Leaving Thailand...

We are currently in Koh Samui, spending our last night in Thailand before we fly to Cambodia tomorrow. While we are both excited to start traveling again, we’re not quite ready to leave paradise. We spent the last 10 days on Kao Tao, a small island north of Koh Phangan. Upon arrival we were met by Sebastion, Matt’s dive instructor, who showed us around and invited us to dinner that evening. We met the rest of the dive group over dinner and had a great night. There was a large group from Poland and a few others from Germany and Sweden who were staying at the same resort and taking dive courses.

Matt completed his advanced dive certification as well as his rescue diver and emergency first response course. We spent most of our free time with our new friends from Poland and Sweden. It was a great end to our time in Thailand, lazy beach days and steak/fish barbeque every night. We’re really going to miss it here but we’ll be back soon to meet Matt’s Mom in Krabi in March.
Our next post will be from Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Koh Phangan

We arrived in Koh Phangan on February 1st and we stayed at a beautiful resort named Sarikantany on Leela Beach. It has beautiful bungalows, great restaurant, beach-side pool and a big screen TV room with unlimited DVDs (most movies still playing in theatres). Leela has a beautiful stretch of beach and is extremely quiet in comparison to the beach next door named Haad Rin; the party beach known for their full moon parties, buckets and DJ’s. It was nice to be able to walk to Haad Rin to party on the beach but come back to the peace and quiet of Leela. Our friend Josh flew out from China to spend some time with us again. We had a great time, probably too much of a good time as there were a couple of days spent recuperating from the night before. We met a lot of other travelers from all parts of the world and had a great 2 weeks there. Below is the dog we've been hanging out with; he has a lot of personality and likes to chill at the beach during the day.

It was hard to leave the comforts of Sarikantany but with Koh Phangan being so large, we wanted to spend some time on the other side of the island. We decided to come to Mae Haad Cove, an hours drive from Leela Beach, which is in a marine park and known for its snorkeling/diving sites. There is a coral reef just 150 meters offshore and if you simply stick your head in the water on the beach, you’ll see hundreds of fish. There is also an island called Ko Ma which is just a short walk along a sandbar which connects it to Koh Phangan, depending on the tide you may be walking through water. We’ve been extremely lazy for the most part, spending our days on the beach or lounging on our deck. We walked 2.5 km to town yesterday to use the ATM and stop at the store which we considered to be an extremely productive day.

I’m not sure how long we will spend in Mae Haad Cove, maybe just a couple more days and then move on to Koh Tao for a week. Then we’ll more than likely spend our last week in Koh Samui. We are now down to our last 2 weeks in the Thai islands and it will be hard for us to leave. We are both ready to start “traveling” again though and we’ve booked our flight from Koh Samui to Siam Reap, Cambodia for February 29th (when our visa for Thailand expires). We’ll more than likely spend a couple of weeks in Cambodia, traveling through the entire country and then moving on into Vietnam.

Similan Islands

We’ve arrived in Koh Pha Ngan after spending 5 nights in Khao Lak; our jumping off point for the Similan Islands. The Similan Islands are about 50 km from Khao Lak and consist of nine islands with beautiful beaches of fine talcum powder-like sand and great snorkeling/diving. We spent the first day snorkeling off of Ba-Ngu Island, then on to Koh Miang to spend some time on the beach and Koh Payu before heading back to Khao Lak. We saw the most beautiful fish at the first spot, schools of brightly colored damsel, trigger, parrot and unicorn fish. The boat crew were excellent, always offering snacks and beverages and helping us with our things.

The following day Matt went diving at “West of Eden” and “Elephant Head”. The Similans are famous for their many dive sites and are rated one of the top 10 scuba diving spots in the world. It has 2 different types of diving; the east side consists of gently sloping coral reefs with sandy patches and the occasional boulder in between while the west side is known for its huge underwater granite boulders and numerous swimthroughs. Elephant head rock is a famous spot with a maze of swimthroughs and the reputation for spin-cycle like currents running in every direction.


Matt saw sea turtles, box fish, grey tip reef sharks, scorpion fish, stone fish, large bright parrot fish, a giant barracuda and a large morrey eel named Emma which comes out when divers approach as she is so used to being fed (one diver recently lost a finger when he came too close and pointed at it). Matt also saw a clown trigger fish which is shown here, not from our camera though as it couldn’t go below 15m..

On our last day in Khao Lak we had to do a visa run to Burma; which would allow us to stay another 30 days in Thailand. We have 10 days left on our existing stamp but since we are heading to the Gulf of Thailand which isn’t close to any border crossing, we decided to just go 3 hours north to cross the border in Burma before we left. Our bus was due to leave at 8am and we woke up in a panic at exactly 7:57. Luckily, everything in Thailand runs a little late and we were on our way at 8:15. It was a full day with a three hour drive to Ranong where we officially departed Thailand, took a longtail boat into Burma, stamped our passport on arrival, then back on the boat to Ranong to stamp our arrival into Thailand. We arrived back to our hotel at 5pm, had dinner and called it an early night as we had to travel to Koh Pha Ngan the following day.

Traveling to Koh Pha Ngan was long process, everything is organized under one ticket from point to point (mini-bus/transfers/ferry/etc) which makes it extremely easy but it was a long day. We left at 8am and didn’t arrive here until 10pm. What can you do though, we’ve arrived and it’s absolutely beautiful. We have nothing to complain about! Koh Pha Ngan is a large island very close to Koh Samui; known for their full moon parties on Haad Rin beach. We are staying on Leela Beach; quiet and peaceful but a short walk to Haad Rin. Our friend Josh is back out here visiting from China and we may have a few other friends coming here as well. We may stay here for a month but may move to the quiet end of the island after a week in the party atmosphere. Koh Pha Ngan is dotted with picturesque beaches and bays on all sides of the island so we may just rent a house for a month while Matt does his dive master course. The diving/snorkeling here is supposed to be great; mainly around Koh Pha Ngan and Ko Tao.