Thursday, August 24, 2006

Kicking it in Ko Tao

Ko Tao is incredibly gorgeous. What a beautiful earth we have!

This same sandbar is covered by water by around 4 or 5pm.

Snorkeling location from a snorkle trip around the island the other day.

I met up with Rachel and Darren on Monday after inadvertantly missing the boat on Sunday, therefore staying in Ko Samui an extra night. Depending on where you are in Thailand, communicating is either fairly easy or sometimes a bit trying. I am not used to having communication difficulties as I tend to travel to Spanish and English countries so it was a good lesson on what other people have to go through. Rachel is someone that I worked with at Citrix that I have been friends with for a few years. She and her husband are moving back to the U.S. from Australia and traveling west, making stops in Thailand, China, South Africa, Europe and Costa Rica before heading home at Christmas.

We have really been enjoying our week as you can imagine. A day at the office goes a little like this: we roll out of bed and get breakfast then read for a few hours. After lunch we find a place to go swimming or snorkeling and check out some pretty fishies. The water is very shallow so it means you have to walk very far out in order to swim (see middle pic) or walk to a neighboring bay. It also means in the afternoon when you first step in, it is literally hotter than the air outside. The further you walk out though, the nicer it gets. Nobody is complaining here as we would have hot water over cold water any day.

The other day we decided to go snorkeling at a place called Shark Bay where there are white tipped reef and nurse sharks. Seeing as I have an insane fear of sharks it would seem as good of an idea as a claustrophobic shoving himself into a refrigerator. But they convinced me that they were incredibly harmless and because they dive quite often, I know they know what they are talking about. Fortunately or unfortunately we did not see any sharks. But we did see some Parrot Fish and Chevron Barracuda (images borrowed as my underwater camera pics are yet to be developed).


as well as butterfly fish, scorpion fish, angel fish, clams and many others. Other people on a snorkel trip I went on the other day were able to spot a small octopus but I missed that one. The coral down here is very cool to check out as well. You must not stand on it in order to protect its health (and you very well might cut yourself in the process). Nearly everywhere I have been snorkeling has been relatively shallow but you are still able to see quite a bit.

Later we return to our rooms to wash up, meet up again for happy hour and cheers the fact we aren't at work. We figure its best every minute to realize and absorb our good fortune while we still have it. Pictured with Heather and Rachel are pina coladas and Chang, one of the local Thai beers.

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We are staying in bungalows at the southern end of Ko Tao. There are many different bungalows lined up along the beach and each has its own bar out front to pick from. So we just go to one of those places for dinner and drinks and then after a day in the sun we usually don't stay up past 10:30. Hopefully tonight we can make it up past 11 as Rachel and Darren leave tomorrow.

The coolest thing we saw yesterday was a double rainbow stretching over the bay. I have never seen a rainbow end before and thought it to be quite lucky.


Sunday I go to the neighboring island of Ko Pha Ngan for a few days.