Well, that was a VERY LONG two days! Yesterday started with a bit of a sleep in, as we weren’t picked up by the kayaking company until 11:30am. Once they picked us up, it was an hour car ride to the pier where our boat was laving from. We arrived, loaded with sunscreen and bug spray, prepared for the next 30 or so hours.
The first afternoon was fairly relaxed. We toured a bunch of the various islands in the bay on the eastern side of Phuket, between Phuket, Krabi, and Phi Phi. These are the iconic rock islands that you see when you google Phuket islands. Most of these islands look really unassuming, but because they are limestone, which is easily eroded away, they have caves that lead to interior hongs, Thai for lagoons. For our first day we sat in our kayaks are were paddled around by one of the guys working for the kayak company. It was pretty jakation and relaxing. We went through a cave full of insect bats, a cave where the floor is covered in oysters, and a third cave filled with mangrove trees.
We also got involved in creating some floating Thai offerings for happiness and prosperity, it was pretty cool to see these banana trunks lit up and floating in this secluded lagoon.
After getting some dinner onboard the boat, we were shipped off to our island for the night. The guys from the kayaking company, who were Chelsea and Liverpool fans, said that we were being left on the island because Jacob and Matt are Manchester United fans…gotta love a good joke!
As we approached our little beach, we spotted our camp fire and three little tents dotted along a narrow beach. We were paddled ashore, put our stuff in our tents, and sat down on the beach as we waved goodbye to the big boat, which was headed back to cozy beds, air conditioning, and safety from mosquitoes…what are we doing?!
We were handed some Coke Lights (ok…not too bad of a start), and we sat on the beach to watch a lightening storm in the distance. We spotted lightening stores fairly regularly here, as the cooler and hot airs collide. But this storm kept getting closer and closer, with a few BIG flashes. After about 30 minutes, we began to feel little drops. “It will not rain,” said one of our guides, “My family are fisherman and I know this. It will not rain.” About 10 minutes later we were in our tents for the night, as it rained around us. It wouldn’t have been told bad, but our tents had been set up when it was hottest earlier in the day, in direct sunlight, with all the vents closed. So they were like humid, little, plastic ovens. We quickly opened our two netted vents to get some air circulating and called it a night. Our guide said that breakfast will be at 8am, but I have a feeling that we will all be up much earlier than that.
Overall it wasn’t a bad night’s sleep, but we did wake up at about 5:45am. Rather than sitting in our hot little tent, Jacob and I decided to go down to the water for a sunrise swim. The water was still fairly warm from the hot day yesterday, probably about 30degrees Celsius…so let’s call that about 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Matt and Ali joined us about 5 minutes later, and we all cooled off with an early morning swim in some of the most clear water I have seen this entire trip. Ali, Jacob, and I swam and chatted, while Matt wandered around finding some odd looking fish.
Breakfast was served a few hours later at 8am, as promised. We were served up some toast, eggs, and sausages, croissants, nuttela, marmalade, and jam. We were also given a variety of fruit, including jack fruits and pomelos. It wasn’t long before we had a furry little monkey visitor. He sat and watched as our breakfast was prepared, he kept creeping ever closer, until the chef’s back was turned for a second…and then Monkey struck! He grabbed our pack of apples and headed back into his tree. He sat there for quite some time, looking ever so pleased with himself and his tasty breakfast.
After breakfast a long tailed boat came to pick us up and take us to our first stop…I have to say I was really glad that we weren’t going to be kayaking the entire way. Our first island was one where we could walk into the lagoon, no kayaks required. We were shown four varieties of mangrove trees, and even got to find mangrove seeds and plant our own little trees. We were also show some fruit bats, or flying foxes as they are also known. It was really cool to see them hanging around in their trees.
Then we were off to our first kayaking spot. We parked up the long-tail boat, unloaded the kayaks and paired off, me and Jacob, and Matt and Ali. We kayaked around this island, where we actually saw quite a few big jelly fish…don’t worry, we didn’t touch any of them!!
