It's an Exciting World

Had a pick up at 10:45 for sea canoeing. We had a long relaxing breakfast before that and I had way too much to eat. We had about an hour to Pukhet Town where we waited to get on the boat. Since most of us were a little sun burned so we pucked up hats. Nick and I decided to get the rice patty hat and I think it was a good decision. I left mine somewhere but wasn’t planning to take it back to the us anyway. Once on the boat we had a one hour ride out to the islands and we got lunch and a quick introduction. We were introduced to our guides. The lead guide was Ti who paddled Steph and I around. Jeremy also had a guide paddling him around but the others decided to paddle themselves.
The first section in the water was going through a long cave called bat cave that connected to a hong also known as a lagoon. The hong was mostly dry since we needed it to be mostly low tide to get through the lower parts of the cave. With the low tide there were large mud flats that had lots of crabs and mud skippers on them. The mud flats were also home to mangrove trees and they looked somewhat out of place in the middle of a mud flat without the water around the base. I got a few good panoramas of the hongs but I’m not sure if they will display correctly on the blog.
After exiting through the first cave we went down the shore to watch the monkeys play. We then went along the cliffs and got picked up by the main boat to go to another island.
On the second paddle we went through Two more hongs and got to see some good pinnacles. We then got some time to paddle around ourselves and swim which was very enjoyable. The canoes weren’t easy to control since they were inflatables.
After free time the guides showed us how to make krathongs. These were modern krathings made of banana trunk, banana leaves, nails, flowers, incense, and candles. The banana leaves are folded to look like a lotus flower. The flower buds can also be cut to look like birds and Steph got a lot of those on her krathong. We went back to the bat cave to launch them in the dark and have a good controlled recovery. We recovered and extinguished them and then got put out all other lights. We then splashed around the water for a great bioluminescent show. This kind of bioluminescence was small particles that had a decent duration. The other type I have seen before is quick sparks. The last kind that I’d like to see is the milky kind.
We exited the cave and started heading back to Pukhet. Along the way we sat up front and watch the lighting in the storms on either side of the boat. It was a very nice cruise back.

Videos:
Into the bat cave
In the bat cave
Exiting the bat cave
Mud skippers
Monkeys
Sea eagles / kites