Under the Sea in Koh Lanta

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On our second day on Koh Lanta, we wandered over to a dive shop called "Dive and Relax" at the resort next door to again take advantage of our new scuba certification. The trip scheduled for the next day was to Koh Haa, a group of 6 tiny islands only 45 minutes away, so we jumped onboard and signed up (pun intended). Then we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to keep up with our busy schedule of sunbathing, daquiris, and relaxing in the massage cabana on the beach. Nobody needs to remind us how tough our lives are right now!

We also found a cute little outdoor restaurant/barber shop? on the main street and over the next 3 days helped ourselves to cheap and delicious pad thai, pad see ew, masaman curry, pineapple milkshakes, and banana and chocolate thai pancakes. The adorable lady that worked there was amazed that we could eat so much and still have room for mango sticky rice for dessert! It's kinda how we roll.

The morning of our dive trip was overcast and threatening rain, but we didn't mind because we knew we'd be spending the whole day underwater! Apparently marine life is a lot more active on stormy days, so diving is really the best way to spend a rainy day on a tropical island. We waded onto our speed boat that left from the beach right in front of our resort, and sped across the Andaman Sea towards Koh Haa, passing all the other companies with slow boats that had left hours earlier. Suckers!

We had a really sweet German divemaster named Sandra who seemed to love shrimp as she pointed out different types to us in nearly every crevice we swam past on our first dive. The site was GORGEOUS (and dare I say rivalled the Great Barrier Reef), and we dove along a spectacular reef wall covered in giant blue sea stars with 20 meters of visibility (compared to only 3m at Pulau Payar in Malaysia). The schools of glass fish were so big and thick, sometimes we had to wave them out of the way just to see the coral! We saw some really interesting things like giant clams, lionfish, cleaner fish that kept trying to clean our legs, pufferfish, moon wrasses, a banded sea snake, christmas tree worms, nudibranchs, GIANT moray eels, squid, and a big ole barracuda. It was so amazing and overwhelming to roll over and watch the marine life gracefully swimming around you in every direction as far as the eye can see.

After our first dive, we were served a yummy rice and chicken lunch on the boat, as well as unlimited bottled water, sodas, and iced coffee. Three helpings later we were struggling to get back into our wetsuits but excited to see what our second dive held for us.

The second dive had equally stunning fish and coral, but the real highlight was the underwater cave. Real cave diving requires special training, certifications, and equipment, but this cave opened up inside and had a place where we could surface in an emergency, so it provided a really unique opportunity for beginner scuba divers. Words can not describe how beautiful it was swimming into the back of the coral cave and turning around to see the sunlight streaming in through the opening. There wasn't much going on inside the cave besides one sleeping moorish idol (you know him as Gill from Finding Nemo...), but the scenery was incredible and the adrenaline rush of swimming through a small tunnel to exit the cave has been unmatched in my diving so far.

It was a sad touch of reality when we surfaced at the end of the dive to the cloudy skies and rain. Everything is so peaceful and beautiful and dreamlike underwater that it's always sad when it comes to an end, but on the bright side, we set a new personal record of 59 minutes underwater!

The ride back to Koh Lanta was pretty rough with the waves and rain, but the staff served us heaps of freshly sliced pineapple and watermelon which definitely helped! When we got back to our resort, our divemaster sat with us and helped filled out our dive log books and flipped through fish books showing us what species we had seen that day. Overall a great day of diving and we would definitely recommend Dive and Relax to anyone staying on Koh Lanta.

The rain looks like it's sticking around, so we're leaving our peaceful retreat to head to what we hear is a great city in the far north of Thailand, Chiang Mai. Looking forward to it but first we have to make it through the overnight bus and all day train to get there. Here goes nothing!