Monday, May 19, 2008

Sand. Turquoise Waters. Manta Rays.

Back in Thailand, we spent about 6 days on the beach of Koh Phi Phi Don, an island with no roads (its sister island is where Leonardo Dicaprio's movie The Beach was filmed, and was also one of the islands worst hit by the tsunami). We were quite excited to just lay still for a moment after having spent the past month and a half running around like maniacs. As Koh Phi Phi was nauseatingly touristy (see previous post re: Vang Vieng, Laos), we opted to escape to another nearby island that had no people staying there beyond us and the national park rangers. On that island (which shall remain unnamed) we camped in tents, and spent just around an hour walking around the entire island; on that walk around, we met some fisherman who let us taste the stingray they were barbecuing. We bought 2kg of crabs from them and took them back to camp. The park rangers barbecued 4 of them along with 5 other fish they just gave to us, and boiled the other 4. They also gave us a bottle of Mekong rice whiskey, a bottle of red wine (expensive in SE Asia), beer, and mango for dessert. A regular feast. We spent the evening using our broken Thai and their broken English plus a dictionary, sign language, and pictures to communicate and teach each other card games. They also gave us an enormous papaya two of the three mornings. Scrumdiddlyumptious.



After Koh Phi Phi and the secret island, we headed to Khao Lak, the place worst hit by the tsunami in Thailand. There, we saw a boat that had been washed 1 km inland (a boat as in a steel navy ship), trees that had been broken off by the wave at the top (around 10 m), and saw where the shore used to stretch out 1 km, but had been washed away by the wave. From Khao Lak we departed on a 4-day scuba diving liveaboard with Sea Dragon Dive Center to the Koh Similans and Koh Surins, some of the best diving in the world. We did a total of 13 dives there, and saw amazing underwater life, including two enormous manta rays, the last one circling around us for a good 10 minutes. It swam right over my head, and with my arm extended, my hand was about 2 ft. away from touching the beauty of a beast. On the liveaboard, we were served three amazing meals a day, and stopped at various secluded beaches for a swim and to climb up the rocks and watch the sunset. Quite a stellar way to end the trip - Emily and I tearfully headed back up to Bangkok to spend two more nights there before jumping on our respective planes back home.



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