Snorkeling

To my knowledge, Koh Pangan is not necessarily known as a diving paradise, but there are some places worth diving, such as the bay of Mae Haad in front of the offshore island Koh Ma.

Koh Ma is barely 100 meters in front of the beach of Mae Haad, easily accessible on foot via a sandbank during low tide. I have been snorkeling around Mae Haad with a diving mask and snorkel several times and have always seen some colorful fish, but the best was yet to come.

My resort host kindly and unasked provided me with a diving mask and snorkel that previous guests had left behind. Unfortunately, I didn't have fins, but I put on my water shoes that I had brought along knowing the beach of Mae Haad, and they were about to become important.

Two years ago, I went snorkeling in front of Koh Ma, but only along the sandbank, which was not really exciting. This time, I wanted to go further out into the water where the bay opens up to the open sea. In the afternoon, I walked over the sandbank to Koh Ma, which was no problem at that time of day. I had planned to do this two days earlier, but I postponed it again because the water rises in the morning and I probably would have had problems with the rising water level when I returned. I had a bag with me that I had left in the hut on my second attempt - I didn't need it either. Now I only had a diving mask, snorkel, and my compact camera with me, which was in a waterproof protective case. The bag was an attempt to get cheap underwater photos or videos, and it should be waterproof up to a depth of 5 meters - I wouldn't snorkel deeper anyway - a professional and much more expensive underwater housing was not necessary at this point. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a suitable bag for my camera and had to accept some limitations. First of all, the bag was actually too small - I had measured and researched everything before buying and came to the conclusion that it could be enough. Depending on how the camera was positioned in the bag, it worked, but sometimes the lens hit against the outer wall of the bag when extending, causing the camera to automatically shut down. In addition, I could only record videos, so I couldn't take photos because the shutter button was not accessible. Even the video recording button was difficult to operate through the bag, and because the display control was hardly visible through the diving mask and bag, I didn't receive any feedback whether recording was in progress or not, which caused me to miss many beautiful moments. But anything is better than nothing. I also bought a similar bag for my phone, but nothing worked there. Only the video function worked, but only if I started the video above water, underwater it was not possible. I assume that the touchscreen is affected by the water pressure.

Equipped like this, I walked over the sandbank to Koh Ma, and there along the rocky beach towards a group of rocks where I wanted to enter the water. However, the path became increasingly difficult despite my water shoes, which is why I entered the quite shallow water earlier. But even here, I had to climb over some smaller rocks before reaching deeper water.

What I then saw surprised me a lot. I had already snorkeled at other locations in Mae Haad, but apart from fish and a few corals, there were only rocks to see there. Here, everything was full of various corals, with only a few rocks or sandy bottom visible. I am not familiar with the individual corals or sponges, but it was a curious and fabulous world that I looked at, which I find difficult to describe in words. In terms of color, there were unfortunately few differences, almost everything appeared in various shades of earth and sand, gray to black, and occasionally light colors up to white. But there were few colorful colors in themselves. Every now and then, an extremely unusual shape in the brightest blue appeared, which clearly stood out in color from the rest. However, the variety of shapes was intoxicating and thrilled me completely, a real fairy tale world. In addition, all kinds of fish joined in, some of which were very colorful, such as large parrotfish. I also saw some large wavy shells, but they immediately closed when I approached.

I admired this new foreign world from the water's surface without venturing into deeper layers, as the camera was a bit of a hindrance. The sun was already quite low and only weakly illuminated the corals and fish, making the already pale colors even weaker, so I decided to move towards the beach. However, this was not as easy as I soon found out. I was more or less in the open sea, outside the coral reefs blocking the way to the beach. During high tide, they were no obstacle, but now it was clearly heading towards low tide and the water was sometimes so shallow that I could no longer swim over the partially sharp, at least rough and sensitive corals. I tried to make my way through the invisible labyrinth, which was extremely difficult because there was a large coral block blocking the way everywhere and there was no clear passage to be seen anywhere. Now, don't panic, but stay calm and keep searching. Luckily, I had the water shoes with which I could try to find a clear surface and step between the individual corals and slowly fight my way forward. Without the shoes, I would have been really stuck. If I had fins on my feet instead of shoes, I would have been really lost. Even with just the shoes, it was complicated enough to navigate through the corals without causing major damage to either the corals or myself. But finally, I reached sandy ground and was able to save myself to the beach. The sun was almost gone now, soon it would have been dark...