Our new friends at Sea Fa Diving took us out on what we are sure is
the best diving and snorkeling trip around. Their boat was easily the
best for the job (the others were either huge and packed or smoky) and
the snorkeling spots they took us to were breathtaking.

We really didn’t miss the fact that we weren’t able to dive down as
the visibility was superb. We saw gazzilions of colourful fish, bright
blue starfish, moray eels, jelly fish, barracuda, tuna, shoals of
thousands of tiny fish and…at least 10 black tip sharks! Yay!

Photo below is of the utterly ruined beach from the film, ‘The Beach’.
We went past for photos but thankfully wasted no time there.

Today we pretty much did nothing. It was great!

Tomorrow will probably bring the same before we go on a snorkeling
trip on Friday to see some sharks. We have been assured they are
perfectly safe and a guide will be with us the whole time.

Then it will be off to Koh Lanta for yet more beaches – tsk! The only
real downside is that we definitely preferred areas where the western
faces were outnumbered but hopefully Malaysia will prove less touristy
(and slightly cheaper).

Just a quick post as we have some free wifi with our drinks.

First of all Happy Birthday to Clare – hope you have a great day and
we’ll have to make up for our absence next year!

Also a big hello must go to Meg and Tim as today is one month to their
twins’ due date! Can’t wait for that but it’s going to be odd being
all this distance away.

No photo today as we’re getting far too lazy and we’re sure you’ll get
sick of endless beach pics!

P.S. RIP Doogie the cat 🙁

Woke up today with a plan to head along the coast to Railay beach and
then onto Ao Nang to find accommodation. As with all good plans it
fell at the first hurdle as the longtail boat prices from Krabi to
Railay have gone through the roof and the drivers are running a real
monoply. So we told them to get lost and got a very cheap bus to Ao
Nang. Unfortunately the prices there have also gone up a huge amount
(a theme of this region) and so we walked to the next beach, Nopparat
Thara. What greeted us was a much nicer quieter beach (below) with
much more palatable prices and lovely people. We found a bungalow at
Andaman Resort and made friends with their puppy called CoffeeMate!

With that done we were able to relax and launched ourselves into the
bathwater like sea which really helped us get over the annoyances of
the morning.

It’s looking like we will skip on the Phi Phi islands as they are
simply waaaay out of our budget and will head on to Koh Lanta next. I
think all the backpackers here are struggling as we’ve seen loads
desperately seeking accommodation and cheap food.

Our posts for the next week may be few and far between as wifi was non
existent when we checked in our next location, although we can pay a
tiny amount to use their computers if the threatened thunderstorms
emerge!