It’s hard to believe that we’re almost half-way through our trip already!
Basically, we’ve had:
-3 days in Bangkok
-over night train to southern Thailand (Surat Thani)
-3 full days on the northeast side of Ko Pha-ngan (ferry to and from the island), relaxing on the beach
-two day trip across Thailand to the west coast, with an unsuccessful detour to Kao Sak national park
-day in Kao Lak, which is totally shut down this time of year because of weather, but enjoying a small street festival
-day in Krabi, trying to figure out scuba diving, eating street food at the night market
-week+ in Ao Nang, taking scuba lessons, relaxing on the beach, with a few days break due to bad diving weather and bed rest for Emma who had a bit of a fever
Besides the fever, we’ve had a good time here in Ao Nang. We spent two days getting educated all about scuba diving and practicing in a local pool and then got to go to the Phi Phi Islands to put our new skills to practice. Although a little nerve wracking at first and a little counter-intuitive, it is pretty amazing to be able to breathe and move around so freely underwater. Unfortunately, the weather’s not the best for diving this time of year and visibility was poor, but we got to see lots of cute little Nemo clownfish, bright blue sea stars, a crown-of-thorns starfish, a moray eel, a lionfish, some giant-caterpillar-type sea cucumbers, and the back of a sea turtle as it swam away! We were lucky to have a great instructor, Terry, who taught us the number one rule of diving: look cool! I don’t know if we succeeded, but we’ll keep working on it!
You never know with this kind of traveling, but hopefully we’ll be in Laos a couple of days from now. We’ll take an overnight bus up to Bangkok today, then probably another overnight bus to the Laos border the next night. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly. In Laos, the plan is to spend a few days each in Vientiane, Vang Vieng, and Luang Prabang. If we have the chance, we may go for a ride on the Mekong River.
Finally, we got some photos uploaded! Enjoy!
Emma & Alex,
I love the pictures, thanks for getting a post up for us! But Alex, the most important thing our dive instructor said was to “Breathe”.
Love you bunches, Mom G.
Nice post and pictures! Apparently y’all haven’t loaded up on too much Pad Thai, because you both have some pretty rockin’ beach bods
Krispy Kreme doughnuts will help take care of that. Emma, how was the soup with various sea creatures? That almost looked grosser than salo. Be safe, have fun and see you soooon!