Snorkelling from a boat around the island

  Koh Tao, Surat Thani, Thailand Saturday, April 18, 2015

We had been looking forward to doing this one day and we finnally got to do this before Hannah & Dave left us. We chose Coral Grand to take us as a) they had a very nice looking boat and b) Bryan can do it as an exercise for his Dive Master course so he didn't have to pay! But at only £20 each for the whole day including lunch and drinks we couldn't really complain about the price anyway. We were greeted at Coral Grand by Sandy - our Thai Guide for the day. He is a great character and made us laugh.After signing our waiver forms  the first task was to clamber into the little tub boat which would take us to the bigger boat we would be spending the day on as the water was too shallow for it to come onto the beach. But we got to take a good look at the other people we would be spending the day with. A few Chinese in the group made us think "Oh no". Only because we know what they are like on boats - they don't take too well to the sea as we have unfortunately witnessed many times. So finally on the main boat, Sandy gave us all bottles of nice cold water and a briefing about the day and where we were stopping etc. We went anti-clockwise around the island which meant we had a great view of our apartment from the boat. It does actually look quite high up from here. No wonder we are always out of breath and sweating by the time we get home! Well we hadn't been in the boat for very long before the Chinese proved us right again and were all hanging over the side of the boat being sick (they had thought it was ok to be sick in the rubbish bin before Bryan informed them it wasn't a particularly nice thing to do!) We hadn't even been going 20 minutes by now.Our first stop was Shark Bay right on the southern most tip of Koh Tao. We had been here before and the last time just a few days ago but the sea was a bit choppy after all the rain and storms so we had not been able to snorkel there at all. Today was a bit calmer but not the lovely flat sea we had hoped for. Still we were all prepared to give it a go. Hannah had never snorkelled before but thanks to our favourite pub landlord (Steve from Hacienda) she had been able to practice in the pool for a few days. He had lent her a brand new snorkel set he had won in the pub quiz a couple of weeks ago. We had even managed to get down to the beach one day to practice in the sea too. So despite the sea being quite wavy we all managed to get in and have a really good snorkel about. The boat had given us life jackets as they really help with buoyancy and because the water was quite deep here too. We saw lots of beautiful fish then it was time to get back on the boat and head to the next bay. Which should have been Aow Leok but because conditions were not so great for snorkelling, we instead headed to Hin Wong Bay.Hin Wong is where we had stayed when we were here last year and stayed in the wonderful apartment hanging on the cliff with thousands of steps to get to it. It was great to see it from the sea but it really didn't look like such an arduous walk to get to it from here. Hin Wong Bay was much calmer as it was like a natural harbour which kept a lot of the choppy waves away. We had about 30 minutes here and saw more beautiful fish and coral. Back on the boat we headed to Mango Bay which is right up on the north of the island. Here we were hoping to see sea horses but unfortunately they were all out for the day and we didn't see a single one. Here we also stopped for lunch which was rice and some type of curry (Thai version). Thankfully the Chinese had stopped throwing up by now too so it made for such a lovely setting, bobbing about in Mango Bay as we watched the other snorkel boats. We even got some snoozy time on the front of the boat.Our final stop on the day was Nang Yuan Island. This is the small island we can see from our balcony just a short distance off Sairee beach. It is privately owned (reportedly by the Singha family - of Singha beer).  There are two islands here joined by a sandy causeway. It is a really lovely place and there is some quite pricy accommodation here and to be honest if we were paying al this money to stay on a private island, we wouldn't like being invaded by the swarms of people who arrive everyday by ferry, snorkel boat and taxi boat. Nang Yuan had some great snorkel points and fairly shallow too. It was extremely hot here and unfortunately we did  not have enough time to climb to the viewpoint and see the Love Koh Tao sign. We decided we would come back another ay to see that. It was so hot though we decided ice-cream shakes were in order and plopped ourselves on stools at the bar. We have to say that these were probably the best coconut shakes we had had here. Served in a coconut too!We were all quite weary by now and as we headed back to where we started the sun was lower in the sky. After a brief stroll along the beach we decided massages were the perfect way to relax at the end of the day so we headed to our favourite place - Silver Sands. Well, we're not sure relaxing is quite the word we would use but it was certainly interesting watching everyone being pulled into all sorts of shapes! Jody & Hannah decided to follow up with a proper relaxing therapy - a facial. Exactly what we needed to get all that salt off our faces! By now it was time to eat and we were all ready to just snooze the evening away. We had had a great day, seen lots and lots of beautiful fish, lots of coral, no sea horses or turtles, but a truly memorable day anyway. Bryan has made a video of our snorkel trip which you can see here if you want to...   [gallery columns="4" ids="7194,7196,7201,7204,7205,7208,7212,7218,7220,7224,7230,7233,7237,7240,7241,7243,7249,7252,7254,7258,7261,7266,7268,7270,7273,7276,7277"]