Originally written on December 12, 2004

Spent the day on the beach. Walked north of our resort and found a shady spot on the beach. Crazy waves where they came back from the shore, and met with waves coming to shore. This occurred because the water was really shallow, then deep only 3 ft from the shore. The result, big waves that crash really fast, and happen in triples. You have to ride out the series of waves, as it the current was too strong to make it back to shore. Bathing suits were difficult to keep on. Evening. Celebrate our last night at the beach by bar/restaurant hopping. Kao Lak Seafood restaurant for Masamum curry and beer. Then bar, name escapes me for girly drinks. Then cheap mom and pop place, for french fries, beer, and chicken fingers. Yes, western food at your service, and cheap. Crawl to bed, and sleep well. Nite nite.

Originally written on December 10, 2004

I awoke early, as I had on the boat, at 7am. I let Kirk sleep and took a book to read and some yoghurt and museli for breakfast out to the front porch. At 8:30 am I was off to the supermarket to purchase an international phone card, and called my parents and my grandparents. Impressed with how much I had accomplished by 9:30 am I went back to the bungalow and slept till 12pm. And so the sleeping begins.

We went to the closest restaurant for lunch, and were pleasantly surprised to find it reasonably priced, you can always tell by the price of drinks (pop/alchohol etc). Grilled ham and cheese sandwich was on the menu and was promptly chosen, along with a new thai food (muslim origin) favourite, masamum. This is a creamy spicy stew with potatoes and either chicken or beef. With a pineapple shake and a diet coke the meal cost 5 CAD.

After lunch we checked out the facilities at our hotel, our bungalow is in a separate section from the main complex. We went past the pool, the restaurant, and down to the beach. During high tide the beach completely disappears, as told by the large breaker wall separating the beach from the resort property. The sand beach is intermixed with rocky outcrops, which we explored for sea stars and other intertidal animals. We found a sea slug, and lots of small fish in the tidal pools. The air was hot and still, really muggy. After a short walk down the beach it was time for a swim in the pool.

The pool has water jets to massage your aching muscles and ceramic elephants that shoot water into the pool from their nostrils. The water went only to my neck which was the perfect height for me! After swimming we went back to the bungalow, where we read (Kirk listened to an audio book), and then I layed down for another nap (3 hours!). Crazy~

Kirk woke me up at 7pm for dinner, and we headed back to the restaurant where we ate lunch. For dinner I had spaghetti, as I was craving it. Never crave western food in an asian country, because you will be surely disappointed. A 3 out of 10. Kirk had his favourite, Tom Yam Goon (coconut curry chicken soup) by default. He wanted red curry, but the curry dishes were in Thai and we were unable to communicate with the waitress, so Kirk decided on an all time favourite. After dinner to the internet to catch up on stories and then to bed.

Originally written on December 4, 2004

The day was spent lounging in a beach chair (with umbrella a must) and going in and out of the water body surfing the great waves. People watching, was of course, a part of our day. Kirk rented a surf board in the late afternoon and tried it out. By the end of the hour he was able to surf on his knees. Not an easy feat. I tried it out a couple of times, lying on my stomach, and only nearly beached myself once. I soon learned when and where to bail off of the surf board. Dinner was good, Kirk had a meat pie with pastry and peas and chips and I shepherd’s pie. We left packing (as we were going to Kao Lak the next day) for the morning and had a good night’s sleep.

Hello, tomorrow we are off to Khao Lak. There we will be staying in some kind of bungalow type thing. We have no idea what the facilities are like (we are thinking, thatch room and jungle with beach, maybe a phone or two around who knows…) and will be there for 2 days before we board a ship to go snorkelling for 3 days. SO…. maybe no internet messages for awhile. Therefore, some messages if we can’t get them out from where we are:

* Happy Birthday Mom! (from Heather, Dec 08)
* Happy belated thai fathers day!
* Happy King’s Birthday (Dec 5)

Originally written on December 2, 2004

I surprised the women who runs the breakfast nook at our guesthouse, I arrived for breakfast as she was opening up shop! We usually stroll down to breakfast between 9am and 10am, but today we were going snorkeling and had to be ready for our minivan pickup at 8:20. I couldn’t resist, I had the french toast for the third time in a row. I had a look at the ingredients in “Honey flavoured syrup”, which I drizzle over my french toast, and realized it may be time to move on. As I recall sugar and glucose made up 70-80% of the ingredients.

After breakfast we stood at the bottom of the driveway, at the end of a short but steep hill, awaiting our minivan. Our transportation arrived, and shuttled us off to the pier, where we were “branded” with stickers (so they knew which group we belonged to) and herded to a table where we were told to sit. The guide then disappeared amongst the other guides and my fellow herd sat waiting. Five to ten minutes passed and the guide returned telling us that flippers were extra and if we wanted to rent some we had to do so now. With flippers in tow we boarded our speed boat for Raya Island.

