"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!

Elephants, Jeeps and Mopeds.

Those were our three methods of transport today.  :)

We got up early this morning to get picked up for our tour of Ang Thong Marine National Park, only to discover that the tour is actually happening TOMORROW.  Oops.  We ate breakfast at the resort restaurant overlooking the ocean and made a different plan for the day.

After breakfast, we asked the resort to bring us some mopeds so we could drive to a waterfall.  Michele had never ridden one before, but we assured her it was easy.  We also assured the resort personnel that we had all ridden mopeds before, but “not for a while.” :) I am sure we did not inspire confidence in the moped rental company, as I put my helmet on backwards (I didn’t notice until 30 minutes later…) and Michele promptly ran her moped into the curb.  :)

Michele practicing her moped skills at the gas station.  :)

It was only about a half hour drive to the waterfall, and we were surprised that the whole area in front of the falls had been turned into a massive tourist trap complete with ATV rides and elephant rides, and they wouldn’t allow us to ride our mopeds up to the falls.  We had to pay to take their Jeep to the falls or walk a mile uphill on the narrow, winding road with the real risk of getting smashed by their Jeeps flying down the road.  We opted for riding in the Jeep.

Michele was excited about the elephant rides, so we did one with her before visiting the falls.  This elephant ride was different than in Chiang Mai; we didn’t get to drive, :) and we had to sit in a metal seat on the elephant’s back rather than bareback.  Michele had a friendly and talkative driver, but ours was quite sullen, only talking to us to say, “I take photos, you give me tip.”  He did take some nice pictures of us on the elephant.

Michele on the elephant ride.

Gavin and I on our elephant.

All of us and Michele's happy, friendly mahout.

After the elephant ride, we took a hair-raising ride on the Jeep to the falls.  We were seated in the open-air back of the Jeep on metal benches, but our view of what was in front of us was blocked; all we could feel was our driver tossing the Jeep around the narrow, curvy road, and not being able to see if we were heading toward a collision with another Jeep coming the other way!

We arrived at the base of the falls, and had a small hike to get up to the larger falls.  It was a nice waterfall and had some tiny pools to dip our feet in.  It took the obligatory yoga by a waterfall photo, of course.  :)

The sign says "Warning, Dangerous, One by One."
We weren't sure if this meant literally one
person allowed on the bridge at once, or that we
should go single file.

Not the best workmanship on these bridges. At least the drop is only a few
feet if they break.  :D

Astavakrasana at the falls.

Shows better how if I fell out of the arm balance,
I would take a nasty tumble down those rocks. :)
Also you can see the "do not climb the falls" sign
that I obviously disobeyed.  :)

After another thrill-inducing ride down, we rode our mopeds back to the resort.  We ate some fruit in our room for lunch, then our pickup for a zip line adventure arrived.  We sat on hard metal benches in the back of a truck again, this time for well over an hour, on the dusty, noisy, fume-choked Koh Samui roads.

The zip lining itself was fun.  One of our guides took all our cameras and took videos and photos of us with our own cameras, which was nice.  One zip line I watched a guide jump off the ledge and bounce all the way down the line, so I tried it, too and for the first time finally got a little bit of a thrill on a zip line.  :)  On the last zip line, Gavin and I got to go together on two parallel lines, and we got to mess around and flip upside down, etc.  :)

Geared up and ready to go!

Gavin zipping along.

View of Lamai from the top of one of the towers.

Me being silly. :)

Gavin and I on a zip platform.

After another long, dusty ride in the back of a truck back to the resort, we decided to relax at the resort for a while.  We checked out Rocky’s tiny beach, which was the only unimpressive part of the resort, which we love otherwise.  We wandered into water the temperature of a bath, and I noticed some little crunches happening under my feet.  When I discovered they were thousands of tiny SNAILS in the water, I jumped out of the water really quickly and headed for the pool instead.  :)

Later in the afternoon, Michele and I had scheduled massages in the open-air pavilion overlooking the ocean.  Mine was very nice, good pressure for relaxation, and really nice smelling massage oil.  The massage ended just before sunset, and our massage ladies gave us some nice ginger tea to drink while we watched the sunset.

While we had been getting the massages, resort staff had begun setting up a bunch of tables, a grill, electric lights, and buffet on the beach.  We had a reservation for this dinner, so we went back to the room to shower and change, then wandered back down to the now-dimly-lit beach for dinner.  The buffet foot was good, and the spices were really nice on the grilled meats and fish, but EVERYTHING was overcooked; rubbery calamari, dry chicken, fully brown/well done beef...  It seems that whenever Thai restaurants try to approximate Western food, it doesn’t come out quite right.  :)

Setting up tables for the beach barbeque. You can see the pavilion where
we did our massages in the center of the photo under the trees.

