"Isle of Dogs"

Cake for breakfast? Hey, it's vacation AND her birthday!  :)

Today was Michele’s birthday, so we arranged for a surprise cake to be delivered during breakfast, and we and the staff sang happy birthday to her.   :)  After breakfast, we left our hotel early to do our tour of Ang Thong Marine National Park.  100 Degrees East picked us up at our hotel, drove us about an hour to the boat, then we sat in the motorboat for about an hour to get to the snorkel/dive site in the national park.  Gavin and I were the only two on the boat who were diving; all the rest of the 15 or so people on the boat were only snorkeling.  We suited up, then our first bit of the dive was through a small cave!  The cave wasn’t entirely underwater, which I am not sure I could have handled without getting really nervous/claustrophobic.  It was shallow water, and there was air above us in the cave.  As we swam through, a school of thousands and thousands of small silver fish swirled around us!

In the rest of the dive, we saw almost whole fields of anemones, hundreds of sea urchins, and lots of coral.  We also got to see a spotted stingray, which we had never seen before.

Anemones and their inhabitants.

Little wormy things on a vase sponge.

Spotted stingray!

Purple anemones.

Me and me Medusa hair.  :)

After diving, we took the boat to a beach on one of the little islands of the park.  From that beach, we kayaked to another teeny island with a small beach and two ornery puppies living there; they kept grabbing any towels or clothing we left in the kayak, and played tug-of-war with Michele for her hat, and then tried to pull off her bathing suit.  :) We swam in the warm water of the tiny beach for a bit.  After kayaking back to the first beach, we had lunch, which was “European Thai food,” according to our dive guide.  Basically, it was Thai food with very little spice/heat/flavor.  :)

Gavin in the back of the kayak.

Me in the front with my ridiculous amount of sun protection.  :) Yes, I am one
of THOSE people who wears a swim shirt...

Gavin and I on the beach where we ate lunch.

Michele making friends with the local "wildlife."  :)

Michele in the warm water off the "Isle of Dogs." (Not its real name, just
what I am calling it.  :)  )

After lunch we boated to the Emerald Lake viewpoint.  Through the sweltering heat of a Thai afternoon, we had to drag ourselves up around a hundred stairs, which were thin enough and steep enough that they had more in common with a ladder than a staircase.  At the top we had a view of an emerald green lagoon inside one of the islands, fed by the sea from an underwater cave.  We climbed down another steep staircase down to the lagoon, but we were not allowed to swim in it.  We then hoisted our sweaty selves back up the ladders/stairs to the top of the island, then back down to the boat, now all wishing that there was more beach/swimming time planned for the rest of the afternoon.  :)

The platform at the top gave us a view of the ocean and the Emerald Lake.

Gavin and I sweating at Emerald Lake. :)

Gavin and I overlooking the ocean in Ang Thong Marine National Park.

Our last stop was Monkey Island, another beach that has many ADORABLE monkeys living in the trees.  We were lucky that we saw a family of monkeys right away when we first arrived.  There were two adults and two babies, and the babies were definitely hamming it up for the tourists.  :)

Just chillin'.

He's VERY comfortable.  Manspreading at its finest.  :)

Two little ones.

And the mother. These were all only about 10 feet away from us or less.

After the boat tour, we had scheduled a sunset cruise from the hotel, but the 100 Degrees neglected to tell us we wouldn’t be back to our hotel at 5pm, but rather just at their shop at 5pm.  And then after calling the hotel for us to tell them we’d be late, they proceeded to drop us off the VERY LAST of all the other people on the tour.  We should have just taken a taxi instead.  We arrived for our sunset cruise after sunset with our private boat still waiting for us, luckily.  Despite that the sun had already set, we still had a nice cruise with champagne and appetizers.

Post-sunset cruise.

After our cruise, we decided to stay at the resort for dinner, and ate at the restaurant overlooking the water.  We had a decent Chateaubriand steak, but overall the food at the resort isn’t that impressive.  We then turned in after our busy day.  Tomorrow we will leave for Vietnam!