Thailand looking very similar to Lan Ha Bay
We woke up super early and took an Uber to the bus station across Bangkok so we could arrive at 6am. The early wake up call as worth it because we were finally headed to the famous Thai beaches! We hadn't been at a proper warm beach since Indonesia, so after all of our hiking and time in the mountains, we were ready to get back to a tropical paradise for a couple of weeks. We were starting on Koh Tao, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand known for great beaches and being one of the cheapest places in the world to get Scuba certified. Melissa had caught the Scuba bug after her discover dive on Gili Air, so she had signed up for an open water certification course at one of the dozens of Scuba schools on the small island (Carson is more comfortable on land, so he wasn't joining her for this).
After a lot of waiting around to check in and some typical travel-day confusion we finally got on the correct bus. It wasn't a sleeper bus, but it was still pretty comfortable, so we relaxed for the 6 hour journey that brought us to the port of Chumphon on the Gulf of Thailand. We grabbed a quick lunch at the port and waited about an hour before we boarded our ferry. We were a little worried about our ferry ride, because the ferries the day before had been cancelled due to weather (high wind and waves). Ours ended up being safe to go, but we knew it would still be a rough ride (fortunately we had gone with the ferry company that had the bigger boats). It was a good thing Carson had taken some Dramamine because the 1.5 hour boat ride was definitely rough with massive waves, sometimes up to like 10ft or more. There were times in the beginning where it felt like we were on a roller coaster and clearly other passengers felt the same because the staffers kept handing out puke bags. The worst part was that when we would hit a really big wave, some of the passengers would scream, which made everything worse. Mel put her noise cancellation headphones in and said a quiet thanks for her strong stomach, and Carson put his head down and tried to sleep and just get through it. The staff was clearly unfazed, so we at least never felt unsafe.
We survived the ferry ride and arrived on the beautiful island of Koh Tao. We grabbed our bags and since there was no Uber on the island and the taxis were more expensive than we liked we decided to walk the 30 minutes north to our guesthouse near Sairee Beah on the island's west side. We weren't sure how our guesthouse would be because there were pretty limited options when we booked and we were planning to stay for almost a week. We arrived and discovered it was run by a nice local family and ended up being better than we expected- spacious, a comfy bed, good A/C, super walkable to everything, and cheaper than the hostels!
We unpacked and cooled off after our long and tiring walk with our backpacks, and then Melissa headed off to her dive school, Phoenix, to fill out paperwork in preparation for her classes this week. Carson met up with Melissa to watch the beautiful sunset on the beach and then we grabbed some pizza and pasta from and Italian place for dinner before calling it a night.
The next day Melissa headed off to her first day of scuba school while Carson relaxed and caught up on some football. Melissa ended up being the only new student doing Open Water certification that day, so she got a private lesson with her instructor, Mona. At first she was a little bummed that she wouldn't meet new friends in class, but it ended up being awesome to have a private lesson and get to learn at her own pace (plus she still met plenty of other people at the school on breaks and on the boat!). The first morning consisted of classroom learning about diving and getting into a lot of the theory and science behind it. Mel had fun being back in a classroom, and found a lot of it pretty intuitive since the pressure topics were things she'd covered for her degree. We met up for lunch nearby, and then Melissa headed back to school while Carson ran errands. In the afternoon, Melissa got to do the pool session of the course. After first passing a swim test, she donned the equipment and practiced buoyancy control and different underwater equipment recovery maneuvers with Mona before calling it a day. After class, we met back up and grabbed some beers and headed to watch sunset from our local beach again. The sunset tonight was even more beautiful than the night before, and we made friends with a friendly short and chunky stray dog on the beach. For dinner, we tried a small local restaurant we had passed that day, which was basically a large tiki hut with seating around the edge and the kitchen in the middle. We ordered a red and green curry and they were so good we knew we'd be back. That night, Mel did some of her Scuba homework and we watched some TV on our laptops before calling it a night.
