Snorkelling in Koh Tao

After travelling through India and Thailand, we really missed the underwater world. Both of us love the sea, Dave is a big swimmer and just enjoys being in the sea all the time, mask or no mask, but I love watching the underwater world.

But, I think I’ve also converted Dave into a snorkeller now too… I did buy him a mask and snorkel for Christmas, but bringing it with us went against his ‘ultralight packing’ concept, so he left them at home to save space and weight… In the Maldives we were able to use masks and snorkels from the hotels, so his idea seemed to have worked, but he quickly learned the importance of a good fitting mask. I’ve had mine a while now and it fits me perfect, it’s actually a kids mask (well advertised as a “teen” mask by Cressi) haha because I do have quite a small face. But a mask that leaks, fogs, or slips on your face really distracts from the experience and can ruin your whole snorkel trip. So, before we left Bangkok in search of more sea, Dave finally invested in a mask and snorkel from Decathlon, and made sure it fits well. I also got him some vaseline to help seal it around his beard to prevent leaking. So we were both looking forward to trying it out.

Koh Tao is one of 3 major tourist destination islands in the Gulf of Thailand, next to Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. I’d wanted to come here 10 years ago, but I visited Phangan first and got “stuck” there, as I absolutely fell in love with the island and the people and stayed for about a month. But Koh Tao is often described as the baby of the 3 islands here. Much smaller, and easy to travel across the island within 20 minutes (with a scooter). Also supposedly much quieter, with most people going there to dive and snorkel.

We left Prachuap via train and headed to Chumphon, where you can get a boat direct to Koh Tao. I’ve also been to Chumphon before, and I did like it, but we stayed just one night to get the early morning boat. Which actually was a shame, because the beach next to the Lomphraya pier was actually really nice.

But we didn’t dwell on it, we were heading to some of the nicest bays in all of Thailand… The next morning, we boarded the boat at 7am and could not believe how many people were on the boat, we were packed in. Loads of big groups with huge suitcases coming straight from Bangkok by bus. We were worried about how busy it might be…

We disembarked and the town here, Mae Haad, was so busy! We couldn’t believe it!! I remember being in Koh Phangan 10 years ago and asking someone, what’s Koh Tao like, and being told, oh it’s quiet, sleepy, not many people, no cars, no nightlife etc… this didn’t seem to be the case anymore…

But once we got out of the town, it was a little better. After dropping our bags off at our guesthouse (AVA Boutique Hotel, which was very nice and great value for money), we rented a motorbike for the next few days and headed straight out to a beach. There were many to choose from, but with snorkelling as our main purpose, we headed first to Ao Leuk on the Eastern Coast. The road there was a little insane, well first because we took a wrong turning haha, and had to go up and over probably the steepest road I’ve ever driven on. I think it would have been fine, but with Dave on the back, the brakes did struggle coming down, deffo squeaky bum time. I was so glad I’d decided to get the 160cc bike instead!!! Otherwise I don’t think we would have made it.

We eventually made it to Leuk Bay, where we had to pay to park and enter. It was quite busy, even this early. We managed to find a space in the shade for our bags, and then got straight in the water.

Visibility was ok to good, but not amazing, but pretty much straight away I saw a baby black tip reef shark, so I was hooked, and any fear of jellyfish l had in the back of my mind, just melted away.

We were off to a good start, and Dave was loving his good fitting mask! Haha

After a shower and change we headed to the west beach for sunset and food.

The next day we decided to head to the next bay after Leuk, Ao Tanote, which is also supposed to be good for snorkelling. For once, we got there quite early and managed to get a great spot on the beach under the shade of a tree.

The bay here has huge rocks and is really stunning, we absolutely loved it. The tide was lower in the morning when we got there, but as the day progressed and the tide came in, the visibility got worse and worse, but still ok. But the corals were great, there was a huge coral garden under the rocks in the middle of the bay, and the right side of the beach also had some nice corals. Unfortunately, in the centre of the bay the corals were all dead and scarred across the bottom, but there were a lot of fish, and we even saw an octopus and several blue spotted rays! My first time seeing blue spotted rays!! But annoyingly, every time we saw one, was when I’d not taken my GoPro in with me!! Sometimes, it’s nice to go swimming without it, as I find when I have it, I look through the screen a lot without realising, but it’s sod’s law I always see something cool without it haha! 🤦🏻‍♀️

We stayed there all day, enjoying a nice lunch on the beach. The next day we took a day off, as we both felt a little ill again, and I mostly slept all day!!

We had only booked 3 nights at AVA, and although we loved it, the room was nice and it had a lovely hot shower, we decided to book one of the little bungalows we saw in Tanote Bay. We figured being able to wake up early and have the bay to ourselves was a big enough selling point. And we’d scoped out the restaurants here and knew we could get a vegan meal. So we booked 2 nights at Family Tanote Bay. It was only £16 for a fan-only, wooden bungalow with a cold shower… Which was fine…. Until the power cut out (several times) and our fan stopped, it was SOOOOO HOOOTTTT without it!!!

Fortunately, the view of Tanote Bay made up for it, and we were able to just take essentials down to the beach and not worry about valuables. We also had a shower for right after snorkeling, so we really enjoyed the bag and the underwater world even more.

One afternoon, a huge storm came over, the skies darkened and the heavens opened, everyone rushed out into the nearest restaurant on the beach. But when it didn’t look like letting up, and started to get cold, we decided the best place was back in the water, so we went snorkelling in the rain!

We really liked Tanote bay, but we found Koh Tao much busier than we expected, especially considering everywhere else we’d visited had been practically a ghost town for tourists; it’s monsoon and low season, despite being August. It seemed like literally every westerner in Thailand was in Koh Tao right now. And EVERYONE was on a motorbike, driving with no helmet, no shoes, no sense, honestly it was so hard driving surrounded by idiots on the road haha, I was never sure who was going to pull into me, or turn without indicating etc.

It was especially annoying, because we were being sensible. I have done my CBT, and my international driving licence shows that I can drive motorbikes. But Dave’s doesn’t, and he’s never driven one. So despite the fact that I am sure Dave could easily jump on a bike and drive it instantly, whenever we have hired one, it has been me, with Dave as pillion (just in case something happens or the police pull us over etc). But here, it was obvious nobody had a licence, and they do it anyway 🤣 no wonder there are so many accidents here!! The infamous “Thailand tattoo” is a burn mark or graze from falling off a bike 🤦🏻‍♀️ well, at least we tried to do the right thing… I think if the island was quieter it wouldn’t be an issue, but the sheer amount of people, all on bikes, the roads were full.

So we started thinking about other islands already, even though the snorkelling here was great.

We headed back to Mae Haad and stayed at Infinity guesthouse for the night, which was great, especially since we got it 50% off, low season is good for bargains! We found a beyond meat burger for our last night (omg it was amazing) and then the next morning we started a long journey to Koh Lipe… Hopefully this island is quieter and still has good snorkelling 🤞🏻

---

Watch this as a video on Travel Alchemist here: