Koh Phi Phi Snorkling

When you think of Southern Thailand you think of long beaches, clear water and fish that swim right next to you. After a two weeks in the northern and central part of Thailand and two weeks at the beaches we had not experienced that yet, until we went on a chartered snorkeling boat on Ko Phi Phi.

Ko Phi Phi Don

We set off for a fun day at 10:30am and cruised for a half hour to our first spot. When we arrived the captain told everyone that they could jump in and swim around. So I ran up to the top deck and jumped off. We guestimated it was 15 feet to the water below. When I was in the air I thought, "Why am i doing this?" When I hit the water I relaxed. It was awesome! After we swam and jumped off the boat a few more times we sailed to a different spot and snorkeled.

AHHHHHHH!

Totally Awesome!

I was one of the first people to jump in at this spot. I saw a lot of fish for a couple of seconds but then they disappeared. Too many people jumped in the water and the fish swam away. Most people swan to beach for a walk to the other side but my family and I stayed put. We waited for about five minutes and then the fish returned. We saw tons of fish. Fish that were fluorescent green and yellow, fish that would blend in to the rocks and fish that swim right next to you. I also saw sea urchins that were the size of basketballs and a giant clam that was two to three feet long!!

We stopped at two more spots but they didn't have as great conditions for snorkeling as the first one did. One was a really small cove that was really shallow in some spots, really deep in others and not many fish. We did see a cave but it was surrounded by corral so we didn't go in fear of cutting ourselves. The other one I did not snorkel in because we saw five jellyfish that were huge and I didn't want to get stung.

Jellyfish the deck hand pulled out of the water.

At the seconded to last stop one of the deck hands started to throw bread to the fish while people were snorkeling. The fish swarmed the food and swam away, they did this over and over. It felt really weird to have hundreds of fish brush up against you at the same time. A few even bit me in their frenzy for food.
From there we sailed to one more island, kayaked to the beach and walked around. We watched the sun set on the ocean and then headed back. It took about an hour to get back to the dock so we got to see the island at night. It was pretty. We got back at about 8:00pm, returned to our hotel and changed clothes for dinner and decided that today's adventure redeemed our visit to Thailand.

A great day!