When we got back to the hotel I got Tina, Jeremy, Steph, and Nick to come launch paper lanterns with me. We first had to find them and that took a while. We had a rotee break in the middle.
We found a place that had the lanterns and then walked back to close by out hotel. We had a good time launching them and it was really nice to watch them until the disappeared through the clouds.
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
Jeremy, Nick, Steph and I went out to the muay Thai match at Paying Boxing Stadium. It was very fun. The first match was between two kids I would guess to be 10 to 12. The second match is where the good fights really started. There was a very in shape white guy against a heavy that guy. The white guy was much more disciplined and won the fight because he outlasted the Thai guy. The third match was the best. There were two really amazing Thai fighters that tested each other a lot. Once they had a feel for the other fighter things heated up. The blue corner was more aggressive but wild. The red corner was defensive and measured. The red corner guy was able to get a hard elbow to the fave on the blue corner and the blue corner guy went down hard. He was knocked out badly enough to need a stretcher out of the arena.
The only other memorable and mentionable fight was the super heavy weight fight. There was a tall black guy from america who had a huge afro against a big Thai guy with a third of his head shaved. The Thai guy was silly and fell on his way into the ring which dislodged his cup so there was a time out for cup adjustment. He was also super silly while fighting which threw off the black guy. When there was the opening the Thai guy cane in with a massive ouch nearly knocking the black guy out. The black guy made it back and finished the round. The next round the black guy took the Thai guy more seriously and got a great punch to the face to knock out the Thai guy. The Thai guy was out cold until they brought out the smelling salts.
It was a lot of fun to watch but I would never do a sport with that high a chance of severe head injury. I don’t mind the broken limbs but I can’t risk my brain.
We got up at 8 so that we could get a good breakfast before getting to the phi phi islands. Jeremy slept in a bit and missed breakfast and Amit decided to have a personal day. The six of us loaded into a van with some other people from the hotel. We got to the dock loaded up on the giant speedboat and set off for a one hour ride to the islands.
We first did a drive by of the monkey beach where some small monkey like to hang out. They were cute. We then went to a small bay inside the smaller island and got to swim around. There wasn’t any snorkeling there but it was nice to get in the water. We then got to a snorkeling location that was in the shade of a huge cliff. It had a lot of life and I tried several times to get the cleaner wrasse to clean me. They checked me out but didn’t do any cleaning. Under one set of cleaner wrasse there happened to be a moray eel. There were lots of anemones but the clown fish in then weren’t the memo colorings. We then went to the main beach area and got some lunch. Following lunch we went to bamboo island and I napped on the beach while Nick built a sand castle, Tina looked for rocks, and Adam and Steph went snorkeling. We took the boat ride back and protected ourselves from the sun with the towels since we were out of sun screen. We all got a little bit too much sun from the looks of it, but no one was burnt too badly. The van that took us there brought us back to the hotel.
Stephanie and I got picked up from the hotel at 6 am and were lucky to get picked up. The guy at the front desk was telling the driver that there weren’t any foreigners staying at the hotel. We walked down just in time to resolve the misunderstanding.
When we got to the dock we met the guy who runs Similan Dive Center who reminded me a lot of Jeremy Clarkson. We then got on a giant speedboat for an hour to get out to the dive boat. When we got there we got a light breakfast then started the first dive. It was very nice. After that dive we got lunch and went to the sun deck for a nap since we had gotten up so early. We then did dive number two after which we got another snack of fresh fruit. After dive three the people who weren’t living aboard got carried back to shore. Then we got dropped off on the shore of island 4. It was absolutely gorgeous and we made some funny panoramas. There was a sunset dive that was rather nice followed by a relaxing time just hanging out in the cabin before going to bed.
That night there were terrific thunder storms that raged for most of the night, but the boat wasn’t bothered too much by them since we were in a well protected bay. The next morning we got a wakeup call at 6:15 for a sunrise dive. The morning view of the islands was beautiful as was the water. We did roughly the same routine as before except for on the way to one dive site the boat getting caught on a mooring. We were the people getting on the speedboat before dinner and when we made it back we had to stop by the shop to pay. Afterwards we went to the taxi stand and headed back to the patong rose guest house. The others had moved to a hotel called novotel and we are planning to join them there tonight.
