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Busy day yesterday.. Relaxing but hot day today.
Picking up where I last left off, two days ago we were able to wake up early enough to catch the sunrise (about 6:30am). The island we're on faces East so the sunrise was visible and very pretty. We spent about 20 minutes or so sitting on the beach and taking pictures. Some wild dogs came around hung out with us. Then we went back to our room and passed out for several hours.
Later that day, we didn't do too much other than sit on the beach, swim in the ocean, and eat.
Yesterday, was a big day. We woke up at about 6:45am to catch our ride at 7:15am to another part of the island in this ghetto rigged-up jeep/truck. We had signed up for this sort of day of activities through
Island Safari where they just took us to do various things all day long. We got to the pier at about 7:45am and had "breakfast" aka a crossant and instant coffee. Other guests had showed up and there was bout 15-20 of us. We got on this boat and headed out to sea.
Snorkelling 
Noah Drawing Sunset
with visit from our dogfriendOur first activity was snorkelling. They took us to this coral reef where we immediately saw tons of fish from out of the water. Noah and I were the first ones in off our boat. I had my waterproof camera with me, so I took a bunch of pictures and actually a video as well. This was probably one of my favorite things we've done this trip so far. We got to snorkel for about an hour, but I took a short break back on the boat for about 10 minutes to rehydrate myself after drinking so much sea water accidentally, hah! Most people only spent like 30 mins in the water cuz either they were old or they didn't have the energy to stay in. Before we all got in the water I said "Wow, look at that great white shark!" and probably scared half the boat. This one girl looked pretty frightened. Most people knew I was kidding though.
I just liked it so much because there were fish all around me. When we would stay still the fish would get even closer to us and swarm around us. We didn't see anything too dangerous. It was
just amazing because you get completely surrounded by nature and when your underwater all you hear is the sea. It was so much fun to swim down and explore different coral finding different species of fish every now and then.
This was my second or third time snorkelling. The other times were in Fiji, but I didn't see nearly as many fish & coral there when I went. It's a shame how global warming and all the other negative environmental effects are killing coral reefs. They are such a diverse place where so many diffent species of plants and animals gather and live.
Canoing through Limestone Caves Next the boat took us to these limestone caves/islands. They look funny cuz they are constantly erroded by acid rain. Noah and I had the little tour guide in our canoe, which turned out to be alright. We got to go through a cave more than once to show other people how to go through it.
Lunch on the Beach We went to this one island in what seemed like the middle of nowhere to have lunch. It was a pretty good lunch. Then we had fresh pinapple
Snorkelling
surfaced for a break and watermelon. We had a lot of down time in between activities, so after lunch Noah and I went off exploring the island and attempted to climb palm trees and throw stuff at them to get a coconut down. We were unsuccessful, but read on to hear about when we did get one.
Hiking We arrived at yet another island to hike this mountain. It was ridiculously hot and very steep. I was sweating so much my face was dripping constantly. When we got to the top we had this really nice view of this lagoon that was formed within the mountain by collapsing limestone. It was pretty. After the hike we got to sit on the beach and then Noah and went around the corner exploring, but didn't go far because we didn't want the boat leaving without us. So we decided to go for a swim. Unfortunately, there were a lot of rocks in the water at first and after Noah made it out past them, I caught my foot between two rocks and sliced my foot in two places. One was not so bad, but the other started bleeding immediately. After about 3 minutes I
Ready to Canoe
we look so intense decided it was probably not best for me to keep swimming and that I should get out and check on it. When I got to the shore the boat was coming in to pick us up anyway. On the boat, the driver helped bandage my foot, and so sanitarily used my dirty towel to scrape at my wound to try and clean it. Haha! Lucky for me I guess, the salt water of the ocean is helping it heal fast, but walking on it still hurts a lot.
Elephant Trekking The boat finally took us back to our island where we would get in some jeeps that took us to this store briefly to get a coffee/tea or buy some sort of souvenier. Next, we went to do some elephant trekking. Noah and I were so excited for it. When we got there, some people fed baby elephants some banana and there was this monkey swinging in a branch nearby. When we got to the elephants we would be riding, we suddenly realized how cruel it kind of is. I mean these are animals that have a bench mounted on their backs with rope of some sort tied
Exiting a Cave
they were short caves though around them and are forced to walk this track stepping in eachothers poop and urine, or well, they could have easily stepped in it. Still, we went ahead and rode the elephants for a short bit. It only lasted about 5 or 10 minutes anyway. And I didn't do it when I was in India and I couldn't travel through India and Thailand without having a traditional elephant ride. It was an interesting experience to say the least.
This wrapped up our adventure day at about 5pm. I bought Noah and myself some ice cream and then we headed to our shuttle. There were these air conditioned shuttle vans that would take us back to our resort (which felt really nice). When we got back we found a palm tree with some ripe looking coconuts on it, so I boosted Noah up and retrieved three! We had a knife that we bought in France, so we sat on the beach and I used that to carve open the coconut. Noah was in the water before I had opened it, so I got first dibs at some of the coconut juice. I called him over and shared it with him
and then we scrapped some coconut out. There was this dog sniffing nearby so I gave him a piece of it too.
We were kind of starving for some real food at this point ,so we quickly washed up and went to our resorts restaurant on the beach for dinner. I get the vegetable pad thai a lot from the places we go to. It's so good. Eric would really like the food here. A meal for Noah and I usually costs around $5 combined. Pretty nice.
Later that evening, Noah and I went back to the Shisha Bar for some Shisha and drinks. It was MUCH busier last night then the last time when we were the only customers. There was some sort of birthday party going on. As we were about to leave, they put on a
Manu Chao CD and we HAD to stay because he is one of my favorite musicians and we were in a good environment to listen to him. Finally, the CD was over and we went home and got ready for bed and watched some movies on this random movie channel that we get. Good times.
This morning we
got up around 9am or so. Noah wanted to be up by 8:30am, but I was pushing for later. He finally got me up at 9am by shutting off the A/C, opening the blinds, and turning on the TV. Haha! Oh, Noah.. fine, fine, I'll wake up.. It was our first time having breakfast at our resort and it was pretty poor. All we had were eggs and toast and it was like twice as expensive as our regular dinners. Not doing that again.
We walked to town earlier today which was about 1 km or 15 minutes away. We went through some shops and did some bargaining with the shopowners. I think my best buy was this one item that costed 380 baht that I ended up paying 200 baht for. I'm sure he still made like 150 baht on it. Hah! After shopping in the morning, we came back to our resort and hit the beach and swam for a while. Then we had lunch. Now I'm updating this blog then probably head back out to the beach for a few more hours and then have dinner.
We are leaving for Bangkok tomorrow, and then our
flight is at 1:10am to the Philippines where we will be greated by Noah's uncle and aunt I believe. Should be some more beach fun there.
Ciao for now!
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