Koh Phangnan

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Hi Family and Friends!

We haven't updated for a while because we were on a really remote beach on Koh Phangnan, called Bottle Beach.

We took the afternoon ferry from Koh Tao after a morning of diving. The weather was really windy that morning and the ocean was really rough. I felt seasick within minutes, despite the Gravol. My first dive was a 30m dive at Chumpon Pinnacle. Everything went really well, despite the seasickness...did you know you can puke into your regulator and everything still works? Well, now I do! The second dive was in a much calmer location and I did a navigation dive. My buddy and I also got to go off on our own to explore. Yay scuba adventure! Anyhow, the diving was great, Trev had fun too but he won't get the pictures from the underwater camera until we get home.

We made the journey on the ferry and arrived at the main pier. We got in a truck taxi headed up the island to some little town with some other girls trying to get to Bottle Beach. At that town we found a longboat taxi and bartered with the driver. He was a shirtless, potbellied, one-eyed old guy that kept telling us we were crazy. We survived the longboat ride and arrived on the beach just as it started to pour rain. We decided to stay at Smile Bungalows (by recommendation of our guide book) It's such a neat little place. The beach it's on is almost deserted. There are only 3 little resorts there. The power is by generator, so only between 6pm and 9am, no cell phone reception and really patchy internet connection. We stayed in a little bungalow on the hill and we had a view of the ocean from our balcony. There was probably only 12 people staying there, so we all hung out at the little restaurant for meals.

On our first day we caught a ride into Thongsala town in the back of a truck. It was a BUMPY ride up and down some crazy hills. There wasn't too much to see in that town so we caught a cab to Haad Rin, just to check it out. Our taxi driver ended up pulling a fast one on us, and taking us there via the long and windy mountain road, so by the time we got there we didn't have much time to look around. There were definitely more tourists in Haad Rin then anywhere else we've been on the islands. We had delicious chicken schnitzel sandwiches for lunch, then headed back to meet the truck with a nice taxi driver, who took the regular & short way. It was another bumpy ride back to Bottle Beach, but we had fun checking out the towns. That evening Trev joined in a beach soccer game with the staff, I was the cheering section.

The next day we stayed at the beach. We spent time laying on the beach and reading and played some jenga in the evening. Not too much to report. Oh, it wasn't a sunny day, it was overcast, but there wasn't rain which was nice. The locals are all saying that its an early monsoon season this year, which isn't great for us. We're still having fun, just not fun in the sun.

Love Court

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