August 24, 2007

Thailand: Part Eight - Samui to Koh Tao

Friday, August 24th

We slept in on Friday morning and woke up to a beautiful afternoon! After a totally ridiculous...

meredith — ...and over-the-top lunch at an Israeli restaurant (check out that spread!), we decided to hobble our bloated bellies over to the beach for some sun!

On the way to the beach, we came across the teeniest, tiniest baby mouse that had been squished into the sand and run over by a car! At first we thought he was dead...

...but when I picked him up to bury him, he turned out to be alive! It's a miracle! Baby mouse survived a car-smooshing! We moved him over to the side of the path out of future harm's way, and hit the beach!

We were both a little sunburned, so we stayed in the shade and got our reading on. I finished two books! This one.

And this one!

We spent the evening out on our front porch enjoying the warm night...

...and getting our Raspberry Bacardi Breezer on!

meredith — Hahahah.

Here's me doing my best David Brent desk pose while double-fisting delicious wine coolers. (Man, I don't care what anyone says. Those raspberry Bacardi Breezers are DELICIOUS! Do they even sell them here in the States or are they a UK thing? I totally need to check next time I'm out at a store here!)

After getting our Bacardi Breezer buzz on, we decided to head out to the Green Mango area and see if anything was going on. We found an awesome cover band, but by the time we got there it was after 1am and they were finishing up for the night!

meredith — So we went to Burger King and got veggie burgers! (The veggie burgers at BK in Thailand are amazing - they're like giant falafel patties!)

And sundaes! Who's happier than me?

Saturday, August 25th

On Saturday, we hid out reading in our bungalow until after 2pm. Once the sun had dialed down its intensity a bit...

me, meredith — ...we hit the beach. Check out my hot-pink sunburned chest. That's what happens when I try to go to the beach before 2pm!

meredith — After some quality beach time, we grabbed lunch and then decided to rent a scooter so that we could drive around the island and do some sightseeing!

meredith — We left Chaweng and drove about 40 minutes to Lamai Beach to see Hin Ta and Hin Yai (Grandpa & Grandma). They are two natural rock formations that are supposed to look like male and female genitalia, respectively!

meredith — In order to get there, you have to follow a rocky, boulder-y path that runs along the coastline of the island.

After about a fifteen minute hike along the coast, we finally came out onto a beautiful rock formation that went out into the water.

That rock that you see sticking straight up is Hin Ta (Grandpa).

And here's a picture of Meredith taking a picture of Hin Tai (Grandma). Since neither of my two pictures does these naughty rocks any justice...

...here's a picture of a postcard I stole off line that gives you a much better idea of why these two rocks have become an, um, attraction. (PS - Grandma looks like she's got a bit of a problem with some foam discharge or something. She should probably get that looked at by a professional).

Check out the gorgeous view of the water. While we were admiring the view, we noticed that there was a boat anchored in the water, and to the left of the boat was something coming up out of the water. We decided to climb down onto the rocks furthest out in the water to get a better look!

We got all the way down on the rocks and couldn't believe our eyes! It was a dog standing on what looked like a rock!

Here's a zoom in of the photo above. WTF, right?

me, meredith — We came. We saw. We stared at rocks that looked like elderly people's junk!

On the walk back to our scooter, we took a slightly different path and walked along the beach. It was really pretty.

After visiting Grandpa and Grandma, we hopped back on our scooter and drove another 40 minutes or so to check out what we heard was a great waterfall...but when we got there, there wasn't much of a waterfall at all. Not sure if it was because they hadn't gotten much rain lately or what, but it was a total "thumbs down" situation.

meredith — We had to hike about 10 minutes down a super-steep mountain in order to get to where the waterfall basin was supposed to be. Before heading back up to our scooter, Meredith decided she needed to rest a bit...and then she FELL ASLEEP ON THE ROCKS. Hahaha.

Later that night, we made friends with a toad...

