Sun! Sea! Beach! Diving! Fun!

Hello 

It has been a while since I wrote my blog, cus the days pass by so fast overhere in the south. After Pai I went to Krabi by airplane directly from Chiang Mai. Krabi in itself isn’t a great city, it has a nice night market and I stayed in a nice hostel and did a lot of tours to other places from Krabi. On the first day I went to Railey beach together with some people that I met on the boat to Railey. The rock formations are stunning and the water is very clear and clean, but it was almost impossbile to stay in the sun because of the heat. So we decided to swim to a nearby rock formation that resulted in a great view on the beach. In the afternoon we went to Railey east to end this beachday in the shade.

People who know me might understand that I’m not the type of person that can lay on the beach for more then one day (A), so it was time for some action. The next day, we went to a temple on a hill nearby Krabi Town. We had to walk 1237 steps to the top… pfff, but in the end the view from the top was totally worth it luckily!

Then we booked a tour to the Hong Islands. The tour in itself was a bit disappointing, cus the longtale boat was full of people and it took a lot of time to get to the islands… We snorkeled a bit which was okay, but the islands were quite stunning. The point is that you can barely get there without a touristic tour, or you have to hire a private boat and that’s just too expensive. We had a great adventure with the kayaks though that afternoon… We went to a nearby laguna with four people and two kayaks. As soon as we got to the laguna I thought it would be funny to flip the kayak over to play around a bit. I didn’t realize that the snorkel and mask that I got from the organisation were still in the kayak… and at that moment they already disappeared in the sea  … Then I thought that it would be nice to dive from the flipped over kayak into the laguna. It was nice indeed, but I still had my sunglasses on my head and because of the dive… I lost them too. But this isn’t the end of the story… by the time that we were done playing around with the kayaks, we realized that one of the holes in the kayaks wasn’t well covered, so it was sinking! We hopped on the second kayak with the four of us and brought it to a nearby beach to empty it. So much water came out, that I think it was close to sinking actually. Luckily we noticed it in time…

The next day it was time to do some rock climbing, so excited! There were some very difficult tracks, but in the end I managed to climb them all  , such a good feeling. This all together caused me some suvere muscle aching, so it was time to relax at Koh Phi Phi. The girls that I met during rock climbing went there too by coincidence and I stayed at a place where a girl that I met in Chiang Mai stayed as well. We had a great view on the beach and it was cheap, so perfect. Every evening there are fire shows on Koh Phi Phi. I can’t even descibe how fast they spin sticks that are on fire and sometimes they spin this thing that causes some kind of rainbow of fire and it’s incredible to watch. We also played with fire ourselves (A). We did some rope skipping with a rope that was on fire…! We even managed to skip with two people which was so exicting  and that night we partied till… very… early.

What would follow that Saturday and Sunday was probably one of the best thing I did so far. I went on a overnight tour to Koh Phi Phi Le, or Maya Bay. The Maya Bay is well known because of the movie The Beach. Since the movie was released, visiting this bay became such a ‘must see’that it’s crowded by over 120 boats a day nowadays. I wanted to avoid being part of this mass tourism, so that’s why I booked the overnight tour. We went on the boat at 15.00, snorkeled at a nice place with a lot of fish and coral for about an hour before we went to Maya Bay. By the time we arrived, it was 17.00 o’clock and most tourists had already left the beach. We watched the sunset from the right side of the bay, it was such a stunning red sunset. Never saw something like it before. Then we had a nice dinner and a chicken BBQ and after that I took some nice shots of the stars and rock formation. At 22.00, we went back to the boat to jump in the water to swim with the plankton, just like in the movie…! I just litteraly freaked when I saw the plankton. They were only visible under water, if you moved your body, they light up in the dark almost with a greenish colour. It was just so unreal that I kept diving and moving, I just couldn’t believe it…! Then it was time to sleep… on the deck of the boat… under the stars of Maya Bay. The best part was that I woke up at 4 a.m. and at that time, there were so many stars that I kept looking at them for almost half an hour, stunning! The next morning, we went back to the beach to take some nice group pictures and then it was already done… Such a great experience, I would recommend it to everyone that wants to go to Maya Bay without the crowd.

