Let me start this blog by saying we were supposed to be on Koh Tao for 6 days… we stayed for 15. Once you start talking to the residents you realise this is a common theme. People come for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months and end up still being here years later. There is an energy on the island that keeps you trapped there.
The community on Koh Tao, locals and expats, is so tight. Everyone looks out for each other and everyone is just trying to have a good time. A big reason why we struggled to leave is we just felt part of the family.
Our original purpose for staying on Koh Tao was to get our diving certifications. Brad, already an open water diver, was going to do his advanced. I was just going to get started with my open water, originally feeling a little apprehensive about the whole thing. We had searched on the PADI website for recommended dive shops on the island and eventually decided to go with Simple Life Divers. The best decision we have ever made.
Diving
The first few days were made up of us with our respective instructors, getting taught our certifications. Both of us were incredibly impressed with the teaching. The instructors are professional but also really laid back. My instructor, Zac, is possibly one of the most laid back people I’ve ever met and completely zenned me out. Simple Life is a small dive centre so you get to know everybody which really adds to the experience.
The dive sites around Koh Tao are perfect for beginners. Warm water, next to no current and most of the time, great visibility. There are also loads of shallow sites (less than 18 metres) with a ton of life and corals to explore. During the course however, you aren’t focused as much on what’s around you. Especially being a total beginner I was more concerned with feeling comfortable underwater. I really don’t know why I was so anxious before because diving is probably one of the most relaxing hobbies I’ve ever tried.
After we had both passed our certifications we decided to start doing some fun dives together. We started off just planning to do a couple. That spiralled into a couple more and before you know it you’ve lost count. I won’t bore you with details of every dive we did but instead tell you about the highlights.
We had seen tonnes of beautiful fish such as the yellow boxfish and big parrot fish, but we really wanted to some some bigger fauna. One dive site (White Rock) is known for having 2 resident turtles. Of course we signed up to dive there and with our dive masters reassurance jumped into the water looking for turtles. Within the first 5 minutes this graceful Hawksbill Turtle drifted out of the blue, putting us all to shame with how it effortlessly moves through the water. We let it circle us then followed it to a sandbed under some coral where it had a little itch and nestled down for a nap. What a spectacular experience! I blew it some bubble kisses before leaving it be and continuing the search for other fishes.
With turtles ticked off the list and being blessed with loads of other marine life such as blue spotted stingrays and the much bigger Jenkins Ray, we set our sights on something even more rare! Whale sharks visit Koh Tao twice a year for only a couple on months at a time. Some people at Simple Life have been working on the island almost a year and not seen one. But this is the time of year they’re supposed to be around so we just needed to keep our fingers crossed extra tight! We did two dives at dive sites they’re seen at more regularly with no luck. But then we signed on to go diving at Sail Rock.
Sail Rock is the ‘premium’ dive site around the island. It’s actually around 1.5 hours on the boat to get there (as opposed to 10 minutes for most other sites) and is absolutely teeming with life. In order to make the most of the site I decided to do a deep adventure dive that would qualify me to go to 30 metres of depth, the same as Brad. We did our first dive and we’re blown away by the numbers of fish. Huge schools of barracuda (small and large) circle the rock alongside the largest batfish I had seen the past 2 weeks. Giant grouper perhaps 1.5 metres long swimming around beneath you and so much more. It is clear why this dive site is so special.
After an hour at the surface we readied for our second dive with our amazing instructor Isabelle. This time we swam around the other side of the rock and were engulfed by a shoal of … fish thousands strong. I started doing 360’s in the water seeing that we were surrounded by fish on all sides of us – incredible. We swam up a chimney that has been eroded into the rock. It’s wide enough that you can swim into the chimney at the bottom single file, then swim upwards through it, being careful not to spike your bum on a sea urchin.
It was nearing the end of our dive, we had been in the water around 35 minutes and would need to start ascending slowly soon. We started to hear clicking from other divers and swam hastily towards them. The swim became a little more frantic as our peers swam past us cheering and signing that they had seen the whale shark! Then, out of the blue, majestic as a god, the whale shark appeared. We could not believe what was in front of our eyes, this creature was around 5 metres long and swam straight towards us, then underneath us. We followed above it for as long as we could, but also needed to keep ascending as the dive neared it’s end and our air was running low. Brad’s childhood dream had come true which left him overjoyed with emotion under the water and back on the boat. Our last dive and we had been granted the pleasure of swimming with a whale shark. We couldn’t have asked for more.
Video courtesy of Melo
Snorkelling
We spent a couple of days on the island taking a break from scuba diving, which can be quite tiring! On these days we explored some of the other bays on the island to go snorkelling.
Aow Leuk is a lovely, small beach in a secluded bay that is perfect for snorkelling. The sandy-bottom water is crystal clear and the rocks on either side is home to coral and loads of fish. The best thing about this bay for us was that there were two or three baby black tip reef sharks swimming around the shallows. Only around 2-3 feet long they were babies but still awesome to say that we had been in the water with wild sharks just a metre or so away from our toes! I was absolutely kicking myself that I’d left my GoPro in the apartment.
The other two bays we snorkelled in during our stay were Shark Bay and Tanote Bay. Both of these supposedly see baby sharks, which is what we had gone for (this time armed with my GoPro) but we had no luck. Shark bay also apparently gets green turtles visiting, which we didn’t see. However, we did almost have a collision with a ginormous 5 foot barracuda. We both absolutely freaked out and were a little unnerved after that. They are apparently not dangerous so long as they’re not aggravated, but you still don’t want to almost swim into one in waist-high, murky water.
All 3 bays had loads of fish swimming around and were great alternatives to actual scuba diving!
We really felt sad to leave Koh Tao, it’s one of the only places we’ve been that we felt completely entranced by. Whether it was the excitement of diving or the amazing people that we met, we didn’t want to leave. If we ever decide to do our dive master I’m sure Koh Tao is going to be top choice. But for now we have all the qualifications we need. A whole new world of exploration has opened up to us and we cannot wait to get stuck into it even more!
Lar