Steph and I did 6 dives in the Similan Islands and each one was amazing.
Turtle Rock with Kuan. Kuan had been instructing for 20 years and had 6000+ dives. With the way he was diving I wouldn’t doubt it. We didn’t see too much on the first dive because the area we were in was devmcently baren. We did get to see a white tip shark, which is rare from all the shark fishing that has been going on in southeast Asia. We also got to see a small wreck called Atlantis X. But it want possible to swim through.
Elephant head with Kuan. Elephant Head Rock is a rock formation south of island 8. It was a lot of boulders to swim between with a strong current going through in some spots. It was fun to navigate the maze of boulders and the coral formations were nice. We got to see a moray eel on this dive.
Stone henge with Chris. This dive was a sunset dive and the formations around the point if the island were fantastic. There was one monolith on a hill that was incredible to swim up to and an even more amazing part was being able to see under it. The boulder was the size of a house and was balanced on two points.
Stone henge with Chris. We did another part of stone henge and saw more of the formations. On this dive we got to see some great big coral fans and disks. We saw the cutest clown fish family in their anemone house.
West of Eden with Chris. This dive turned into a drift dive even though it wasn’t supposed to be. We did get the best views on this dive including a moray swimming. The best part was the octopus couple. They didn’t like us being around so they put on a color changing show hoping we would go away. They were in the middle of some mating or territorial behavior. As we swam off I saw on chasing the other down a hole.
Anita’s reef with Chris. This was a large open expanse that had lots of coral pommes coming out of the sand. We saw some rays and lots of fish schools. Chris was shooing them away so he could see the corals at one point. There were fields of eels that looked like sea grass. They were about the color of the sand and would move in and out of holes they made. We also got Steph cleaned by a cleaner wrasse. She has a mosquito bite that isn’t doing well but the fish decided to help her out by cleaning it.
When we got to Patong we went down the alley to the hotel. It was pretty much where I was hoping it would be, a quite corner close enough to the night life but far enough away that we could sleep at night. It was not as nice as I was hoping, but it is good enough for me. I expect several of the others will find a quite beach and either stay there or spend the evening there. Tina and Amit have been leaning towards a quite relaxed time instead of the constant go go go that I tend to enjoy anyway.
We got dinner at a mediocre place close by the hotel and then we went out for drinks at a wine bar. Tina and Amit called it early and went off to relax some. We took a walk down the crazy bar street, but not much was going on since it wasn’t even 8pm yet and most people were still eating. We ended up stopping by the beach and setting off some fireworks. I would really love to have a premature lantern festival of our own and I would be willing to pay a good bit for that. The others will keep eyes out for cheap lanterns and we can get it going.
fireworks video
The Sunday market was a repeat of the Saturday just about twice as large. We stopped by bit I was tired enough to go back to the hotel and pass out pretty quickly. We did get some cute outfits for Archer and Lana as well as a good number of nice stickers for my sticker table. Having the market in the middle of Chiang Mai was really nice.
We weren’t quite ready when the cooling class showed up at the hotel as people wanted to go in and change. We then set off with L12 people in a pickup taxi that took us first to a local food market. It was quote enjoyable to walk through the stalls and see what kind of stuff would be comparable to a US grocery market. The host Sim then walked us through all the ingredients and let us smell all the fresh veggies and spices.
The cooking class was really fun and we went through 4 courses: soup, stir fry, curry, and desert. I did the tom yum, spicy basil, northern style pumpkin, and sweet pumpkin for the respective courses. Nick went for some of the crazier and spicier things. All the flood was delicious. I am pretty sure I can do the tom yum and the desert on my own again but probably not the other dishes. We hopped back in the truck taxi and got dropped off at the hotel.
It's an Exciting World 