...and then we went to dinner at an AWESOME Italian restaurant called Via Vai. Check out the awesome, woodfired pizza we got there! It was sooo tasty.

Sunday, August 26th

Sunday was cloudy and crummy and it drizzled on and off pretty much all day. Here's a picture of what I look like when I'm grumpy and miserable and hate life.

The highlight of our day was the awesome Indian restaurant we went to for lunch. I spent the rest of the day hiding out in our bungalow reading and watching bad HBO movies on TV. (Hey, they were playing Police Academy 5, which I had never seen! What'd you expect me to do, walk around in the rain?)

meredith — Meredith was sick and tired of being cooped up with crabby me and so around 7pm she decided to go for a walk on the beach. When she hadn't returned after four hours, I started to get a little worried. When she finally got back, she explained that after walking on the beach for hours, she was completely unable to find our resort (they all look the same from the beach) and when she finally found a road, she had no shoes and no money and had to find someone who she could convince to take her back to our hotel and then get money to pay the guy. Needless to say, by the time she got home, she was grumpier than me. We pounded a few Bacardi Breezers (which made everything better!) and then called it a night!

Monday, August 27th

On Monday morning we got up early and decided to leave Koh Samui and head to Koh Tao. We only had a couple more days left before we had to head back to Bangkok to catch our flight back to NYC and I wanted to do some diving at Koh Tao before our vacation was over!

We partied with the breakfast buffet...

...and then packed up our stuff and headed to the north side of Koh Samui so that we could catch the high-speed noon ferry to Koh Tao!

A little less than two hours later and we found ourselves on the tiny island of Ko Tao! As soon as we landed, we booked a place to stay and I booked a bunch of dive trips with Asia Divers.

meredith — After getting our accommodations all set, we hit a nearby restaurant for a late lunch and a few tropical drinks! Meredith went with the nacho platter...

...and I got a FRENCH FRY SANDWICH! (Man, how has this not caught on here in the States yet either? I'm going to open a shop in NYC that only sells French Fry Sandwiches and Raspberry Bacardi Breezers and make a million dollars!)

Travel days can take a lot out of you. We spent the rest of our day getting settled into our new room and reading and napping...and then before we knew it, it was time to eat again! We rented a scooter and headed back towards the main street in Koh Tao for some Italian.

meredith — Then we spent the rest of the night reading and taking it easy. Thumbs up for relaxation.

Oh, and we also pet the meow-y cat that liked to sit on one of the air conditioning units out on our hotel's second-story walkway!

Tuesday, August 28th

The next morning we got up a little after 10am and took our time getting ready for an afternoon diving trip I'd booked. I was going to do two dives, and Meredith was going to come along to snorkel.

Here we are posing with the awesome Asia Divers sign that's out front of the resort. Hahah.

meredith — What's better than this thing? I can't believe that someone actually sculpted this on the island. Soooo good!

Here's a pic Meredith snapped of me hooking up my tanks before my dive.

For the first dive, we anchored right off the coast of a tiny island called Ko Nang Yuan that's a couple hundred meters off the coast of Ko Tao.

Dive #5

When I got to the bottom at the beginning of the dive, I was bummed because the water clarity seemed a little murky...

...but as we swam away from the island a bit out into the open water, the visibility improved greatly. Check out the size and brightness of this beautiful butterflyfish!

The deeper underwater you go, the more the colors change because the colors that have shorter wavelengths get filtered out by the water. So when you take photos down deep, they tend to look very blue and washed out.

But if you have the proper filters on your lens, or if you use Photoshop (like I do) to filter out some of the blue light, the rest of the colors magically emerge and then your photos look identical to what the human eye sees while underwater. Check out these awesome Pink Skunk Clownfish hiding out in their little anemone nest!

I swan away from the reef for a bit and found myself in the midst of a shoal of baby barracuda! It was so surreal!

Spooky!

