Last days in Thailand

The last couple days of our trip were relatively uneventful. We did some good eating, sightseeing, souvenir purchasing etc. Here's some random pictures left over that didn't get posted but are fun. Thailand was beautiful and we'd love to go back some day! I'd recommend it to anyone! 

Our view from the bathroom ceiling

Just some random lanterns strung along the path near our resort

The busy street in Ao Nang

The last sunset of our trip

Our last beachy drinks before bed our final night in Krabi! 

Diving Day

We met up with the dive instructors at their shop in the pouring down rain and I was really feeling reluctant about the whole experience. We dived once before on our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic and I was terrified the entire time. It’s not something that comes very naturally to me and the fact that you have to think about each and every breath you take is a little unnerving. However, it’s something George REALLY wanted to do and I wasn’t against it, just a little cautious!

We got to the shore where all of the long tail boats are stored around 8:30 and our “boat man” was waiting for us. The boat seriously looked like something Christopher Columbus sailed to America in. But on a smaller scale and it didn’t have sails, but instead an engine that looked like a weed whacker. “Boat man” had a milk jug with the top cut off so he could also bail out all of the water that was seeping in. If I wasn’t raised on boats with my Daddy and understood that a bit of water in a wooden boat wouldn’t sink us, it would have terrified me.

So the boat ride begins with all of our gear, lunch and Jackie our dive instructor who was British and moved to Krabi just to be a dive instructor for fun (awesome). It was pouring. And the waves were huge, and the boat was small. Any ‘normal’ person would have probably gotten sick on the 45 minute ride out to Koh Si Island where we were going to dive, but I held it together pretty well. I was a little mad we had to do this in the rain, but it was fine.

This is the face George got because of the rain. Complete amusement, because of course this is something that would happen to us on our vacay, and sheer anger, because this is something that would happen to us on our vacy. My life story. :)

Some of the long tail boats

The boat man decided it wasn’t safe for us to go all the way to Koh Si so we stopped at a small island next to the big Chicken Island and did our first dive there. It took me a long time to get comfortable breathing in and out of the aspirator thing (I’m probably going to make up these words now because I don’t remember the real ones) and learning how to inflate and deflate the puffer vest you have to wear, and put the weights on my hips. Plus Jackie had never dived at this Chicken Island so she didn’t even know the depth but was willing to take us down and figure it out. Luckily another dive company pulled up and she asked them lots of questions. Those guys made me feel a little better. But then we weren’t really sure how much weight to put on our gear because we only knew our weight in pounds, she only understood ‘stones’ and the weights were marked in kilograms. Thankfully George had his iPhone with him (Thanks Apple!) so we were able to figure it out. It was still raining up until the point we got in the water, but we were really thankful that it stopped (not that it matters anyways once you’re under the water cause you’re already getting wet!)

It took me almost 20 minutes to get down under the water and feel kind of comfortable and Jackie (bless her heart) held my hand the entire dive. My mask was also leaking so every 5 minutes or so I’d have to stop and clear it which is a really scary feeling. Imagine this: the mask is suctioned to your face, but there’s water in it. You’re 10 meters underwater. So you have to pull the top of your mask away from your head and let more water in, but not too much or you will die (maybe that’s a little overdramatic), and then you have to look down and shake your head so the water clears the glass on your mask and then suction it back to the top of your face and release it from the bottom of your face and blow out with your nose as hard as you can to get the water out before more comes in. Except mine had an eternal leak so in 40 minutes I did this probably 10 times. Awful. And you have to remember to keep breathing through your mouth/aspirator while you do this. Not so cool. And look out for sharks.

We did get to see Nemo and his family and their anemone which was really cool. We also saw some big gray speckled fish, a few Dory’s and some other pretty scenery.