The next morning, Melissa headed back to school. The day started with more learning in the classroom (Mona's dog was another student today), followed by her first two ocean dives that afternoon. Getting out on Phoenix's bright pink boat with other divers was awesome. Since the water was still a little choppy, we went to some of the dive spots closer to the island that had some protection from the waves. Mel and Mona spent the first dive practicing the skills they had done in the pool yesterday, and they they got to just explore. The second dive didn't require any specific skill learning, so Mel got to practice equalizing, maintaining her buoyancy, relaxing her breathing, and just appreciating all of the beautiful reefs and fish! Meanwhile, Carson spent the day hiking on the north part of the island. He hiked up hills that had a 20% incline to reach a viewpoint overlooking the small islands on the northwestern side of Koh Tao. After making it up the hill, he rewarded himself with a drink and relaxed at the top and took in the scenery. In the afternoon, he chilled at the beach reading until Melissa was met up with him after school. We relaxed at our guesthouse for a bit and then headed out to dinner. We noticed that the island seemed way busier than the previous days, and we wondered if all the people were here because of the full moon party on neighboring Koh Samui (not our scene). We had spring rolls and pad see ew for dinner. Back at the guesthouse, Melissa had to deal with some annoying AT&T billing issues and then the whole island lost power for about 30 minutes which is apparently pretty common.
On the final day of Melissa's open water scuba class, she got to the school before 7am to join for two more ocean dives in the morning. This time, there was another student joining her and Mona who had gotten sick in the middle of his class and needed to complete his last two dives. The weather was gray and dreary, but the dives were still scheduled. Unfortunately the rain had stirred up the turbidity in the water, so the visibility wasn't as clear on these dives. But, the visibility and current actually made for some really good learning opportunities, and required more focus and putting her skills to the test. She still loved it, and already couldn't wait to get back in the water on a fun dive somewhere else in their travels. While Mel was diving, Carson watched Iowa State basketball and finally edited some of his photos since the weather was windy and rainy. Melissa came back right before lunch as a successful graduate from her scuba class! We grabbed duck and rice from a restaurant next door and then relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Right before sunset, we headed out to a bar with a beachfront patio and had a beer to celebrate Melissa's graduation. We grabbed burgers for dinner and called it a night.
We took it easy the next morning and slept it and then went on about an hour hike down to the southern point of Koh Tao. About halfway along the walk we stopped for a nice brunch where we ordered big breakfast bowls with potatoes, eggs, veggies, bacon, and toast. We kept hiking and eventually made it to our destination. We had to pay an entrance fee to access the viewpoint which we didn't know about, but we had already walked so far so we weren't going to just turn back. We followed the trail up a short but steep section which required some rock scrambling and finally made it to John-Suwan viewpoint which looks back north towards Koh Tao. It was a beautiful viewpoint that looked out over the narrow peninsula we were on with bright blue turquoise bays framing either side. It was also fun to see just how hilly the island is from this vantage point! We sat on the rocks appreciating the view and cooled off in the strong breeze. After a while we were ready to hit the beach so we hiked down the rocks using ropes and made it to the Freedom Beach. The beach had mangrove trees lining the beach which was really cool, but you couldn't really look out into the sea. There were a fair amount of people at the beach but we were able to find a small patch of sand to lay down our towels and relax. After a couple hours of reading and relaxing, we walked back to our guesthouse (stopping for a refreshing juice along the way) where we changed and got ready to go to a nearby pub trivia. When we got to the bar for trivia, we found out via Instagram that two of our friends, Katie and Luke, from England that we had met in Ho Chi Minh City were also on the island. We reached out to them and they came to join us (the island really is that small!). Trivia was pretty chaotic to start with teams being able to register ahead of time (mainly regulars) so we weren't sure if we were going to get a spot to play. We waited about 30 mins and finally got a table and ordered drinks and food before trivia got underway. Trivia was a similar layout to others we had done and the questions were asked fairly quickly. In the end, we got 4th place out of 25 teams so we were pretty proud of our achievement! We said our goodbyes to Luke and Katie and headed off to bed after a long day on the island.
