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Published: January 26th 2012
The Quiet end of the beach,
5 star luxury in the backgroundI’d like to be
Under the sea
In an octopus’s garden
In the shade.
The words of a Beatles song some of you will familiar with.
Today we saw an octopus, but let me backtrack a bit. Yesterday we set off to walk to the South of the island but somehow took a wrong turn and ended up on the west coast in a small bay lined with four 5 star hotels. Only one small end of the bay was left without sun beds and umbrellas ect.. Probably because it was a bit rocky. We decided to go for a swim as we were extremely hot from walking.
Amazingly the rock soon gave way to coral and we saw a whole variety of fish, a huge puffa fish, 2 cuttle fish and many more non descript fish. The puffa fish was floating around in a small hollow in the rocks as we drifted around it watching, it too was watching us, it’s big eyes following us. After a few minutes we swam off and left it in peace. The cuttle fish was grubbing it’s nose into the sandy bottom, it’s frilly edge waving around gently. As it sensed us it changed into a streamline shape and shot off backwards at a fantastic speed.
Today we set off extra early as that’s when you’re most likely to see more unusual creatures. We were not disappointed, the first thing we saw was a huge conchi shell, for a while we thought it was a turtle sitting on the bottom, a black crab was working away close by trying to eat a reddish coloured crab, when it sensed us, it dragged it’s meal underneath the ‘turtle’. As the sand cleared we realised it wasn’t a turtle but a huge shell. It had really pretty markings and was in perfect condition.
On our way back to shore Stan called me over, he’d seen an octopus, it had wrapped itself around a rock and was just sat there, quite difficult to spot at first as it blended into the background. As we floated quietly above it, it became aware of us and moved into the shadow of the rock as it did so it’s body changed from sandy rock colour to black and became virtually invisible again. Amazing!!
Our time on Ko Samet is coming to an end. We have explored a lot of the island and found spots that are lovely and spots that are crowded with tourists. I guess you could say it has something for everyone and we have enjoyed our time here. Tomorrow we head off to Pattaya on the mainland to meet up with a fellow motorcycle friend of Stan’s who is staying there. Then on Sunday we go back to Bangkok to collect our visas.
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Sharon
non-member comment
Conch shell
Watch out for those conch shells. Did you know they can be deadly, and can shoot a poisonous spear into you which is really painful and kills people due to shock?! We were watching one rather closely in Australia and then later looked it up and discovered that - oops!