After the dive at Chicken Island Boat man said it was safe to go to Koh Si, where we had planned to dive in the first place so we took another boat ride out there and anchored out. Jackie switched masks with me so the next dive was a lot better. I was more comfortable and a little high on oxygen so it was all good. (That’s also probably not true) but we enjoyed this dive even better. The coral was brighter and we saw a really neat stingray and lots of beautiful tropical fish. It made me never want to own an aquarium again. Those fish seemed happy in their anemones with their fishy friends. :)

Us in our scuba gear before we dove in Koh Si

Some of the tropical fish that swam up to greet us

Chicken Island

We made it back to the hotel and were changing to head to the beach when I went to unzip my suitcase and there were ants on my bag. And I mean tons of them. So I unzipped my bag and found hundreds of ants in there. After 3 hours of shaking out each item of clothing I owned, using “off” on them (we didn’t have anything else) and cleaning out my purse we were finally rid of the ants and had changed hotel rooms. Basically what happened was: on the plane ride over from Japan I was given a 3 Musketeers bar and I was “saving it for later” and it was in my purse. I think that people are less likely to steal from you if they have to search for something, so I always put my purse in my suitcase and zip it. It’s harder to steal things than if it were just sitting out in the room. (Or so my theory goes). And somewhere in there ants had crawled into my purse to eat my 3 Musketeers and multiplied times a million and then we I put that in my bag they crawled all over my clothes. It was sick. It was certainly the low point of the trip.

So we made it through that, and then walked along the beach and took some fun pictures and then had drinks and dinner at a restaurant in town. It was a good day but those ants really put a damper on that part of the trip.

Handing your camera to strangers on the beach hoping for a Christmas card picture doesn't always work out so well! 

Hotel Pictures

I wish I would have taken a few pictures of the Koh Samui airport to show you! It was beautiful! The terminals we waited in to take our flight were like tiki-huts and they had food and drinks and cute gift shops. It felt like you were on the beach!

Here's some pics of our room in Koh Samui (Bhundari Resort and Spa), and some pics of the island as we were flying away!

The entrance to our villa

Looking out our bathroom window

I LOVED the sinks in this bathroom!

  

Our pool

We were very sad to leave sunny Koh Samui but happy to arrive in cloudy Krabi. (Pronounced Crabby… well, maybe. It’s debatable.) We managed to get on a bus from the airport to the hotel and were stepping off the bus just in time for an afternoon downpour to begin with about a 3 minute walk to the hotel entrance with 6 bags and no umbrella. It was grand. J

We had lunch at the hotel and then did some exploring and shopping in town. We bought some cool elephant themed souvenirs and a few other odds and ends that will become our treasures from when “we visited Thailand when we lived in Japan before children and we were in our 20’s” and I like adding to that collection. We also booked a diving trip for the next day.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant that had a live band and my truly fave moment of the day was listening to the Thai band in a Mexican restaurant with 4 British teenagers on the stage all singing the most horrendous rendition of “Tik Tok” by Kesha. George said it more than a few times on this trip and I’ll repeat it now: American culture is our biggest export. Easily.  


Here's some pics of our villa in Krabi:

Sightseeing

BEFORE we had breakfast we decided to take a drive north to see what we hadn’t discovered yet. We stumbled into a Big Buddha statue that travel reviewers recommended. We found it (or what we thought was it) and we really enjoyed marveling at the colors used and the intricacy of the work done in the shrine, temple and statues surrounding it. Since we hadn’t planned on visiting a religious sight we weren’t really dressed properly to be there (please note my hot pink tank-top that says “Out. Of. Con. Trol.” And lime green sunglasses. And running shorts. ) So we just took pictures from afar and enjoyed the scenery.

We later discovered that was not actually the famous Big Buddha, it was further up the road; but we enjoyed it just the same.

We had breakfast and went back to our room to hang out at our pool again. There was more of 8 year old George that appeared begging me to give him lots of attention. I just wanted to lie in the sun (with an umbrella and sunscreen) and read my book, but he can’t sit still and be quiet. I even tried giving him one of my favorite Japanese travel books, and the Thailand travel book to entertain him. It only worked for 5 minutes at a time. I hope our children are less exhausting than he is. Haha! : )

We had lunch, took a nap, went to the beach, went back to the pool and then indulged in the Friday night BBQ the resort offered. We ate steak, crocodile, chicken, pork chops, potatoes, salad, and fruit and we had a few drinks. It was one of those perfectly lazy days that every vacation needs. 

Don't got chasing waterfalls... but do ride elephants!

On Day 4 of our trip we had breakfast (spoiler alert: every morning we eat breakfast. Sorry. I never intended my blog to be about eating breakfast, but here we are.) And then we headed out to the waterfall that Mel and DJ had seen before us and recommended. It took about an hour to get to but it was a beautiful drive!

