{"id":772,"date":"2010-08-24T22:09:07","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T15:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/?p=772"},"modified":"2010-08-24T22:09:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T15:09:07","slug":"diving-at-koh-haa-thailand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/2010\/08\/24\/diving-at-koh-haa-thailand\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving at Koh Haa, Thailand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4945639287\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4128\/4945639287_31fc70b458_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The diving on the western coast of Thailand is supposed to be the best the country has to offer. \u00a0But, in rainy season, the more remote destinations (Hin Daeng, Hin Muang, Similan Islands) are closed due to unpredictable\/nasty weather and low demand. \u00a0But, we were able to get a taste of what the area has to offer by diving Koh Haa which means five islands in Thai. \u00a0 It&#8217;s actually 6 boulders\/small islands in some shallow water with some nice corals and animal life.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Here&#8217;s a different species of barracuda, smaller than the barcode barracuda we&#8217;d seen in Sipadan, Malaysia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4945626223\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4152\/4945626223_7a5c801632_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Soft coral below &#8211; you almost just want to pop each bubble.  No&#8230; we didn&#8217;t sneak a little pop in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4945627577\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4085\/4945627577_eff14f5e55_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d say find the fish, but this one&#8217;s obvious. \u00a0It&#8217;s not a flounder though, it&#8217;s a sole &#8211; yes, the kind you find in the supermarket. \u00a0 Now you know what one looks like and that it&#8217;s a bottom feeder, for what it&#8217;s worth.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4945631723\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4127\/4945631723_14c0f69248_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here are some nudibranches (sea slugs) which some dive guides get really psyched about because they can be quite colorful and are sometimes hard to spot. \u00a0 They don&#8217;t really float our boat, but here are a couple where the photo actually came out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4946220446\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4087\/4946220446_1aa7fef235_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been fortunate enough to see several turtles in Malaysia and now Thailand. \u00a0You have to remember that these guys can be rare and you&#8217;re lucky to see one on a dive. \u00a0There&#8217;s a reason there are so many turtle conservation organizations out there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Diving at Ko Haa by T. Chen, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tony-chen\/4946221762\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4089\/4946221762_84441bfe69_z.jpg\" alt=\"Diving at Ko Haa\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>All-in-all, we liked Koh Haa. \u00a0The visibility was far superior to dives in Malaysia and our dive guide (David from Pimalai Divers) said the visibility was bad. \u00a0So, it goes to show that the high season is probably phenomenal. \u00a0We&#8217;ll have to come back.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some more photos our journey and dives:<\/p>\n<p>[flickrslideshow acct_name=&#8221;tony-chen&#8221; id=&#8221;72157624850464478&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>Next, we head to Mai Khao (near Phuket)&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The diving on the western coast of Thailand is supposed to be the best the country has to offer. \u00a0But, in rainy season, the more remote destinations (Hin Daeng, Hin Muang, Similan Islands) are closed due to unpredictable\/nasty weather and low demand. \u00a0But, we were able to get a taste of what the area has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}