A speedy, bumpy 30 minute journey (any longer or bumpier and gravol may have been required) we arrived at the island’s shore and took notice of the resort and many beach chairs and umbrella’s in the sand. Definately a well travelled place. From 10am to 11am we had free time, before boarding the boat and going for a snorkel. As Kirk and I were heading for a swim we noticed the floating dock/pier, the entrance way for those arriving for a stay at the swank resort. The floating dock moved up and down and side to side with the waves, and we soon found a new hobby. Nearly better than swimming in the crystal blue water with white sand (softest I’ve ever fest) beach, watching resort patrons disembark from their speedboat and make their way to the shore on the floating pier all snazzed up in slacks and long sleeved shirts, and touting their huge roll away bags. Add huge waves breaking in between the boat and the shore (i.e. along the highly pliable pier) and this makes for a day of great people watching.

Shortly after discovering our new “sport”, a group of resort patrons were making their way down the pier, as described above, and the hugest wave came, and the plastic pier rose moving with the action of the wave,and then fell as the wave crashed. Two people were on the “crest of the wave” and one took a header backwards when the wave crashed. Pure craziness, glad it wasn’t us, but great to see!!!

We went for a short swim, after no more big waves were coming to send resort patrons into the water, then we boarded the boat for a short trip to our snorkeling spot. Our speedboat stopped in a rocky bay and we all hopped out into the water. In the water we put on our gear and took our first look in the water. There were fish everywhere! All around us/beside us, lots of bright and beautiful colours! A big wow for the both of us. We enjoyed swimming with the fishes, trying to take in all of the different species and diving further down look for new ones. After awhile Kirk realized that we had swam a ways from our boat so we decided to make our way back towards it. We then realized that none of our group was in the water, and we headed back to the boat. Once there we realized we were the last to arrive, how long had they waited for us? An awesome first snorkeling experience!

Back to Raya island for lunch and a long break (2.5 hours) before we went to Coral island for the second snorkel. During our break we went for a snorkel along the rocky side of Raya Island (just off the main beach front). There were lots of fish, but we had to be careful in the rocky shallow water as the waves were powerful. After 20 minutes we started noticing, every once in awhile small translucent jellyfish. We put this fact together with our occasional sharp pinpricks (which we thought were just small cuts with sand going in them) and decided to head for the middle of the bay (where the jellyfish don’t get swept into). This area (the main swimming location is great and jellyfish free for the first couple of metres from shore, but afterwards the jellies still sneak up on you. We headed for shore and spent the rest of break time exploring another beach at the other side of the island (a 5 minute walk away) and short dips in the water.

At 2:30 pm we took the speedboat to coral island, for an hour’s snorkel near its sandy shore. The corals, at one time were likely fantastic, but sand/silt from speedboats, fishing boats, have silted the coral and mostly it is a coral cemetary with tonnes of tropical fish, sea urchins, and molluscs. There were parts of the hard corals that were alive, and I did find one soft coral colony flourishing (and filter feeding, a highlight!!!). We were surprised that the guide did not warn our group (especially as there were many young children, about the dangers of snorkeling. No sharks here, but sea urchins a plenty. Pruny hands and cold from being in the water so long we returned to shore to find out we were just in time. It was time to go. I think they were waiting for us to come back to shore, who knows how long we were swimming out there. We boarded the boat and it was a short trip to main pier and then a short minibus drive home.

We have forgiven pineapple for the unhappiness it had brought us in the past and try it out in full force tonight. For dinner the best pineapple shakes since Luang Prabang, awesome hawaiaan pizza (for kirk) and steak and mushroom pie for me. I love peas!!! Internet then off to bed early, tomorrow we learn to cook Thai!

Originally written on December 1, 2004

Well every day can’t be an exciting day for the readers of wanderers adventures. Today was one of those days. We awoke late and Heather had her signature french toast and honey flavoured syrup. Then we decided to walk right to Karon beach instead of Kata. Its much the same only not as shallow, and not as nice a view. Except there is more nudity here which Kirk mostly approves. In Thailand, nudity is prohibited and in Thai culture it would be *shocking* to be seen in the buff. But that doesn’t stop foreigners from going topless. Sadly, nor does it stop germans from wearing speedo’s. Whats up with that? » Read the rest of the entry..

Originally written on November 30th, 2004

Most of the day was spent phoning all over the place arranging cooking courses, and snorkelling trips. Today the heat was intense, 35C. And when you have spicy chicken curry for lunch in mid-day 35C heat, it is FRIGGIN hot. Thank goodness for cold showers. We spent the evening on the beach and took the photo below, among many others. For dinner we found a place that gave us free salad and bread, the fools! Perhaps they were thinking we would order lots of food. Nope, we did get some booze though. Heather wants everyone to know that she had good french toast with ‘honey flavoured’ syrup mixed with jam.

Today was a relaxing on the beach day. We enjoyed Kata beach, playing in the brief, but often big, waves. The water is crstal clear and a greeny blue. The rest of the day we lounged on loungers and tried not to burn. In the evening we checked out snorkelling options around and had some dinner (gnochi and pizza). The whole area here is very nice, but full of tourists — too much so. There is no ‘thailand’ here. Hopefully will find a way to make some phone calls soon.

We aren’t dead, painfully slow (I mean really slow) internet combined with frequent outages makes updating web almost impossible. Have been keeping up via the pda, expect a whole bunch of days to pop up once we find fast internet. We are in Hoi An and enjoying the nice beach and cheap shopping (the latter mostly heather). Also, much better food here. Cheers for now!