We decided to get away from Phuket for a little variety in diving over the Songkran (Thai New Year) Festival weekend, so opted for Koh Kut (or Kood), the last outpost of the Chang island group, in the Gulf of Thailand. We dived with Ploy Scuba, the only dive operation on the island.
The place is a real challenge to get to: a Bangkok Airways flight (with overweight charges for dive gear), an overnight in Trat town, an overloaded speedboat transfer to the island, and taxis to and from the various points and the boats.
On the first day, we were the only divers on a boatful of snorkelers. The dives were nothing special. We dived Hin Kuak Ma (horseshoe rock) and Koh Thian, both near Koh Chang. We saw very little of note--a blue-spotted moray and a nice boxfish, though the topography at Koh Thian was sort of interesting--with many boulders and coral heads covered with colorful christmas tree worms--and the corals at Hin Kuak Ma appeared to be healthy. Still, everything, absolutely everything, was covered in a fine silt, and most corals were the stony kind, no soft corals to speak of. Maximum depth was 13 meters, which was probably just as well, given the somewhat murky water.
The next day we joined a group of divers on another Ploy boat (from Chang) for two more dives. The first one, at Hin Ka Duang was the best of the four we did. Though the dive guides were rhapsodizing about the "clear" water, we still found the viz to be less than great (+/- 15 m), and everything was still covered in silt. However, we did see various types of nudis and a nice, fat whip coral shrimp on this deep dive (25 m).
Our final dive was another super-shallow one at Hin Thong Lang. The dive guide suggested we just follow our own plan rather than joining the group, as she had a number of relatively inexperienced divers to take care of anyway. In retrospect, I think we could have snorkeled it more effectively. Most of the dive was in water no more than 6 m deep. Once, it got down to a whopping 10 m! In general it was quite a boring dive, so as soon as we got all the way around the rock, we just surfaced and swam back to the boat, despite the fact that we each had more than half a tank of air left after 65 minutes, and nobody to rush us back to the boat.
In sum, it's unlikely I'll go back to the Moo Koh Chang group of islands. It's just not good enough diving to justify the hassle in getting there.
The place is a real challenge to get to: a Bangkok Airways flight (with overweight charges for dive gear), an overnight in Trat town, an overloaded speedboat transfer to the island, and taxis to and from the various points and the boats.
On the first day, we were the only divers on a boatful of snorkelers. The dives were nothing special. We dived Hin Kuak Ma (horseshoe rock) and Koh Thian, both near Koh Chang. We saw very little of note--a blue-spotted moray and a nice boxfish, though the topography at Koh Thian was sort of interesting--with many boulders and coral heads covered with colorful christmas tree worms--and the corals at Hin Kuak Ma appeared to be healthy. Still, everything, absolutely everything, was covered in a fine silt, and most corals were the stony kind, no soft corals to speak of. Maximum depth was 13 meters, which was probably just as well, given the somewhat murky water.
The next day we joined a group of divers on another Ploy boat (from Chang) for two more dives. The first one, at Hin Ka Duang was the best of the four we did. Though the dive guides were rhapsodizing about the "clear" water, we still found the viz to be less than great (+/- 15 m), and everything was still covered in silt. However, we did see various types of nudis and a nice, fat whip coral shrimp on this deep dive (25 m).
Our final dive was another super-shallow one at Hin Thong Lang. The dive guide suggested we just follow our own plan rather than joining the group, as she had a number of relatively inexperienced divers to take care of anyway. In retrospect, I think we could have snorkeled it more effectively. Most of the dive was in water no more than 6 m deep. Once, it got down to a whopping 10 m! In general it was quite a boring dive, so as soon as we got all the way around the rock, we just surfaced and swam back to the boat, despite the fact that we each had more than half a tank of air left after 65 minutes, and nobody to rush us back to the boat.
In sum, it's unlikely I'll go back to the Moo Koh Chang group of islands. It's just not good enough diving to justify the hassle in getting there.
