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 13, 2004

In the morning we had our free breakfast of eggs juice and tea (eggs, extra salty just they way mom never made because we would have run out of a whole box of salt in a week). We hopped on the bike and headed out to find ‘fairy spring’ and never found it. We headed down the road to find red dunes (never found), saw fishing village, great beach, beautiful views. On our way to the dunes we stopped at an internet cafe to download some pictures onto the mp3 player and to look up departure methods and times from Mui Ne to Saigon. The women running the cafe/internet told us that she operates a morning minibus. Later, we asked all around town and no other designated tour company leaves Mui Ne in the morning, so we thought that her deal was shady or more likely a crappy local ram jammed minibus ride from hell.

We decided to turn back, as it was late afternoon and still many km’s from the white sand dunes. We had a great swim in the ocean waves, watched the kite surfers and drank our beer. MMMM…

We wanted western food (hadn’t had pasta since we left) and went to an Italian restaurant. What were we thinking?!!! It was very disappointing: garlic bread, cheese ravioli, spaghetti in tomoto and bacon sauce (hardly any sauce and not crispy bacon). To make up for the meals shortcommings we destroyed the parmesean cheese that was free FU ‘Good. Movies before bed, then sleepy time.