For our final full day on Koh Tao, we took the morning slow and slept in and did some trip admin. We grabbed the duck and rice for lunch again since it was so good and cheap, and then we headed to a different beach close to Melissa's dive shop. We read, swam, and soaked up the sun for a few hours. That afternoon, Melissa got her first haircut of the trip, which was a very normal salon experience and not as unique as some of Carson's haircuts (which was just fine by her). Afterwards, we headed back to our favorite sunset spot on the beach to watch our final sunset on Koh Tao and reflected on our great week here. For dinner we had our favorite red curry at the tiki hut and called it an early night so we could pack our bags for our ferry the next day.
The next morning we packed our bags and started our long and annoying walk back to the ferry port (let the record show that Melissa was team taxi but Carson is very cheap). Tired and sweaty, we finally made it and we boarded our ferry for our 9:30am departure time. Luckily the sea was much calmer today which we were very happy about because we were taking a new route to a different port on the mainland and we had to make pit stops at Koh Samui and Koh Pha Ngan, which made the ferry ride about 3 hours long.
When we made it to the port, we were supposed to get on a bus or van and head to Khao Sok, an inland national park, however the bus first took us to another station where we got off to wait for our transfer van. Carson quickly ran into the mini mart to grab overpriced croissants for lunch since we found out that the transportation company was not stopping for food on this 8 hour combined transfer. We hopped into a smaller van full of people and luggage and sped to Khao Sok village. About halfway through the drive, one of the girls in the van finally realized she was in the wrong van since she was supposed to be going to Koh Tao lol. A bunch of people in the van were trying to communicate with the driver who didn't speak any English to tell him the situation. We felt bad for her, but also knew there wasn't anything the driver could do....the girl was just going to have to go to Khao Sok! After a very long travel day, we finally reached the village bus station and our hostel had a free taxi waiting to pick us up and drive us to town which was great because we were exhausted. We had dinner at the hostel restaurant and worked on packing our day packs to bring on our 2 day/1 night tour of Khao Sok National Park which we'd be starting the next morning.
We woke up and had breakfast at the hostel and were picked up by a van to head off toward Khao Sok National Park. The van made a pit stop at a local market where others grabbed food and supplies while we just walked around since we had packed everything we needed. We arrived at the National Park at 10:30am and learned that our van was actually part of a large group of six other vans. This was a pretty classic SE Asia tour experience at this point where you never know exactly what you're getting when you sign up, but it ended up being fine. The large group was corralled and we headed to four different long boats. We hopped on one of the boats last so we got lucky and were seated in the front of the boat.
The national park is huge, and consists of the largest area of virgin forest in southern Thailand and is a remnant of rain forest which is older and more diverse than the Amazon rainforest! We were only going to see a small part of it, but our journey started by boat on the large man-made Cheow Lan Lake that encompasses much of the park and is surrounded by the impressively huge limestone mountains and dense forest. We learned that the lake was formed from a river that was dammed for hydroelectric power decades ago. The boat ride started and it felt like we were in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan's UP with how colorful the limestone rocks were. Even though we had already seen some impressive and beautiful limestone mountains in Ninh Binh and Cat Ba, we couldn't help but be in awe at these because they seemed even bigger. Our tour made a short stop to get out and explore Pra Kie Phet Cave. The cave was pretty similar to other limestone caves we'd seen, but we saw plenty of small cave bats.
After the pit stop, we hopped back in the long boats and headed to our accommodation for the night. We were staying at one of the ranger stations in the park, which consisted of dozens of floating bungalows in the lake. We were the first couple to get assigned a bungalow and got lucky that ours was at the end of the line with clear views of the lake and surrounding jungle. We had to walk to the bungalow along a floating walkway that definitely swayed with movement, so we had to be careful not to tip into the water, especially when walking to the shared bathrooms at night. Our room was very rustic, made of thatched wood, with open air windows and only a bed inside, but it was still awesome to be sleeping on the water around the jungle. After dropping our bags off, we walked over to the communal area for lunch. By this point everyone was starving because it was already 2:30 pm and we were expecting to eat earlier in the day. After lunch, we had free time to swim or kayak around the lake. There were only 5 kayaks for 40 people so we chose to swim instead which was refreshing and a good chance to make some new friends. We dried off and all jumped back into the longboats to do some jungle trekking that evening. As we were cruising to our trekking trail, our guides kept a sharp eye out for wildlife and we got to see a male white-handed gibbon swinging around the trees from afar.