Sometimes I drive my husband crazy. Sometimes he drives me crazy. And when we’re on vacation, there are no exceptions to these facts. So. The first crazy moment of our trip was on day 4 when we reached the start of the trail and I insisted that we stop to put on bug spray. Please note: we are about to hike through a jungle. To a waterfall. This island is covered in mosquitos and I was pretty sure the jungle was a breeding place for the bloodsuckers. So I asked George to get the bug spray out of the backpack (which he is carrying). He mumbles something. We walk a few more yards and I can feel one bite my leg. “George! Please give me the bug spray.” He kind of ignores me again until I am very insistent. He finally stops, gets the bug spray out and then rants on and on for a minute or two about how I always take for-ev-er to get ready and it’s going to take us for-ev-er to get to the waterfall. Uhhhh--Pardon me for not wanting to be eaten alive or contract West Nile Virus. Right?

So he huffs a little bit (typical married stuff) and walks a few yards ahead of me throughout this hike.  But then we’re hiking, and hiking and hiking. He’s still ahead of me, and the trail gets a little narrower, we stop seeing people, there are more fallen trees, vines (which I’m sure are actually giant snakes hanging from trees… hey—I saw the jungle book) it gets muddier and scarier and the terrain becomes more difficult to climb. Finally George disappears from sight for a little while until I see him coming back down the mountain. He said he ran up really high and he thinks we’re getting further and further away from the waterfall, and he also thinks the trail ended. We made up and began the descent down this slippery mountain. Eventually we see another couple through the trees and find a clearing in the waterfall with a beautiful view. We dabbled in the water and took some pictures and just soaked in the scenery. We loved it.

So once we began hiking down we found a point in the trail not long after our bug spray spat where we should have gone right, but instead we went left. Lesson: Don’t argue when you’re hiking in the jungle. It will cloud your judgment and vision. We could have gotten very lost or eaten by bears. (Ok, maybe not bears. But you never know.)

We had lunch at the bottom  of the waterfall, and near the entrance to the elephant trekking! (YAY!) It was one of the best meals we had in Thailand! Mmmm!

Then we paid to ride our elephant. Her name was Aikooky (I made up the spelling) and the elephant mahout (ma-hoot) was ‘Jack’, like Captain Jack Sparrow. (His words, not mine). Kooky was 25 years old, and had one baby who also lived with her. She eats 300kilos of food a day (which is about 650lbs) and I’m not sure what to make of this fact. I just Googled how much elephants eat and discovered at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park  “Our elephants each eat between 125 and 175 pounds of food a day. The bulk of their diet is hay. They also eat fruits, vegetables, and a fortified pellet food. In the wild, where they must expend a great deal more energy to find food, elephants eat two to three times this amount of plant material, from grass to trees.”  (http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asianelephants/elephantfaq.cfm) The elephants we saw were certainly not wild, so I don’t really know what to tell you, except she was big. And pooped a lot while we rode her, so we know she ate a bunch.

We had to climb up on a platform with stairs to get on the elephant’s back, and Jack sat on her neck, while we sat in a chair strapped around her. She didn’t seem to mind us being up there and even sniffed me with her trunk when I got on. She flapped her ears a few times and I was pretty sure we were going to fly away like Dumbo at any second. Except she was huge. But hey—so are C-130’s, and they fly.

We enjoyed our 30 minute walk through the jungle on Aikooky. Jack even slipped off the elephant and took some pictures of us (which OF COURSE is when the memory card became full…) and then he let George slide forward and sit on her neck. It was a cool experience. I was surprised by how rough her skin was, but also how gentle she and the others appeared.

Jack did carry an elephant hook but he never used it on her. I was really intrigued by how he balanced it between his legs and let the hook hang over the back of his shoulder. His shirt was torn from the frequency in which he did that. Here’s a picture of that:

After the elephant ride we went to a rum distillery Mel and DJ had bragged about. We tasted a couple of different rums that the family made there on their property. It looked like they had a teeny factory, a taste testing place and a house for them all on the same property. That’s the way to do it, I think. Anyways, the lady didn’t speak any English so we didn’t get as good of a lesson as our friends did, but we did learn to never mix rum with coke. Who knew?

We had dinner at the resort that night at the restaurant next to the pool that overlooked the beach. It was so lovely and romantic. Just like on the Bachelorette. : ) HA!