Michele and I at the beach barbeque.

All those lights were added on the beach by burying electrical cords in the
the sand for temporary lighting!

After dinner we got to watch a fire show similar to the on we had watched on Koh Phi Phi last December, but much more professional and impressive; hardly any dropped batons, and the show was so close to us that we could feel the heat from some of the batons!  The moves and twirling also seemed more intricate and smooth.

The fire dancers. Literally the only decent photo we got of them.

After the fire show, we headed back to our room to sleep.  Tomorrow is REALLY our tour and dive in Ang Thong Marine National Park.  :)

Hat Lamai - Rock out with your "rock" out.

Today we arrived in Koh Samui, an island on the gulf/east side of Thailand.  We picked this island because we didn’t get to see any islands on the gulf side when we traveled here in December, and because it had an airport.  :)  We arrived at Rocky’s Boutique Resort and were seriously amazed; what a beautiful place!  Our two-bedroom villa, which we are sharing with our friend Michele who is traveling with us, is the size of an actual house and has two floors!  It also has a small private pool that is about the size of a hot tub, but chest deep.  The whole resort is covered in beautiful vegetation, including my favorite plumeria trees, whose scented blossoms are scattered both purposefully and naturally throughout the resort.

Lovely flower arrangements in big water-filled bowls.

A lotus flower (I think?)  in one of the fish ponds!

Choosing a girly drink at the bar by the pool.

Orchids on the bed...

Orchids in the bathroom.

Breakfast and restaurant area overlooking the water.

More places for relaxing.

Another favorite flower arrangement in water.

The first order of business was to take a nap – we had not only traveled for over 40 hours to get to Bangkok, but we had to spend the night in Bangkok and only got 3 hours of sleep before getting up for our flight to Koh Samui!

After our nap, we took Rocky’s shuttle to Lamai to check out one of Koh Samui’s popular beaches.  We stopped at the first restaurant we saw and had some lunch, including a tasty fresh watermelon juice and some spicy shrimp soup, whose spiciness was fine in my mouth, but gave me instant pain in travel- and lack-of-sleep-upset tummy.  I guess I should have taken it a little slower to adjust to spicy Thai food.  :)

After lunch we walked down to the south end of the beach looking for the “landmarks” Hin Tai and Hin Yai, otherwise known as Grandmother and Grandfather rocks.  Guess why…  (these were actually mentioned in Lonely Planet!)

Hat Lamai.

"Grandfather Rock."

"Grandmother rock."

Scenic yoga posture in front of Grandfather rock.  Because I have the sense
of humor of a 12 year old boy.  :)

After admiring the anatomically correct rock formations, (which didn't exactly come out in the photos due to poor lighting) we walked back to the road to go to the Lamai Night Market.  We walked along the dusty, hot, noisy main road uphill for about a half hour, choking on exhaust fumes and dust stirred up by the cars and mopeds zooming by.  We were tired and hot, so we stopped at a little bakery to have some water and use their internet, and we discovered we had missed a turn to the Night Market and were a long way past it.  Instead of walking all the way back, we were lazy and hired a taxi, who ripped us off $6 to drive 2 minutes to the Night Market.

Michele and I at the Night Market.

The Night Market was pretty small, much smaller than I expected for such a touristy place.  We didn’t spend much time there, though I got a new swimsuit in a store on the same street and Michele got a couple souvenirs.  After our brief walk through, we took another rip-off taxi back to our resort.  We ate an unimpressive dinner at one of the resort restaurants, then ended our day cooling off in our private pool.  Tomorrow we will have our tour and dive in Ang Thong Marine National Park.

Rocky's Boutique Resort lit up at night.

Class with a capital a$$

Prologue to Thailand and Vietnam:

In all our travels, we have NEVER gotten a free upgrade to business class, but it FINALLY happened on our flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok!  We arrived at the gate, and the flight attendant gave us new boarding passes to business class!  We made the most of the free champagne, more legroom, and big, reclining seats, and we proved ourselves business class noobs by taking pictures of the seats, drinks, etc.  Super classy.  After all the elation at the upgrade, I promptly fell asleep for most of the 3-hour flight because I was so comfortable; I wasn’t even awake to fully appreciate it.  :)

Let's get down to BUSINESS. :)

Lots of room. Ahhhh.  :)

Free champagne.

AND free wine...  No wonder I fell asleep 5 minutes into the flight.  :)

We arrived in Bangkok and spent the night at a comfortable and cheap hotel close to the airport, getting about 3 hours of sleep before we had to go back to the airport to fly to the island of Koh Samui!