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Koh Tao Island

I just returned from a mini vacation with Sean and Pink, and now I am ready for a real vacation.

We decided, after much discussion of the many options of places to go and routes to take, on going to the Island of Koh Tao. Last year my son and I went to Koh Samed, and I had such a wonderful time snorkeling for the first time.

Since I knew we would be going to one of the islands again, I purchased a pair of underwater digital camera goggles, with 5 megapixels, which is the same size megapixel as my land camera. I was so excited about the possibility of getting some good underwater shots to show you just how amazing snorkeling is. I had envisioned a whole new section on my site dedicated to bright colorful underwater shots.

We decided on Koh Tao because of the beauty of the island and the fantastic snorkeling there.

Sunday, toting our luggage, we piled into a taxi and made a trial run to the airport. When we got to the window to check in, we realized we were a day early according to our internet reservations.

Oops. We grabbed another taxi and headed home, and tried to get over the disappointing blow of the start of our trip. We decided to look on the bright side, and acknowledge every time we saw something nice that would not have happened if we had been on our trip already. It also gave us time to grab those last minute things we had forgotten but remembered when we were standing in line waiting to find out we were a day early.

The next day, Monday, we officially began our trip.

Our first leg of the trip was to fly into Bangkok. Easy, a one hour flight. From there we would take a taxi to the bus station across town, maybe another 45 minutes.

The bus would be leaving in 4 hours, so we had time to walk around the market area, have a bite to eat, before boarding our bus.

The bus was an all nighter, leaving at 9:00 pm, arriving at the boat docks at 6:00 am. We were told that the seats were very comfortable and reclined for a comfortable sleep.

Not quite true, we found out. The seats slightly reclined, not much leg room, quite uncomfortable for an all night ride actually. But we survived.

Finally our boat arrived, and we were quite excited to finally be heading to the island, and looking forward to hitting our beds for a nap.

Well, the weather was not the greatest, so the ride was a little rocky. No, it was actually quite turbulent. The ship was swaying side to side, half the passengers were seasick.

I was on the upper deck, out in the open area, taking photos of a beautiful sunrise that I will upload someday, when the waters started getting rough, tossing us around on the deck. Trying to get back to a seat I was thrown into the lap of some poor unsuspecting guy, and managed to crawl off his lap onto my own seat and hang on for dear life.

I felt as if I was on an amusement park ride, except it lasted a little longer, about 85 minutes longer than your average 5 minute ride. It reminded me of when I was young and my grandmother would take us to amusement parks, and I would get on a ride, and immediately regret it, and every time we would go by the ride operator I would scream out “stop the ride! I want to get off!”. Of course they never listened, and I would have to sit through the whole ride.

While I was upstairs hanging on for dear life, Sean and Pink were down below, and the motion unfortunately got Pink sick.

When we pulled into shore, things started going a little more smoothly. A truck from our hotel was there waiting to pick us up, and we quickly got settled into our room and hit the beds.

Our hotel was on the southern tip of the island, facing Chalok Baan Kao Bay. The water was not the same brilliant color as it had been on Koh Samed, and it was a lot colder. Hmm. There went my dreams of floating on the warm turquoise waters taking wonderful underwater shots to share with you.

We did have a nice time, even though we were not able to do any snorkeling. The weather was too rough and it seemed a bad time of year to try to do any snorkeling. Sean went out one day and tried out the camera, but there was not much to see, and the water was not clear enough to really test the camera.

Being on an island can be a little frustrating. I wanted to get as many photos of the island as I could, but travel is difficult and expensive. One day we decided to spend the day exploring other beaches. At first we thought about renting ATV’s and exploring on our own. I test drove one to see if I could handle riding one, and the unanimous decision was we better take a taxi. The roads are extremely steep, part sandy gravel, paved here and there.

After a relaxing day at the beautiful beach, we decided to walk back to our hotel. It only required us to hike over two mountains. Straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down and home. It was an interesting walk, I thought about the show Lost, and how physical that show is for the actors, they earn every penny they make.

After a very long 25 hours, I am once again back in the comfort of my home in Chiang Mai. I will not bore you with details of the ride home. Let’s just say the boat ride back was a little smoother, as for the rest of it, looooong.

Would I ever do it again? Never in a million years. Does that affect my desire to travel? Not in the least. I just know now what kind of transportation I enjoy, and what to stay away from. I want to be in a bed somewhere at night, and not traveling if possible. I would rather take a day bus and see the scenery than a night bus where I can’t get comfortable.

One good thing on the trip I finished reading Dreams from My Father, President Barack Obama’s fascinating book. I had hoped to finish it before the inauguration. I am so excited about Obama, and what he brings to this country.

I supported Obama for several reason, first being he is the most intelligent and honorable man I have seen in my lifetime, and secondly I trust that he will surround himself with equally capable people, which gives this country the best shot at moving forward to where this country needs to be.

Obama inspires me, and I am taking that inspiration and using it to make changes in my life. I have decided to write in my bog on a more regular basis. Often I have stories to tell, but get bogged down with getting the photos ready and uploaded to go with the stories. So I have decided to makes some blogs without photos, maybe I will add them later after I have uploaded them to the site and have access to them.

Eventually I will have all of my photos uploaded. But it may be awhile. I am in the process of designing yet a new site, one that will eventually replace this one. It has a new format, I am separating the images into different categories, adding new features, with a larger size image for the bigger screens out there.

Which means I have had to go through all of my images, find the originals, so I can create the new size. I am also being more selective of which photos I will post, and have found many new images to add in the process.

Upon returning home we discovered the monsoon season, which usually ends around the new year, had been late in ending. The changes on the island were very apparent to Sean and Pink, who had visited there before. The sandy beaches were gone, the water was quite high. Another example of the effects of global warming.

So, after resting a few days and recuperating from my mini vacation, I will get back to working on the new site. In the meantime, I will continue to add new blogs to this site.






Digital Images 
by ccdeleo
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