We reached the trekking point, and the boat ran onto shore where we disembarked to start hiking with our guide. Our guide's name was Nook, and he knew a lot about the park and jungle having grown up nearby; he even helped to create the trail that we were walking on. Since our group was so large, we stayed up near the front with Nook since we really wanted to best chance to spot animals. As we walked, we saw a lot of signs that elephants had been on the trail, including footprints and bamboo that was pushed over for eating. Sadly we didn't see any elephants on this trip, and Nook let us know it is very rare. Along the trek, Nook showed us how to find drinking water from bamboo, how to cook with bamboo, and how to make a stylish hat out of leaves in the jungle.
After our hike, since it was starting to get darker, we all got back into the boats to cruise around and look for more animals in the jungle. We saw Long Tailed Macaques, a Great Hornbill, some unique lizards, and heard very load cicadas. We arrived back at the bungalows around 8pm and had dinner which was much better and more filling than lunch. We played cards and chatted with others on the tour before heading off to bed under the clear starry sky.
The next morning, Carson woke up early in the hopes of seeing some Great Hornbills around the bungalows, since Nook had told him that this was a common sight. He did see 12 of them, but they were all flying up very high. The rest of us woke up to the beautiful, cloudy morning, and we all got back in the long boats for a morning safari. We cruised around again and saw Short Tailed Macaques, an Oriental Pied Hornbill, Osprey, Brahminy Kites, Crested Serpent Eagle, and White Bellied Sea Eagles. Lot of "Lifers" (first time seeing a bird) for Carson which was exciting. We went back to camp for a banana pancake breakfast and then packed up our Bungalow before heading out. The boat ride took about 1 hour to get back to port, and we enjoyed passing through the beautiful scenery once more. At port, we had a fried rice lunch at a view point of the park before hopping into the van to take us back to our hostel. We relaxed for a couple hours at our hostel until we were picked up by another van to head to Krabi town. Our next stop was the island of Koh Lanta, but we planned to spend one night in Krabi town to break up the long 5-7 hour journey and arrive on the island super late. The van ride to Krabi was going fine until the driver first had to drop two other passengers off in a location that was outside of the drop-off zone. She was clearly annoyed after doing this, and then when she asked us the name of our guesthouse she said she didn't know exactly where it was and didn't want to drop us there. We tried to explain and showed her the location (which WAS in the drop off zone), but the driver was not listening and was getting rude, so we reached back out to the hostel for help since we booked it through them. Eventually it got sorted out and we were dropped off in the right place but it was a frustrating since it was one of our first unfriendly experiences in our travels. Fortunately, we were greeted very warmly at our guesthouse which was run by a super nice family in a local part of Krabi town. The family's youngest son who was maybe 5 years old helped show us to our room and then played some soccer with us on the terrace. We grabbed dinner at a cute local spot next door with outside seating and went straight to bed.
The next morning, we grabbed breakfast at a nearby 7/11, said goodbye to the sweet family running the guesthouse, and jumped into yet another van for our ~2 hour drive to the island of Koh Lanta. We took a quick ferry ride to the island (we stayed in the van), swapped vans, and were driven to our guesthouse located near the middle of the island, about a block from the beach. The owner of the guesthouse who checked us in was very nice, and gave very beach boss energy, sitting behind his desk on the phone, rocking a colorful shirt and a fedora. We checked in to our private bungalow and then ventured down toward the beach to find lunch. We ended up having some delicious grilled chicken for lunch, with a very old woman manning a massive grill. As soon as we walked by and saw/smelled it, we knew we had to have it. After lunch, Melissa flagged down a tuk-tuk and negotiated a ride to another scuba school, OK Club Divers, located farther north on the island. She signed up for an advanced open water course that would involve five dives over the next two days. Getting this certification would give her more dive experience with instructors, teach some new skills, and let her dive up to 30 meters (100 feet). While at the school, she met Isabelle who was training at OK Club as a dive master, turned out to be another long-term traveler who was also originally from south Florida! They hit it off and chatted for a while and Isabelle gave Mel a ride back to the guesthouse on the back of her scooter. Riding around the island, it was clear that this island's vibe was very chill. The island was larger than Koh Tao, and everything was more spread out, with lots of beach bungalows and beach bars, but not very many people or tourists throughout. It felt like we had truly dropped into a sleepy little beach town.
