Cliff Jumping and Shark Swim

Got up about 7:00. I've stayed in a lot of guest houses and dormitories in my life, and The Rock Backpacker has to rank near the top of being the worst. The dorm was super hot, fans don't work, it's packed the rafters with backpackers, the mattresses are superbly uncomfortable, the pillows are hard and sweat inducing. And in the morning, the toilets were something else. I had a hard time trying to find one that wasn't overflowing with poop or something else. I decided I had to move to another place, even though I booked for two nights here.

Erin, Shabana, Courtney, Chris and James were coming today too, and I told them I'd book something at The Rock, but after last nights experience, that'll be a no.

Hooked up with my parents, and had breakfast, then went in search of new accomodations. Tried Anita Guest House, which are beach huts, they had two available, but when they went to show me, they were both locked, and they didn't have keys for them. So much for that. Kept looking, and found Oasis Guest House, nice, large rooms, and they had three rooms available, so I booked them all.

Then pretty much waited for everyone to arrive. I didn't know what boat they were on, so my plan was to go to the pier whenever a boat from Phuket was scheduled to arrive. They weren't on the first boat, then my parents and I decided to find a place to have lunch. They were just getting ready for their boat+bus trip back to Bangkok. As we were looking for a restaurant, we ran into all of them (except Rob and Colleen). I guided them to the Oasis and took Tahnie and Sterling to the PP Casita. Then we booked a cliff jumping and shark swim tour for later in the afternoon.

We just hung out, then went on our tour. It was on a long tail boat, we first stopped at Monkey Beach, but no monkeys around, so headed on to the cliff jumping area. Holy cow, the cliff jumping was fun and soooooo terrifying! We did three jumps, first from 8 metres, the second from 12 metres, the third from 14 metres (45 feet!). Shabana chickened out on the 8 metre jump, Courtney almost didn't do it. She'd get to the edge, then get scared and back off. She eventually did jump, but only when Chris jumped with her. 14 metres was terrifying. I didn't know if I could do it, but I did. Our guide also had a video camera and video taped us jumping.

AFter cliff jumping, we went to Shark Point and snorkelled and saw plenty of black-tip reef sharks, some fairly large as well. After that, we went to Maya Beach (The Beach beach) and hung out there for a while. Then we watched the sunset on a choppy ocean. Once we got back to the tour office, we watched the video our guide made for us, it was awesome. We ordered a copy.

We ran into Rob and Colleen and Tahnie and Sterling and James, had supper and a beer tower at a pub. Erin and Chris then booked a PADI Open Water dive course for tomorrow.

Courtney, Chris, me, James and Erin walked to the beach and stopped at a beach restaurant and had a bite to eat and a drink. Erin, James and me started on buckets. Holy cow, they are potent. Courtney and Chris went home, and the three of us partied with our buckets. We each had two buckets throughout the night.

One of the bars had a fire show (which I tried, and got my pants all black and sooty). Erin was doing backflips on the sand and a local wanted Erin to teach him how to do that. He was totally playing her, I think.

I left the beach at 1:30am, I was wiped and getting tired. I told Erin I was going, but she wasn't ready to quit yet, so she stayed out, as did James.