More Island Adventures

Well Hilary and I survived our time in Koh Tao. We had some crazy days. We both got extremely burnt the first few days. And I met a friendly seahorse swimming near me. I've never seen one close up but it was cute like this:

The next day, we decided to rent a sea kayak and managed to make it all the way around this small island called Koh NangYuan seen here:
We also noticed flying fish while we were kayaking. As much of the coral was too shallow to swim on, we could easily see it on the kayak without harming it. So we explored little ocean ecosystems for awhile. We found out that most restaurants showed movies everynight so we would wander around and decide which flick to take in each day.

Our last day, we decided to do a mountain trek. Hey, it's a pretty small island and the trail seems small and well-marked on the map. Well, it was nearly unbearable walking up that mountain. I thought I was going to fall over from the heat and hard work. We finally got up to near the top and didn't find much of anything. There were spectacular veiws but we weren't sure how to get back so we just pressed on. After awhile, it became apparent that few people had walked this trail in the past decade or so. The trail was becoming increasingly overgrown and all we could hear were the deafining sound of bugs and monkeys in the distance. We started to get pretty spooked out. We hadn't seen anyone in awhile and I began thinking of what we could do if we were suddenly attacked by a python or island pirates. We got to a point where we were pretty paralyzed and unsure about what to do next. Should we go on and possibly get even more lost? Should we turn back and hike back up the mountain? We psyched ourselves up and just kept going. Finally, the path opened up into a spectacular view of this bay:

We became giddy and happy once we heard the sound of a motorcycle which meant we were by a main road. We started shouting and singing and laughing at how silly we'd been, feeling triumphant that we'd climbed this mountain by ourselves and were brave enough to blaze a trail through the jungle.

This is the mountain we climbed:


So Koh Tao was fun but i think we both are glad that we are living in the mountains rather than on the beach. It was nice to live the island life for a couple of weeks. I was just glad to see my cosy little home in Lampang last night. Next on the agenda: party in Mae rim, songkran in chiang mai and then it's off to Issan and Laos!