Long Beach (and long snakes)

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Yesterday spent recovering after our trip to Long Beach! Set off on Sunday afternoon and found rooms to stay at Panorama hostel - complete with a big owl sat outside which we all thought was stuffed at first! Shared with Kate, Laura and Fran in a room with AIR CON! Which we were all excited about.

However it only lasted as long as a nap as by the time I woke up the Air Con had conked out, ah well. We joined the others at Bobo bar for a cheeky cocktail. Ordered a Cosmopolitan (of course) which took aaaaaaages (barman trying to do too many orders at once) but went down very nicely. Plus we were entertained by a big gecko trying to catch an even bigger butterfly! He nearly caught it - but not quite.

Then headed back to get ready for the meal, when it started raining and didn't stop all night! How glamorous did we look, all dressed up - UNDERNEATH the wet jackets!

Had pizza for dinner (although did wonder whether they were cooking them one at a time) with garlic and cheese toast - funny how good things taste after chicken, rice and veg every day! Then headed to a nearby bar where we sampled the not-so-local Tiger beers and danced the night away - until midnight anyway. Then had a quick dip in the sea (not skinny might I add!), led by Merv and Katherine and bed around 2am. Beans on toast for brekkie and bought my postcards and stamps in the morning. (Little did I know the boat man wasn't going to turn up on our island so your postcards might take a little while!)

Ronnie who co-owns Bubbles, the dive shop told us about the monkeys on the island. Apparently it's illegal to own anything that has a trigger in Malaysia (except a triggerfish of course! By the way they are the scariest fish EVER), so he has a slingshot and makes his own lead pellets to scare them off. One guest was poked in the boob by a monkey while she was sunbathing on her porch; another lady had her camera and towel taken on the beach - they dropped the towel but Ronnie had to trek off to the jungle and get the camera back!

As luck would have it, we then saw two brown monkeys at the other end of the beach while we were on the tree swing. Then I was relaxing in the hammock just chatting to the two Katies, idly wondering how I was going to get out of the hammock, when Kate said 'That's a - ' and Katie said 'SNAKE'! I immediately thought it was a monkey from their shock and jumped out faster than you can say 'monkey' and just RAN towards the sea! It was actually a green snake which the workers picked up and somehow I ended up holding it after they persuaded me it was fairly harmless. Anything for a photo eh?!

Today we went out for a Peak Performance Buoyancy dive where we practiced our buoyancy - fin pivoting off the sea bed, hovering in mid water, and did an 'underwater circus' going through hoops - and not forgetting making matrix 'bending over backwards Keanu-style' shapes, somersaults and handstands - all strictly part of the course, of course! Then we had a violent game of underwater basketball where it was a free-for-all - never mind about who was on your team!

In the afternoon, Peicee (Ronnie's partner in crime) told us all about reef checking and the importance of the reef - did you know that more oxygen is given off by all the reefs in the world than all the trees in the world? - including branch coral, stack coral, sponges and giant clams - then we headed out for a snorkel to check it all out.

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