Koh Lanta
Koh Lanta ended up being a bit of a rest stop. More developed than either Koh Lipe or Koh Mook, the main thing to do is rent a scooter and drive around the island. By far and away though the highlight was the diving. I had previously planned to dive in Koh Haa after having heard about it from some people I met in Koh Lipe, however after chatting to a few diving schools it became clear that while Koh Haa is well worth seeing, it’s more of what I’d seen a lot of already - soft coral and small to medium sized fish. I decided instead to sign up for a three dive day in Koh Bida with one word in mind: sharks.
Koh Bida Nai, Koh Bida Nok and His Bida are three dive sites a two hour boat ride from Koh Lanta. The boat was much bigger than the previous ones I’d been on, and much more luxury, with individual spaces for each person’s scuba kit and buffet food on offer between each dive. The first dive was good with lots of new things to see. A list for posterity: Kuhl’s stingray, cornetfish, trumpetfish, brown marbled grouper, batfish, masked porcupine fish, seal faced puffer fish, giant moral eel, a couple of huge pacific lionfish, blue sea stars, crown of thorns starfish, bluefin trevally, long nose butterfly fish, three kinds of clownfish including Nemo, titan triggerfish, needlefish and bicolour parrotfish. One the other dives I also added a spotted boxfish, emperor angelfish, Andaman sweetlips, a bigger giant moray than I thought possible (its head was the size of my thigh), a giant clam and a scorpionfish.
I was here to look for sharks though, and we were lucky enough to see some. The first one I caught a glimpse of was a blacktip reef shark. It flashed past fast, so while I could identify it as a shark, I couldn’t get a proper look at it. We didn’t see any more for a while, and I began to assume that was all we were going to see, but right at the end of our second dive, we found another blacktip. Swimming between the rocks and coral on the seabed to stay hidden, we slowly moved towards it, and were lucky to have it swim with us for a moment, around 3 meters away. Sharks have a bad reputation, but it was peaceful and graceful, aware of us but unfazed and certainly not aggressive. Right at the start of our third dive, my guide started gesticulating wildly. I was initially concerned something was wrong, but I quickly realised it was because we had by chance entered the water directly above a leopard shark, sleeping on the sea floor. I managed to descend quickly and move around for a good view. It looked completely different to the blacktips we had seen earlier, with slightly yellow skin with brown spots (hence the name). After a while the shark woke up and decided to swim away from all the attention (there were more divers in one place than usual because we’d all just entered the water). In doing so, the shark swam within about 2 meters of me, and for a moment I had a fantastic view.
There was also a bonus hawkbill turtle - a big one - half way through dive 2. It was pretty, very calm and quite intentional in its movements. It didn’t seem overly concerned by us - perhaps it was aware it was a better swimmer than we’d ever be. I left the water feeling elated, knowing I’d seen something really special. Diving in itself is a brilliant feeling, but diving with sharks and sea turtles feels like a once in a lifetime kind of moment. One that I plan to repeat at the next opportunity.