Koh Samui Snorkeling
Thursday, April 26 2007 @ 04:11 PM | Contributed by:
Oliver | Views: 1,063
 | Koh Samui is one of the places in Thailand that is a bit out of the way. If you go to Bangkok or to Pukhet, you will find a much more established stream of tourists and the surrounding industry. Of course there are overcrowded places and you will see the stereotypical fat white guy with the half-his-age thai girl in Koh Samui as well. But the houses that are mushrooming here out of the ground are small, private ones instead of large hotels. Most of the beaches here are hard to access and the good spots for snorkeling are a bumpy hour of boatride away, so there is a slight chance that this place will remain a bit more of a paradise than most other places you come across. |
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| As I said, Koh Samui is not a deserted place, there are lots of people living there, but as of now most of them are Thai. You will see many typical villages if you search for them, but unfortunately, most of the trade is aimed at tourists here too, specially towards other Asians who build holiday houses here. So there are many tailors, building equipment & hardware shops, real estate dealers and furniture manufacturers. |
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| The islands around Koh Samui are partly natural reserves and many of them much too small for anyone to live there in the first place. When you peer into the water however, you can see already whats going on below. There is a large variety of fishes in species and size, and all at arm's lenght. |
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| Already on the shallow areas of the bays you can find many fishes that live around huge corals. In some places coral whitening has started but in others everything seems to be fine. Of course, the normal tours will take you only to the touristy spots where fishes are used to beeing fed with bread. |
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| On the beaches around the island the visibility is often quite bad, which does not mean that there are no fish around. It is actually normal to be pinched by a crab if you are not careful where you step, even close by the beach, but the sea urchins discourage you quickly to put your feet anywhere without looking first. |
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| You really get teh most out of swimming around slowly and observing carefully everything that moves. You will find that you get tired quickly from seeing the same 3-4 types of fish that are around everywhere, but looking closer you will find some rarer and much more exciting species hidden away, almost invisible in their camouflage. |
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