Wanderlust

Bangkok, Thailand.

Tomorrow we fly. We’re off to Italy (via Germany)! Goodbye Asia! Hello Europe! A lot has happened over the past few days, so I have a lot to catch up with the blog. But I’ve been so busy trying to upload all of my pictures from S.E. Asia, that I forgot all about writing! And now it’s 9 pm, I haven’t had dinner (but I had a very late lunch) and I need to pack and get some sleep before tomorrow. So, updates will have to wait! I haven’t quite finished with the photos, but we’ve made it to Angkor Wat and there’s only a little bit more to go–including some underwater photos of snorkeling!

We’re both excited about being cold, eating Italian food and drinking wine, seeing our friend Florian in Dusseldorf (we have an overnight layover so we’re going to get some food and possibly crash at his place tomorrow night), and soon going to Croatia to WWOOF. I’ll try to make some time during our few days in Florence to write some more. But one happy bit of news I have to share–I got into UC Santa Barbara for graduate school! Yay! Real life is quickly catching up with the trip. But I’m glad. Especially since the real life things are all happy!

Koh Tao, Thailand.

Wow! This place is amazing! We’re definitely enjoying our island paradise. It’s just what we needed after 8 months of traveling around. Koh Tao is beautiful. We took an overnight bus from Bangkok and then the speed ferry from hell. The bus ride went pretty smoothly. We didn’t sleep much, and it arrived hours before it was supposed to (which shouldn’t be a problem, but we expected to arrive at 7 am, but we arrived at 3 am which meant a lot less time to try to sleep on the bus). We had about 45 minutes of waiting around on the pier before loading onto the ferry. It was still so dark outside (being 3:45 and the sun doesn’t come up until 6:30 here) that walking down the pier was a little frightening (in sandals, with my heavy bag on and not so closely spaced, flimsy looking boards making up the pier). Stephen gets seasick, so we were already prepared for a not-so-pleasant ride. Happily, Stephen did not puke. But I think that everyone else around me did. At some point Steve decided to go up top to sit on the deck to try to get some fresh air and ease a little of the stomach flips (the boat was just slapping up and down in the water which at first was sort of fun–butterflies in the stomach and all–but it got old quick). I don’t get seasick, but I was so incredibly tired that I felt generally crappy and exhausted. I leaned my head against a little window sill and tried to sleep/ignore all of the commotion. Shortly before Steve left the girl in front of us started puking. Her boyfriend had asked us if we had a bag of some sort for her. We did, but it turned out it had a hole in it (sorry!). I was surprised that little barf bags weren’t passed out or readily available anywhere for us. After Steve left all gastro-intestinal hell broke loose. I swear I was surrounded by retching. It was awful. I plugged my ears, closed my eyes and tried to go to a happy place. Luckily Koh Tao was the first island stop, and we disembarked soon after all of the sickness. It was still very dark when we got on firm ground and we decided to just wander and find a place to sleep since according to our guidebook there were a bunch of bungalows just down the street. It took us a few minutes to find our way and to wake up a sleeping guesthouse owner to show us a bungalow. But just as the sun was coming up we were lying down to finally get some sleep and trying to ignore the fact that it felt like the bed was still moving!

We woke up around 10:30, got some yummy Thai food (it’s so good!) and started to explore our little island. We were staying in the main area of the island, near the piers, where there were lots of bungalows, dive shops, internet cafes, and people. After reading the book a little we decided that we wanted to go to a more private area for a few days of solitude and snorkeling. We wanted to get over to Tanote Bay to check out the accommodation before committing ourselves with our heavy bags. So we decided to hike across the island to check it out. It ended up being more than we bargained for. It was hot and the dirt roads were so washed out from the previous rainy season that they were treacherous even to walk on. We got turned around a couple of times since the free maps of the island weren’t very accurate. But we had lots of water and snacks and we made it to the bay before dark. We stopped at a restaurant in the mountains overlooking the bay. It was yummy food and a gorgeous view. We made a reservation for a little bungalow on the far side of the bay and we scheduled to have the guest house pick us up for free the next morning. We got a truck-taxi ride back to the main part of the island and went to bed! It had been a very long day!

