So at dinner last night the tour leader told me that I should sign up for a boat trip to some of the islands in the area. I hadn’t been talking to any of the other people on the tour, but I guess they all had agreed to go. Hearing that I had been left out, my first instinct was not to go on principle, but maturity got the better of me and signed up. I don’t usually talk too much about the people that I travel with for good reasons. So I’m not going to go into the idiosyncrasies of this group, but I will say that I am the outsider here. I’m the oldest, the only single man, and the only one that has traveled as much as I have.
We were picked up at the hotel and taken to huge staging area. There must have been over a thousand people all being formed up into groups to go to their respective boats. Our group was led to one of about thirty speedboats all moored along the bank of a river that fed into the sea. I took my seat up at the bow of the boat, and to be honest I think this was the perfect spot. I got to see the waves coming, got the wind in my hair, and got a great view of the islands. About the only thing bad about being in the bow was that it wasn’t covered so the sun was a problem. These boats are big, maybe 30 or 35 feet long, some hold up to about 25 people, but ours held less, maybe 20 or 15. They are speedboats too, we were flying along about 30 mpg, maybe faster, I know that that may not sound that fast, but on the open sea that is going very fast. The tour was to take us to four islands, two of the islands we were going to go snorkeling and/or swimming. One of the islands, Phe Phe (pee pee) we were to have lunch and kind of sightsee.
We did all that we were scheduled to do and the only thing that stood out was the snorkeling. I really like to snorkel. I don’t think that up until this vacation I’ve ever gone to a reef to snorkel, I’ve snorkeled on my own. This So far I think I’ve gone at least a two times, but maybe even more this summer, but this time was the best. There were lots of fish swimming around, the water was clear enough to actually see down to the bottom, where even bigger fish were. The second place we stopped was better than the first because of the “trained” fish. I guess they’re so used to being fed there, that they have no fear of people. I had my underwater camera out and the fish thought it was food, probably because of how I was holding it, but at one time they attacked it. The camera has been having some issues so I didn’t get all the video that I actually shot, but I did get some. The camera used to be pretty reliable, unfortunately something has happened and now it will turn itself off or even more frustrating is when you shoot some video and then stop, the video isn’t saved. So like I said, I’ve got some video, about 2 minutes of more than 30 that I actually filmed. I guess it’s better than nothing.
The day ended with me and almost everybody else I saw sunburned. I guess it’s expected being in the sun for that amount of time. I just didn’t realize how bad I got it until I went back to my room. We all used sunscreen too.
Dinner was good–pizza for me– I was just in the mood for something Western. Afterwards we all went out for beers/drinks at a nearby bar. It was fun, but I’ve got to admit I miss the attention that I used to get in Cambodia. I just don’t get it here.
