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.
We all slowly filtered down to the restaurant next to the hotel. We headed out from there to the next street over where most of the rental shops were. After getting the scooters we set out for an easy ride through the city with Jeremy leading and the rest of us following. Nick had not been on a motor bike before and he took a couple turns to get used to it. We also all had to get used to driving on the left. At the temple we relaxed and decided that we were all comfortable enough to continue to the mountain. We took the easiest route out of the city and made it to the mountain base with no incidents. We kept going with me in the lead until Nick decided to rush ahead. Jeremy who was keeping the rear got confused where nick wasn’t in the line and went to the front to ask about it. While he was passing us in the right lane a truck coming down the mountain crossed over into his lane and clipped Jeremy’s handle bars. He was able to keep control but it gave us the notion that lanes are relative in Thailand. We met up with Nick at the first set of waterfalls. They were nice but it was obvious that it had a good bit of toilet water in it. We then went all the way up the mountain to the palace area for lunch.
The palace was under construction so we could only see the grounds. There were tons of flowers everywhere. It was rather nice but there was a surprising lack of views from the mountain top.
We then started down the mountain and stopped at the temple. All of us took the naga stairs up and down and it wasn’t nearly as much as I thought it would be. We saw some monks on our way up and they were all just chilling on the stairs using their smart phones. Jeremy has the theory that second sons of wealthy families may be sent to be monks to figure things out for themselves like the monks of the middle ages in Europe. These monks aren’t monks for life so it isn’t as big a deal to be sent off for a period of months to years. The temple had a big shiny gold spire that can be seen from anywhere in Chiang mai. It also has the best view of Chiang mai that you can get anywhere.
Continuing down the mountain we stopped by a set of waterfalls that were pretty. We then kept going all the way back to the rental shop and dropped off the bikes. We were just in time to run over and hop on the bus to the cooking class. I had a great time on the scooters and would get one if it made sense.
We had a quick breakfast this morning and then Nick and I went off to one last temple.
We finished everything at the hotel and then got a taxi truck to the airport. It was really quick to check in and the others ended up playing an hour of poker. The flight was decently quick and we got a van to the hotel. The traffic was pretty bad so we didn’t get there until nearly 5pm.
It's an Exciting World 