We spent the last two days snorkeling around our little bay. The first morning we went out right away and headed towards some rocks that the guest house worker pointed out to us. We saw angel fish, hard coral, and Steve even saw a little reef shark! It was beautiful, but the sky was a little cloudy and it ended up raining a little in the afternoon (we napped!). The next day we headed out to the middle of the bay where we had seen a bunch of people snorkeling the day before. It was absolutely amazing. So many fish. Such beautiful colors. There was mostly hard coral, but all different kinds! Some looked like brains, others were neon green, there were big columns of coral with rounded tops and hollow bowls at the top where little fish swam. We saw a couple of soft, purple coral with little purple fish swimming in and out of them. There were schools of hundreds of little fish which we would chase and they would break apart into smaller and smaller groups until you weren’t sure where they all went! It was beautiful. Steve had so much fun diving down and chasing after fish! I am an amazing floater–really, I just hang out and don’t have to move and I float–but I can’t dive down for anything. So I just slowly float around, stopping in places where there are lots of fish and just watching until they all surround me. When I was little we had a giant fish tank in my house and we had all different kinds of fish in it (all fresh water). I used to love to watch the fish and to go with my dad to aquariums to buy new fish. I’m surprised it took me this long to realize how much I’d love to snorkel! But I guess I never had a chance to try it out until we went to Baja two years ago.

One of the highlights of snorkeling for me was when this pretty fish about the size of my hand was swimming along and I was just slowly following it. It noticed me at some point and swam up in front of me. I stopped swimming and looked back at it. It came so close to my face that I could see its little fishy bucked teeth! We just stared at each other. I wasn’t moving so not to scare it, and it was just slowly waving its red fins. It was so close to my face that I could’ve touched it. It was awesome. After a little while it lost interest and slowly swam away. I followed, hoping to get its attention again. But then it found this pretty white fish with long finger-like tentacles around its mouth that was rooting around in the sand. The red fish followed this fish around, hoping to get some leftover food I imagine, and I followed the two of them around until I lost interest. It was so amazing that the fish seemed curious about me, too!

We ended the day, yesterday, when some sort of cloud of sperm came into the bay. It was crazy. We were swimming around and all of the sudden it was like we were swimming through a cloud of purple specks. It was everywhere. I couldn’t find my way out of it. When Steve dove down it wasn’t there, but towards the surface it was everywhere. We finally had to call it a day because we could barely see anything through it–and there were tons of fish having a feast!–and it was sort of gross when you thought about it. When we got back on shore the water looked dark purple from all of it washing up. And there were lots of dead shells trailing what looked like a long line of eggs. So we’re assuming that it was some sort of sea creature spawning. But it was sad that it ended our day of snorkeling a little early. It turned out my back was a bit burnt, so it was good that we stopped. We spent the rest of the day reading and lying in the hammock. Steve went out to give snorkeling another try, but he wasn’t out very long.

Now we’re back in the more populated part of the island. There is another bay called Mango Bay which is supposed to have amazing snorkeling, but it’s at the far Northern tip of the island and I’m not sure how we’ll get there. We can hike out, but there’s nowhere to stay (well, there’s one place that sounds very expensive) and we wouldn’t want to do the hike with our bags, anyway. So we might get a boat taxi or do one of the snorkeling day tours that they offer all around. It was great having a little secluded beach almost to ourselves for a couple of days, but we’re looking forward to being in a more populated area now, too.

We have our plane tickets all taken care of for Italy (Thanks Laura!). We fly out of Bangkok on the 29th. I can’t wait to eat yummy Italian food! I’ve been hungry for pizza for a while now, but I’m holding out for the good stuff! We also got confirmation from Linden Tree Retreat about WWOOFing there for two months. So after Italy it’s off to Croatia and snow and work. After all of this sun and beach I think we’ll both be ready for it.

We’re off to look for our next bungalow and to do some serious lying around on the beach!

Bangkok, Thailand. We had a great day at Angkor Wat and around. We ended up only buying the one day pass ($20 each) and it was enough for us. We just get so bored with architecture and old stuff after a ... [Continue reading this entry]