Adventures of Track'n'Graz: 14/02/2010 Day trip around the islands

Got down to the wharf for a 9.30 start and hoped the boat would not be packed. Lucky us it wasn’t. So off we chugged. First stop was the Viking Cave. Well that’s a waste of time you can’t go into the cave as it is full of birds nests and they are worth around $2000 US a kilo. Plus it looks like crap as they have all these bamboo sticks stuck everywhere so don’t get excited about that. Next stop was Maya Bay. We could not go in for a beach landing as the boat was too big, so we got to go in from the back of the island. This involved anchoring the boat and snorkeling across to a wooden ladder up the side of the cliff and over the other side. This was probably better than Maya Bay as when we walked over to that side of the island to the beach there was thousands and I mean thousands of people on the beach. It was ridiculous. Plus it looked like an ad for speedboats. See the pics they were lined up. There was no room to swim on the beach because of all the parked boats. We found a spot down the end which was fine but once people saw us there they came in swarms. This would be a great beach if you could get there at daybreak and you might enjoy it for an hour. We then hiked back to the cliff and climbed up the old wooden ladder and did the return snorkel to the boat. Once we were all aboard the boat set sail. We headed over to another part of the island for some snorkeling over some coral. There were lots of lovely snorkeling stops including a stop on Bamboo Island where you can camp in the national park (tents included for 300 Baht). Maybe next time we will just stay there as it was a lovely beach and very secluded. As we were going from place to place we meet a lovely elderly couple from Denmark. Ole & Annie and spent a lot of time chatting to them about their travels. Both of them were widowers and they had been together about a year so at sunset they exchanged rings to signify their commitment to each other – it was just beautiful to witness this. It was a great way to finish the day, including conquering our fears and jumping of the top deck of the boat into to sea (it was about 10m high & you had to jump out over the deck below so it was pretty scary!) We also met Peter and Pen from Sweden on this trip. The crew were also having a good time drinking all the beer and the captain was pretty drunk by the end of the day. We actually ran out of beer and had to restock before we went back out to watch the sunset! Once they had stocked up the beers and kicked off the people that had not paid for the sunset trip. We headed back out between the islands to view the sunset. One drunken crew member had passed out and the rest were happily getting everybody to drink beer and jump off the boat. This was actually a fun but in hindsite probably pretty darn dangerous. Well we all made it back to shore and bid farewell to the drunken crew and our new friends. As we were pretty stuffed from a big day we cleaned up and hit the sack as we had to catch the ferry to Koh Lanta in the morning.