent snorkeling Ming and I finally found a school of fairly large fish of a few different species. We followed them around until it was time to head back to the boat. The boat took us back to Koh Nang Yuan, where we had lunch (with a few stray cats) and rested under an umbrella.


There was actually snorkeling at Koh Nang Yuan as well. While the coral wasn't as impressive the animal life was actually more interesting than Koh Tao. Here there were many different schools of fish that swam surprisingly close to the swimmers hanging around the beach.

Snorkeling out away from the shore a bit Ming found the prize sighting of the day: an octopus. It's probably my coolest snorkeling sighting yet. She waved me over and I watched it for 20 minutes or so. So long that Ming got bored and took a few shots from the shore.


It's too bad the underwater camera wasn't functioning at that point. Truth be told though, most of the time the octopus blended in so well with the coral that I could barely see it! I probably would have stayed longer, but it was time to head back to Koh Samui. After a few snapshots on the docks, we boarded the boat and headed back. All and all, another great day in Thailand.