After our amazing day 2, and given that the next day was our Sabbath, we decided to simply have a slow morning and a day at the beach together. Turns out, this was my daughter’s favorite day. We did a little simple snorkeling, but mostly just relaxing on the beach, the kids building endless sand creations, and swimming in the 85 degree water. Grandma and I did find a few crabs while snorkeling and one fish that followed us around for a good 30 minutes. I think her name was Dory.
When we got back to our hotel, Grandma found this amazing flower close to our house:
Day 4
Because hotels were booked around Christmas day, we had to book our last day on a hotel on the other side of the island, so we packed up everything the night before and made an early departure for our hotel and adventure for the day: snorkeling at 4 islands!
After the hour drive around the island, we arrived at the pier. We piled onto our large boat and set sail for a 90 minute ride out to our first snorkeling shop. It was fairly windy and cold and cloudy, but by the time we reached our first stop, the skies had cleared and warmed up considerably.
I was really proud of my kids. They all jumped into the ocean and went snorkeling with me. Even our 4 year old hopped on my back and would plunge his little face into the water while I swam around…occasionally giving me a thumbs up at what he saw. My daughter hooked arms with me and we’d point things out to each other over and over. There were hundreds of tropical fish to see. For this Dad, it was heaven on earth.
After the first stop, they fed us lunch and ferried us to another little island for snorkeling. 4 islands in all, with 2 meals, and 2 of the islands we could get off and walk around the beach and explore as well. All of this for $16 / person. Got to love Thailand. This was my favorite day there (if not in Thailand so far!).
All of us sat on the top of the boat (literally the roof) for the last hour. It was a beautiful view as we came back to the main island:
We did some Christmas shopping at the pier and then went back to the new hotel for a fall-in-your-bed night’s sleep.
Day 5
We woke up pretty early and had a great breakfast (at the bakery, of course). We repacked the car and started our long drive back to Bangkok. We were all a bit sad to say good-bye to our great island trip, but I was going to be OK without having to drive those crazy roads any more. I did get pulled over by a police officer on our drive back. He said I was driving in the right lane, and that in Thailand, you can only do that if you’re passing (even though we saw 100s of Thais doing the same thing). I’ve been told before that falangs are targeted by police for trivial things, and this was no exception. He told us he could write me a ticket and I’d have to come back to the office in this nowhere town to pay it, or just pay him (implying he’d pay it for us). He was all too happy to take our money.
3 cheers for a wonderful Christmas vacation in paradise! If you’re coming to Thailand, I highly recommend Koh Chang (or one of its sister locations).
No comments:
Post a Comment