We made it to the next little bay where our long-tail boat was waiting for us. As we disembarked from our kayak, Jacob flipped us over. Luckily the water was shallow enough to stand up in. Ali laughed and stayed, “I am who happy right now!” All of our guides thought it was funny that Ali took enjoyment in Jacob going in the water.
Once we were all loaded up, we were taxied off to our second kayaking site, where we caught a glimpse of a stingray below us and a few more jelly fish. We finally made it to a nice little sandy beach, where we went for a swim. It still surprises me how warm the water is here. We spent some time snorkelling around this reef, which was ok. Pretty clear water, but once you have scuba dived, snorkelling isn’t quite as exciting.
We were then told that we would be heading to Koh Yai Noi, where our guide was from, to grab a bit of lunch. He informed us that this little island only received electricity about 15 years ago…crazy! We were all a bit dubious of lunch, we have come to learn that you don’t really get what you expect.
We were taken to a small little food place on the side of the road, let’s just say not one that we would have picked ourselves. Our guide informed us that he had taken the liberty of ordering a fish dish and soup dish for us. Ali and I told the boys that the fish was their job. We ordered a few dishes that we figured were pretty safe, Pad Thai (a traditional noodle dish), chicken fried rice, and beef panang. We also asked for four waters.
We knew it wasn’t a great sign when we were given tap water, what Matt called diarrhoea in a glass. We then quickly asked for Coke Lights. Poor Matt doesn’t drink soda and only had about an inch of Gatorade to get him through the entire meal.
The fish came out next. And I honestly had to keep from gagging. The lady placed it down so that this entire cooked fish was staring straight at me. YUCK. The boys asked our guide how to serve it because they were “really excited to try it”. And when the guide tried to serve some to me I told him that Ali and I don’t eat seafood, but that it makes the boys happy because that means there is more for them…they gave me a smirk as I said it, but they were able to stomach enough of the fish. Way to take one for the team boys.
Then came the Pad Thai, this can’t be too bad. But remember our theme? You don’t ever get what you expect. It was awful, we had made this in our cooking class back in Chiang Mai and ours was FAR better. We swallowed it down to be polite, but I ended up having to take a bite and then quickly use my Coke Light to swallow it down.
Then came the chicken rice, which was ok, but very bland. The massive soup came out in a coconut, I did’t eat any of the contents, but managed to have enough of the broth to make it look like we had eaten a decent amount. After the dishes we were served, we were all incredibly relieved when the hostess forgot our beef panang. I don’t think that we could have stomached another dish.
We thought we would be polite and order some mango sticky rice, a dessert we thought would be difficult to mess up…WHEN WILL WE LEARN?! The mango was nice and ripe, the sticky rice was ok, but they had put these incredibly hard, inedible nuts on the top. We gave up and quickly left the restaurant to return back to our boat.
As we were walking away, Ali points out that the meal we had in Sorrento, Italy last year was the best meal that any of us have ever had, still to this day. And if that was the best, today’s lunch was by a large margin, the worst meal any of us have every had.
We are off Thai food for the foreseeable future. We boarded our boat and began looking forward to returning to the safety of our resort. It took about an hour to get back to Phuket, with car ride just over an hour to get to the hotel. We arrived, soaked up our air conditioning and enjoyed our much deserved shower.
We all decided to follow in Matt’s slippered footsteps and ate dinner and had some mocktails in the hotel bar, while comfortably in our non-smoking robes. We enjoyed a few pizzas and our pina coladas. A great way to end the day.
All in all, the kayaking trip was really enjoyable, and we all created lasting memories. But I have to say, I am not a camping girl and I will really enjoy and appreciate my bed tonight. We were all pretty tired from the long two day trip, not to mention that none of us got the best sleep last night. So decided that tonight called for a pretty early bed time. 9pm and lights are out. Tomorrow it’s back to Bangkok!
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