Name a place after what you are supposed to find there and in my experience you rarely find given namesake when you go there – take One Tree Hill for example. What a totally pleasant surprise it was to spend a good five minutes diving with a turtle on Turtle Island and snorkelling with a school of Black Tip Reef Sharks in Shark Bay on said island!
Diving on Koh Tao ranged from boring-pedestrian to wide-eyed wow. In a nut shell the diving and accommodation is cheap (a great place to learn how to dive), the coral was crap and the fish life varied hugely (literally). We managed to dive two of the top three dive spots, South West Pinnacle and Chumphon Pinnacle. South West was cursed by a dirty thermocline at 20m which turned the viz to nothing so no Leopard Sharks, and an average dive unfortunately. Chumphon was awesome though with massive schools of fusiliers and jacks (thousands of fish), large schools (hundreds of fish) of batfish, barracuda, and trevally, two giant grouper (2m), giant trevally too) not to mention the shacks of other reef fish about. We blew out a wee bit on Chumphon, as the day after we were there a Whale Shark stopped in for a visit….tante pis.
"The best dive site in the Gulf of Thailand", Sail Rock eluded us however, despite asking basically every dive store on the island if they could get us there. How this happens in a place with 42 dive schools I don't know.
One our other dives we saw sea snakes, lots of agro trigger fish (you’re up for stitches if one of these overgrown leather jackets gets you), more angel, banner, butterfly, puffer and other reef fish than you can poke a stick at and several giant barracuda (2m long) hunting on our night dive. Coconut fringed Shark Bay was really picturesque and very chilled out. Despite actually having Sharks, the rest of the underwater scenery was evidently subjected to some rather apocalyptic dynamite fishing in the past, and had a few centuries of recovery to do.
Above the water, you’re safe from the agro Trigger fish, but watch out for the motor scooters. The amount of people that we saw wondering around sporting battle wounds from zooming around the island was disconcerting. What made it more worrying was that the profilic Pharmacys don’t have qualified Pharmacists and are as useless as you know what. Of course you can always forgo the Pharmacy and go straight to Mr. J... check out the photo of Mr. J's spin on procreation...gold! He also sells home made condoms with a 20 year gaurantee...