Two more butterflyfish.

As I approached another reef, the water was teeming with fishes!

Here's a close up of a reef where you can see just how colorful and alive it is See those things that look like yellow and blue brushes? That's how the coral eats! It uses all those brushes to capture microscopic organisms in the water. If you swim close to the coral and make sudden movements with your hand, all of those brushes will get instantly retracted back into the rock and disappear! It's crazy!

Sea slug!

While poking around into all the crevices in one of the reefs...

...i found this guy hiding out trying to catch some sleep!

He's a blue-spotted stingray! Isn't he amazing? Look at those colors!

Some sort of crazy-ass bi-valve! Hi, Clambo!

I did my five minute safety stop right atop of a shallow reef.

When I got to the surface...

meredith — ...look who I found waiting for me! Meredith had just finished some snorkeling and was waiting in the water for us to return!

After we got back on the boat, our captain moved the boat around the island to another dive spot while we were waiting for our surface time to be over. We anchored next to another group of divers that I'm guessing were practicing their underwater navigation skills. They submerged...

...only to resurface five minutes later a couple hundred yards away!

meredith — While I got ready to dive again, Meredith announced that she'd had enough snorkeling and was going to just relax on the boat.

Dive #6

Dive number six was just me and the divemaster. Here's me following him around the bottom of a reef as we searched for various hiding creatures!

Success! We spotted another snoozing blue-spotted stingray!

And we found ourselves in the midst of yet another shoal of baby barracuda. These ones were even tinier than the the last school we came across.

This second shoal was much, much larger than the first I'd swam through. Even after snapping a bunch of photos, I still had time to switch to movie mode and film this!

barracuda ˆ scuba ˆ video

I also managed to get a few pics of them with a flash! Look how pretty and tiny they are! Baby barracudas, awwwww! Who knew!?

Coral? More like BORE-AL!

Another Pink Skunk Clownfish hiding in her anemone nest!

Profile shot sans flash (which is why the colors are less vibrant). Right after I snapped this photo, I heard a my divemaster frantically banging his tank with his dive knife. Since you can't speak underwater, if you want to get someone's attention, you usually will bang something metal (a carabiner, a dive knife, etc). It took me a while to locate where the sound was coming from (sound travels differently through water and it makes it impossible for humans to use their two ears to pinpoint the source of a sound), so I was slowly turning around scanning to see what he wanted to show me, and as I turned around I found myself face to face with a very large, very angry, male, Titan triggerfish!

Triggerfish as usually harmless, but their very territorial and if you swim through the "cone" that they consider theirs, they raise a fin on their back that points at you, signaling that they are about to attack. When they do this, you simply swim on your back and kick your fins at them as you swim out of their territory. Usually, a triggerfish will take a half-hearted nip at your fish and then swim away.

But not this guy! After surprising me, I barely had time to get my fins up in front of me before his first chomp. As he circled around for another go at me, I kept swimming away as fast as I could. He made three or four more passes at me, biting my fins each time! I swam over next to my dive master and despite the fact that we were now at least a hundred meters away from his territory, he was still attacking us! My divemaster was equally perflexed and after the 10th or 11th attack, we both decided to cut our dive short by 10 minutes or so and surface.

It was actually really scary. Usually when a fish comes after you, it's just a warning to get out of their area. But this guy had a real problem with us and just wouldn't leave us alone! It was crazy!

On another note, is it just me or do the rocks on this island look like the remains of a long lost civilization that worshiped Lego People?

Here's a pic Meredith snapped of me right after I handed her my fins. I was half expecting the triggerfish to appear and take one of my toes off!

Later that night, I got frisky with the bas relief murals at our resort...

...would you just look at how much she enjoying that! So art-rotic!

And then Mer and I headed down to El Gringo on the beach to...

...share a couple of fruity drinks and enjoy one of our last warm nights in Thailand!

me, meredith — Check out those tans!