Koh Haa snorkeling

We are just back from a Koh Haa snorkeling weekend aboard MV Saimai liveaboard. We spent three days snorkeling with family and friends at Phi Phi and Koh Haa. We chartered the Saimai so that we could avoid the Phi Phi crowds. It’s great to wake up in Maya Bay as the sun rises with no other boats around. By 7.30 am the first long tail boats started arriving, by 10 am we couldn’t see the beach for speedboats, it’s amazing to watch the armada of boats speeding towards Phi Phi from Phuket. When the 400 capacity Sea Angel ferry arrived and announced over it’s tanoy that it was staying for one hour we slipped anchor and moved to a quieter bay.

A two hour cruise away from Phi Phi is one of our favourite islands for swimming and snorkeling – Koh Haa. The water is always crystal clear and the coral is pristine, these photos show the water clarity, you can see the reef below. It’s never crowded, there were two small yachts there when we arrived, no one was on the beach.

Koh Haa is a pretty nice dive site as well with a very impressive underwater cavern but the water clarity often drops dramatically below 10m depth when a cool thermocline turns the water a cloudy green, I prefer snorkeling over the shallow reefs.