That afternoon, we met back up, bought a big container full or ripe and juicy mango and papaya, and walked to the beach to swim, read, and watch the beautiful sun set. This beach reminded Mel a lot of her beach in Florida, so she really enjoyed spending time there. We grabbed a quick dinner nearby at a local spot, and then headed to bed early.
The next day, Melissa was picked up early by one of the instructors from OK Club to drive her to the boat they'd be taking on the dives that day. At the dock, Melissa met her instructor, Hampus, a super friendly and young Scandinavian guy. They were tagging along on the boat of a different dive club today due to some scheduling conflicts, so they got to enjoy a much larger double decker boat than what they would usually use at OK Club. They got their gear together, had breakfast on the boat, and headed to the first dive site, the Kled Gaeow shipwreck near the beautiful Phi Phi Islands, which was about two hours away. This ship was actually intentionally sunk years ago to create an artificial reef. The first dive was the deep dive, so they went down to 30 meters this time (100 feet!). For the first time, Mel had some trouble at the dive start. She was having trouble equalizing and the water was very wavy/turbid near the surface, which made her slightly panicked, so she had to signal to Hampus to go back up after attempting the first descent before they got very far. They surfaced, and she composed herself, and then they slowly made their way down a fixed line to the bottom. Fortunately the water was more clear at depth, and they spent some time swimming around the shipwreck and seeing the beautiful reefs and fish. After surfacing, they got back on the boat to take their rest period and hydrate, while they headed to the second nearby dive site of Koh Bida Nok. The dramatic rocks coming out of the sea were impressive above water, but things were even more impressive underwater. The visibility at this site was incredible, and they saw blacktip reef sharks, cuttlefish, a moray eel, and much more, which was so cool! They also practiced more buoyancy drills and control at depth since this was the subject of this learning dive. After the second dive, Mel and Hampus chilled on the boat and ate lunch, while some other people did a third dive. They cruised back to the Koh Lanta and Mel got a ride back to the guesthouse. While Melissa was scuba diving, Carson had taken it easy and enjoyed the free breakfast at the guesthouse (with a new cat friend), birded, hung out at the beach, read, and swam. He managed to see a pair of Olive-Backed Sunbirds, Brown-throated Sunbirds, and an Asian Openbill. That night, we grabbed dinner nearby, and went to bed early exhausted.
The following day, Mel was picked up early again and taken to the dock. The plan was for her to complete her final three dives for her advanced certification today, but she'd be on OK Club's speed boat instead of the big boat from yesterday (much more cramped and bumpy, but gets to the dive sites WAY faster). Unfortunately, her instructor Hampus accidentally overslept his alarm (apparently for the first time ever as an instructor) and missed the boat! While this was a bummer, the dive instructors adapted and made sure Mel got her three dives in. Unfortunately, this meant her first dive (this time with a Nitrox cylinder) had to be grouped with another student doing their first ocean dive for their open water course, so she they only went to about 10 meters and the first part of the dive was spent watching and doing the drills she had already learned in her open water course. At least there were still some fish, and she still got to be underwater and practice her skills. The next two dives were better as they went back to Koh Bida Nok. This is such a pretty site with great animals that she wasn't even upset to be repeating. Her second dive was to practice the navigation skill with her underwater compass. It went ok, but it was definitely challenging, and she's probably going to stick with following dive guides around (she can barely navigate on land). Her third and final dive of the day was mostly just a normal dive, but they did focus some learning ahead of time on waves and tides. She saw plenty more fish and a lot more blacktip reef sharks, which never got old. After the dives, the boat sped back to Koh Lanta and they all had lunch before an instructor drove Melissa back to her guesthouse. She met up with Carson, who had spent a similar day as the day before, chilling, beaching, and birding, and we grabbed more fresh fruit and a couple of beers and hit the beach where we stayed until sunset. We grabbed a quick dinner, and headed off to bed.
