a thing in 267 photos ocean No one around in either direction! We got a few hours in during the early morning, but around 10:30, a few really big big waves (double-overheads!) started coming in. Private swim. Always nice to see something you don't see every day. Her snout was covered in fish gore and she was grunting with delight. In addition to birds, the fish scraps had also attracted a local pig! No room for error. People surf right next to here at high tide. Grass park next to the ocean. Empty line up. Plenty of room for frisbee. Man chats. We dove to another gorgeous nearby beach. Unbelievable sunset. ...down the beach that looks like this. View from the top of the dunes. Right next to the turquoise ocean is a coastal dune lake. The contrast in colors is crazy. Hardly any waves. It feels like you got shipwrecked somewhere. I snapped a quick group photo... Meredith's eyes really bring out the ocean. Late afternoon sun. Lots of people swimming! Empty waves. The ocean view from the train platform. He even gave us wooden switches to intimidate the monkeys with! Backlit temple. Right when we got up to the temple, the sun was just getting ready to set over Java in the west. Giant chess board on the beach! If you looked down the coast to the right, you could see Pura Pulaki. A big, coastal Hindu temple that's overrun with monkeys! Black sand. The beach had trees growing feet from the water! It's wonderful to sit on the beach in the shade of trees! On Monday our stay at Amertha was over and we packed up to head just a hundred yards down the road to the Mati Hari. The view from the bed was probably one of the most picturesque views I've ever seen in my life. Headed back to Pemuteran. The island we were moored off had pura that were visible from the boat. Riding to the second dive location. Check the two volcanos in the background! We anchored near a reef off of another island. See you in 40 minutes! Awesome. We left a little before 10am. It was about a thirty-minute boat ride out to the first dive spot. The scenery was amazing. I love how the water turns from deep blue to turquoise. Pirately ship! Mer doesn't like scuba diving (she has trouble equalizing the pressure in her ears) but she was excited to snorkel around the reef while we were diving. Rad. All the boats were beautiful wooden boats. ...taken from the black sand beach a couple hundred feet away. Later that night we went into Puta for dinner. Afterwards, we went for a nice night walk on the beach. Balcony view. Later in the afternoon, I decided to really mix things up with a change of scenery and moved my feed up to the lounge chairs by the pool. Neato. People coming down the beach on horseback. ...and took turns reading up on Bali guidebook and figuring out where we wanted to travel to next! After breakfast, we relaxed in lounge chairs on the beach... Went for a nice long walk down the beach... Me, peeking over the edge of the edgeless pool. (Kilroy was here .) The next morning we woke up before 5am and went downstairs to swim in the hotel's gorgeous edgeless pool that's right down near the beach. (Meredith's in the pool, but you can see the ocean right behind her). The view from our balcony after sunset. The view from our balcony. Wow. View of the ocean from the subway platform. Late night paddle boat excursion. Full moon over the bay. Thanks for having us all over, Justin's Parents! Haha. Captain Geordon's hair is unstoppable. Capt. Geordon readies his ship for sea. Paddle boat! As we stood there debating, the waves kept getting bigger and bigger. Check out the size of the curl! Insanity. In waves were crashing so violently and the undertow was so strong that everyone swimming ended up clearing out. I think this is about as far in to the water as any of us went. We walked down to the water to check out the absolutely massive (for NYC) waves that were starting to break. Check out the curl and spray! Debating whether or not to do in. Usually we go to the western, more deserted part of Rockaway Beach, but this time we went to the main beach so that Pauly could surf. The lovely boardwalk. I tried on his fedora but on my tiny pin-head it ended up looking like a bowler hat that Blossom's friend Sixx would wear. Mohamed kept laughing at my fascination with the camels! But I had never really spent time around them and was really interested in how alien they were to me! Camel bath. ...only to resurface five minutes later a couple hundred yards away! 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... 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! When I got to the surface... ...look who I found waiting for me! Meredith had just finished some snorkeling and was waiting in the water for us to return! 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. ...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! On the walk back to our scooter, we took a slightly different path and walked along the beach. It was really pretty. Here's a zoom in of the photo above. WTF, right? 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! After about a fifteen minute hike along the coast, we finally came out onto a beautiful rock formation that went out into the water. 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 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! On Saturday, we hid out reading in our bungalow until after 2pm. Once the sun had dialed down its intensity a bit... ...and proceeded to relax the fuck out of it. Tragedy averted, we hit the beach.... ...and then caught the 4pm ferry from Surat Thani to Koh Samui. Here's the ferry leaving the mainland behind. Leaving Phi Phi. Then, about 20 minutes later, the clouds rolled in AGAIN, and we decided to just give up and head back to our hut and relax and rain before getting caught in a monsoon. Almost home! 