Now it was already time to leave Phi Phi and go on to Phuket. I went there togeter with Michelle, the Dutch girl that I met during rock climbing. One night is enough to see Phuket I think. There was a nice night market, we saw the Sino Portuguese buildingstyle and we went to some cafés with live music. The next day would be a travelday to Koh Tao. We went there by bus and ferry. First we stayed in a hostel where two German friends stayed that I met in Pai. As you can read, the world is very small. I meet so many people that I already met somewhere else before and a reunion is always great stuff. We wanted to rent scooters with a group, but the people here are so anxious to rent out their bikes.. You have to sign this and that and we just didn’t feel comfortable about it. I think people on the islands have to deal with so many tourists that they get a littlebit sick of it and you notice that in their behaviour. To get around here by cab is also way more expensive then in the North, the whole South is just a lot more expensive then the North. We ended up on a beach, the colours and rocks surrounding the bay were so nice.. but there was so much garbage in the water and on the beach. We snorkeled around some nice coral reefs which was nice. I actually went to Koh Tao to finish my PADI Open Water dive course. I started it on Cape Verde, but I only got my Scuba Diver there. So today I first went through the theorie with my instructor Molly. She’s such a nice teacher.
In the afternoon I had to do some excercises in the swimming pool and afterwards I bought a professional dive mask, one of the most important parts of a diving equipment.

The next day we went to two dive sights (at 6.30 a.m!) to do some exercises in the sea to complete my course and to just dive for fun. We went to divesight South-West, one of Molly’s favourites and to Hin Pee Wee. The visibility at South-West was quite bad while the visibility at Hin Pee Wee was very nice and this is not how they expected it to be. The two dives were awesome anyway. I succeeded very well to do the excercises that I had to do to complete the course and we saw a lot of interesting fish and coral, for example; a Giant Grouper, Banded Box Shrimp, a Blue Spotted Stingray, Masked Porcupine Fish and ‘Christmas trees’. These ‘Christmas Trees’ are actually coloured worms that look a lot like small blue, red and yellow christmas trees. If you wave you had above them, they disappear quickly to protect themselves! |I also loved the (marble) seaslugs, they move so slowly over the reef and it looks like they have tiny feet and that looks so cute! ^^ So after these two dives I finished the Open Water course 

That afternoon we went to a group of islands North-West of Koh Tao. It was just paradise. The water was so clear.. there was a snorkling spot with many coloured fish and we went to the viewpoint to have a magnificent view on the sandbank that’s in between two islands. We finished the day by drinking a coconut near the beach and by having a very nice BBQ dinner, a very fulfilling day!

Now we were both certified for the Padi Open Water course, Michelle and I decided to do two fundives together, just to admire the beauty that Koh Tao’s underwater world has to offer. Again.. we had to get up very early, for we had to be on the boat at 7 a.m! This time we went to Chumphon Pinnacles and The White Rock dive sights. I just loved to float around in this ‘new’world, it almost feels like being in space. There are so many (colourfull) creatures in the sea that I never saw before and that makes diver very exciting. On the first dive we saw for example Anglefish, a very very Giant Grouper, a Triggerfish (they are quite big and they attack you if you enter their territory), two white eyed moray eels, (Golden) Travellies, Fusilliers (the Travellies are preditors and they chase the smaller Fussiliers that move in giant schools), Queenfish, Bigfin Reef Squids and … A SEAHORSE! The instructor that joined us had never seen one before during diving, so we were very very lucky to spot it. It was just floating around and we could get so close, I got so excited… Only wanted to take a better look at it, it’s such a pretty creature. I was also ‘attacked’ by some small Cleaner Fish, they just loved to take a bite from the old skin around some small wounds that I have on my legs

During the second dive I was impressed by the diversity in the colourfull coral and again,we saw many many nice and colourfull fish around; the Brown Banded Pipefish, Tiny Glass Cleaner Shrimps (you can see right through them and if you reach out your hand, they try to clean it), a big Longfin Batfish, Scribbled Filefish, a tiny Whipcoral Crab, a Wattle Trap and I again loved a very slow creature, the black and orange/yellow Phylidiella. They just look so from out of space, amazing! So, as you can read I just loved the dives!

At the moment I’m writing this from a hostel on Koh Phagnan where the full moon party will take place tomorrow. This evening, we’re going to the jungle party. Very curious about this, cus I didn’t plan to go at first but.. they say it’s something you have to do one while you’re in Thailand so I’ll give it a go 

So, you’re all up to date by now! Hope you enjoyed my stories again.
My dropbox is quite full, I hope that I’ll be able to put up some new pictures soon. You can also check my Facebook page.

Heel veel liefs,
Danouck.