In the morning, we said goodbye to sleepy and peaceful Koh Lanta, and readied ourselves for the transfer to Ao Nang (in Krabi) that we booked through our guesthouse. We were picked up at 7am by our transfer van and slowly picked people up at other hotels on the island. Once the van reached Krabi, it stopped and let people out who were transferring to Koh Tao and we stayed on thinking we were going to Ao Nang which was just another 20 minute drive away. The van ultimately dropped us off in Krabi at a tour agency and we were told we would need to wait almost 2 hours for a van to take us to Ao Nang. We were annoyed because once again this was supposed to be a direct transfer that had gone awry and we felt like we had just struggled through this same situation. Normally we would just wait, but we were meeting our friend Sam who was arriving that morning in Ao Nang. We tried to negotiate a ride with the tour agency, but after getting nowhere, we left frustrated and just called a Grab to get to where we needed to go quicker. Despite the annoyance, we arrived at our guesthouse in Ao Nang located just a couple blocks from the beach and met up with Sam! All our annoyances were forgotten, and we dropped off our bags and immediately headed to the beach. On our way, we ran into another one of Melissa's close friends, Andrea, who was on a Contiki tour of southern Thailand. We knew she was going to be here and had planned to meet up, but weren't expecting to run right into her (turns out her hotel was right across the street!). We made plans to see Andrea later, and then walked down to the beach and found a bar where we grabbed beers, caught up, and planned our next few days. We grabbed a delicious Thai lunch and walked back to the guesthouse to cool off and relax for a while. We also met the cute but very serious looking cats that lived on the property who we became instant fans of. That evening, we walked back to the beach and took the "monkey trail" through the forest to another smaller and more secluded beach to enjoy the sunset. We passed a lot of macaques on the trail which explained how the trail got it's name, but luckily they weren't aggressive like the Ubud monkeys! After the sunset, we noticed some large crowds gathering on the beach, so we stuck around to see what was going in. We're glad we did, because we got to see a fire dancing performance on the beach. We grabbed a quick dinner and headed off to bed since we were all tired, especially Sam after flying all the way from San Diego!
The next morning, we bought a ticket to take a quick long boat ride from Ao Nang beach to nearby Railay Beach. We had heard from many people that Railay was beautiful, but it was even better than we expected. It was a perfect sandy beach nestled in a bay ringed by the jungle, with large imposing rocks jutting out of the sea around it. Unless you were staying in the very small town of Railay, the only way to reach it was by boat, so it felt somewhat secluded despite being a tourist destination. we arrived at the beach early enough that there were few people there and we claimed a prime spot near the shade. Andrea and one of her friends joined us for a while, and we spent the morning relaxing, swimming, reading, and chatting. Eventually, we got hungry and decided to find food in the small town of Railay. We found a small local restaurant where we ordered grilled chicken, papaya salad, and smoothies, and then we walked to East Railay beach and explored for a while. We eventually caught a long boat back to Ao Nang, and we headed back to the guesthouse to shower and chill. Sam ad Mel had picked up facemasks for us to enjoy, and we all had a good laugh when we realized the facemasks were "whitening" (good luck finding any cosmetics in SE Asia that aren't- including deodorant.) We enjoyed the masks nonetheless, and didn't feel any whiter after the fact. That night, we walked over to the Krabi night market. The food didn't look very good to us compared to some of the other night markets we'd been to (not as fresh), but we grabbed some mochi to snack on and then grabbed a nice dinner at a restaurant nearby that was recommended. We had to wait a while, but the curry and Tom Yum soup were delicious and worth the wait!
