Koh Lanta is a charming island a few hours south of bustling Phuket. It has beautiful beaches, some nice, scenic hills and world class diving. It combines a nice infrastructure without the overdevelopment of other Thai islands.
The main town in the north of the island is Saladan. I stayed there because it was close to the dive shop I used. Below are views of a couple of its main streets.
The next two pictures are looking at parts of the town from the water.
There are quiet, secluded resorts all over the island. Below is an area of a few resorts where we picked up some of the divers in our group. When they weren’t diving my dive buddies staying in this area basically laid on the beach and got messages. It was a great place for a vacation for them!
Some of the Koh Haa rock formations near one of our dive sites.
I came here for the diving and I wasn’t disappointed. There was nothing overly dramatic about the dives in Lanta; they were all just really nice experiences with sections of abundant coral and sea life.
The star of our dives were a couple of leopard sharks we spotted sleeping on the bottom. The first one we saw swam away shortly after a few of us arrived.
The second one just kept on sleeping as we drifted above it.
Here a huge group of bad ass travellies swam past us. They are aggressive apex predators. They’ve even been known to leap out of the sea to snatch unwary birds.
As you can see in the videos below, there were sections where the sea life was incredibly plentiful.
It’s always interesting to have barracudas swim by, even if these are one of the smaller species.
Cuttlefish are relatives of octopuses and they can also quickly change their color to match their surroundings, as this one does in the video.
A blue marbled ray passes below us.
A small, but beautiful, jellyfish drifts past.
Ghost pipefish look like little pieces of coral, but they are actually relatives of seahorses and their camoflage is magnificent.
A moray eel sniffing it’s surroundings.
The beautiful, but potentially very painful lionfish.
This is the first time I’ve seen lobsters completely out of their rock hiding places and exposing their full bodies to the ocean elements. There must be some type of territorial drama going on here. Or maybe it’s just a boy lobster checking out a girl lobster below it.
A couple of shots of tiny, elegant nudibranches strolling about.
A nice passthrough among the underwater pinnacles.
A rare site of a pufferfish large enough to have cleaning fish attached to it.
A deeply camoflaged and highly poisonous scorpionfish.
A sea cucumber showing off some type of echinodermic yoga pose.
A bright yellow seahorse hanging out below some rocks.
This juvenile sea turtle is really aggressive in getting some of its food.
A whole host of tiny shrimp hanging out among the coral.
As with most of the best dive spots in Southeast Asia, there were sections of really nice coral.
What it’s like to surface in this beautiful area of Thailand.
I stayed in a really comfortable hotel on the beach just down the street from Lanta Divers, the dive shop I used.
The view of the hotel as we came back from one of our diving excursions.
The post sunset view from my balcony.
