Despite Koh Phangan being a quiet island we managed to stir up enough interest to do a slightly different diving trip yesterday. A happy bunch of scuba divers suggests that we don’t always have to go to Sail Rock in the low season! The next step is to go to 3 dive sites, namely Southwest Pinnacles, Samran & Sail Rock; please let us know if you’re interested..
Koh Phangan is a super quiet island, which is normal for May. Hot, sunny weather, great vis at Sail Rock yesterday & a whaleshark spotted the day before; shame we can’t change the tourist seasons! Anyway it’s a great chance for the diving school team to unwind a little &, guess what?…go Scuba diving. We’re exploring local dive sites on a daily basis, & Samran Pinnacles on Monday/Tuesday is the next special chance for us to get out with the cameras.
Although Koh Phangan is not a busy island at all, the weather & diving are fine. On our diving trip to Sail Rock today we had nice visibility & loads of fish (but not the whale shark this time…) Other dive sites we plan to visit soon are Samran Pinnacles & maybe Koh Tao for the snorkelling; we are trying to find out how conditions are at the Marine Park, though the current West wind probably means it’s gone green!
Well, it came together at last & we made a diving trip to Samran Pinnacles yesterday. After some fun finding the pinnacles we enjoyed 2 leisurely dives with great conditions on a favourite dive site. It was a special day for the macro team too, with some fine nudibranch found & duly photographed; photos are up on facebook already! We then moved to a quiet Sail Rock with only 2 small dive boats left & had a nice, peaceful 3rd dive with good conditions. Who could ask for more? Our next special should be to the Marine Park v. soon…
On our dive trip to Sail Rock yesterday we were lucky to have yet another whaleshark sighting, but as diving conditions are generally good now, we want to offer some variety for our diving school regulars and so we plan to visit Angthong National Marine Park tomorrow. Also planned is a trip to the rarely visited Samran Pinnacles after the Songkran celebrations on Koh Phangan (please, please!).
Our last week of diving trips to Sail Rock have had great conditions & even better, 3 days when we were honoured with the presence of Whale Sharks! Untypically, we had some rainy weather over the last 2 days which has not encouraged diving (or Padi courses), but today the sun’s beating down on the dive centre & it’s definitely time to get out & make some scuba dives (or come snorkelling) with Chaloklum Diving!
Over the last few days we’ve been doing a lot of diving (& Padi courses) at Koh Phangan dive sites, &, looking at some of our photos we should do it more often. Check our Marine Life RSS feeds for some of our latest piccies. However Sail Rock does look like it’s clearing up, (do we dare say it!) with 10+ m vis & loads of fish today & we’re once again waiting to hear about Marine Park conditions…
So it’s diving and snorkelling the quieter dive sites of Koh Tao again (possibly the Marine Park if it’s miraculously cleared up!). However we had turtles & even bump head parrot fish on our last diving trip, as well as a boat load of happy divers, Padi course students and snorkellers. Our feeling is that Sail Rock must get better soon, especially after the full moon; we will keep you posted.
Tomorrow we plan a diving trip to Koh Tao. We have scuba divers who want some variation from Sail Rock & snorkellers who want more coral reef to explore. We’re waiting for an update on visibility at the Marine Park, but it currently looks like Koh Phangan diving conditions are still better!
As we hoped, the diving conditions at Sail Rock are clearing up. Today with visibility up to 15 metres (& loads of fish) we have a completely happy dive boat, as several of our scuba divers have been waiting some time on Koh Phangan for us to give the go-ahead… Local diving & snorkelling is also fine at the moment & we’ve made a few enjoyable diving trips by longtail boat.