The next day, we woke up early to get ready for a tour we had booked to visit nearby Hong Island. We grabbed a 7/11 breakfast of champions (toasties, bananas, and iced coffee) and walked to our meeting point. After waiting for a while to be sorted into our group, we were led to a long boat and started our journey. The weather was calm, and we made our way with our boat into the beautiful Hong Island Lagoon, which had a narrow inlet which opened into an area of beautiful blue/green water surrounded by limestone rocks. We did a quick ride around in the boat here (and so did a LOT of other boats) and then made our way to a couple of different beaches on nearby islands, where we got to swim and enjoy a buffet lunch. As we headed back to the other side of Hong Island that afternoon, the winds picked up and the sea was more rough. We had reserved kayaks at the tour agency when we booked the day before, but as we docked, we told the guide it wasn't safe for kayaking due to the high winds and waves but she was saying we didn't have to kayak but we probably wouldn't get a refund. We said ok, since we literally would have capsized the kayaks, and figured we could just talk to someone from the agency about it back in Ao Nang. Instead, Melissa and Carson decided to hike up to a beautiful viewpoint that overlooked Hong Island and the nearby islands while Sam opted to snorkel in the bay (luckily the waves were a little calmer here). After our hike, we joined Sam and snorkeled for a while. It was kind of turbid from the waves, but we did get to see an adorable fat clownfish, which was awesome. Unfortunately, right as we found the clownfish, everyone got called out of the water because it was low tide and they wanted to protect the reef. At first we thought something more serious was going on based on the yelling and whistles...we were kind of annoyed that we had to get out of the water early since the tide timing isn't a surprise, and part of this tour was to snorkel, but we let it go and were appreciative that we at least got to see some things. We dried off and headed back to Ao Nang where we stopped at the tour agency to see if we could get a refund since we couldn't kayak. They wouldn't agree since our tour guide told them we didn't "want" to kayak. No matter how many times we told them it was a safety issue and nothing to do with "want" they wouldn't budge. We were annoyed, but let it go. Carson went back to the guesthouse to relax and Melissa and Sam visited a nearby dive shop to book a dive for the next day since Sam is also certified. We watched sunset over the water, and grabbed dinner. On our walk home, Mel wasn't paying attention and accidentally walked right into the corner of a parked tuktuk and whacked her upper eye bone near her eyebrow. It hurt pretty bad and bled a little, so Sam and Carson went into 7/11 to find ice. Luckily she didn't take her eye out, and it didn't bruise or scar (though her scab for a few days looked kind of badass). In retrospect, it's very funny, btu at the time it was kind of dramatic lol. We got home, iced Mel's eye more, and called it a night.
The next morning, Sam and Melissa were driven to the dive boat which was at a different port. The weather was nice, but it was kind of windy and wavy, so we were going to some more local dive sites instead of the sites near Koh Phi Phi. Luckily, the surroundings were still beautiful, and our guides and boat crew were awesome. We did two fun dives as dive buddies, and still had some good visibility despite the waves and saw a lot of beautiful reefs and fish. We had lunch on the boat and had fun basking in the sun on the ride back to the dock. It was great to finally get to dive with a friend and share that experience! While they were diving, Carson went to the main office of the Hong Island Boat Tour agency and talked nicely to a different staff member who was very understanding about the kayak situation and gave us our money back. He also went back to Railay beach in an attempt to take photos of the hornbills. He saw a pair of white collar kingfishers, pacific reef-heron, pacific swallows, macaques, and 23 dusky leaf langurs. We all met back up that afternoon and relaxed. Sam went to get a foot message, and we all met up to enjoy some final beers on the beach at sunset and watch another fire show. We grabbed some curry for dinner and then went out for drinks where we ran into the fun English guy who ran the dive shop we had gone to. He was super funny, and we enjoyed talking to him for a while. Eventually we made our way back to the guesthouse (and grabbed a midnight toasty snack on the way).
On our final day in Ao Nang, we slept in, went to Ao Nang Beach for a while, grabbed lunch from a delicious restaurant we had been eyeing during our whole stay but always had a line! We could see why, though, because the fried rice and fresh coconuts were incredible. After lunch, Sam and Melissa got foot massages, and then we took a Grab to the airport to hop on a quick flight back to Bangkok.
All in all, southern Thailand and the beaches were everything they hoped they would be - beautiful, relaxing, and warm. We had a great time doing less, even though we still made time for hobbies, and picked up some new ones (like scuba!). We were also so happy to have a friend with us again for the last leg of it. We left rested, tan, and happy.
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