There are some nice dive spots around the island, in which are easier to reach from Koh Lanta than from Koh Phi Phi.
My first day of scuba-dive in Koh Lanta, I dove with Lanta Scuba dive center. The owner is Matt, a Dutch guy, partnering with Marc, also Dutch. And guess what... that day, there were 9 people on the boat and all of them are Dutch except me and Ian, my English dive master! 3 of them were open water students + 1 advanced open water student + 2 dive instructors + 1 dive master trainee + me + 1 dive master. And.. all of them were guys!!! (I wonder where were the girls?) It was pretty interesting to be on a speed boat surrounded with only Dutch people. It really reminded me of my study time in Amsterdam, where I spent two years of my life. It was nice to hear the Dutch speaking their own language and we talked about places in The Netherlands. Ah.. they made me miss my school time in Amsterdam!Ok, enough nostalgia. The best thing of diving with Lanta Scuba was... I got my own dive master! Wow! Very luxurious, eh? Apparently, Lanta Scuba decided to dedicate 1 dive master only for me, because the rest of the people were students. So, it wouldn't be fair for me if I joined them. Yayyy... I had no complain with that! In fact, I was very happy as I never had a dive master only for myself! Hihihi.. :P
We went to Koh Haa, a dive spot that famous for its cave known as "The Cathedral". It took us 45 minutes by speed boat to get here from Koh Lanta. Koh Haa itself means 5 islands. It's beautiful and looks like a smaller version of Phi Phi Ley. In one of the islands, there's a small beach, which can only be reached by swimming from the boat. "Would be nice to have lunch there", I thought. Unfortunately the water was very choppy that day, so it was pretty dangerous to swim there! :( Oh well... We even had to struggle having our lunch in such choppy water. Some of us felt sea sick even before we got to the dive spot! :D I had to drink a few glasses of soft drink with ice, in which I rarely do (yup, i'm not a big fan of soft drinks!), just to prevent myself from getting those annoying sea-sick! (try it, believe me.. it works!)The first dive was in Koh Haa Lagoon. It was just so-so, only the usual suspects. But, the second dive was interesting. We dove in Koh Haa Yai. It was a cavern dive and we dove for... 75 minutes! Yayyy!!! I was happy because Ian was also good with air consumption, so both of us could dive... forever! :D (err.. not really forever as in forever... but yeah.. u know what I mean). It was the longest dive I've ever had :).
I got scared when entering the first cavern. It was pitched dark! And we forgot to bring a torch, so we couldn't see anything. As soon as we entered the cave, I grabbed Ian's arm right away! Hahaha.. The second cavern was nice. There were two entrances and a chamber in which we could go up to the surface and breath normally (yep... u can take off the regulator from your mouth!). We spent more than 5 minutes in the chamber, thus, our dive computers counted it as a new dive when we started to descend again. LOL. Oh... I LOVED CAVERN DIVE!!!
The water was 28 degrees celcius, the visibility wasn't that good.. around 7 - 10 meters. We dove down to 20.7 meters on the first dive and 21.8 meters on the second dive. Didn't see any big pelagic fish, but saw some big nudibranchs in black and purple, in which I've never seen such types and in huge size before, barracudas, scorpion fish, orange-line cardinal fish and some other usual suspects. The cavern dive was really cool. LOVED IT! Did I already say it? LOVED IT LOVED IT LOVED IT!!! :D