Snorkelling Tour Around Koh Tao

Up at 7:00, got my laundry, then walked to Chalok Baan and had breakfast at a cafe, then waited for the snorkelling pickup at the travel agent.

I got to the AC Tours office and got my snorkelling equipment. This tour is run by Philip, an English guy who's been living on Koh Tao for more than a decade. There's about 24 of us on the tour, 15 or so tourists and a bunch of Thai's. Apparently it's a Thai holiday today, so the Thai's are out in full force. We got to the "big" boat and our first stop was Shark Bay to see black-tipped reef sharks. I saw a few of them, including one 5-6 feet. Then we made three other stops (Au Leuk, Mango Bay and another one I can't remember), then to Nangyuan Island, a national park. It's actually three separate islands connected by a sandy spit of white sand. Of course, there's a resort there, and a restaurant and stuff, and it's chock full of tourists, but still very spectacular. I climbed up to a viewpoint for a great view of the island and the sand spit. We also got lunch served to us after our second snorkelling stop, rice and chicken, plain, but tasty.

When we got to the AC Tours office and walked to the beach, there was a very friendly dog that liked to run out into the ocean, get all wet, then come back and rub against everyone or shake himself near everyone. Then he would run back out into the ocean, swim around, then roll around in the sand get covered in sand, then wanted to be friendly with us again. It was pretty funny. If he spotted a plastic bottle floating in the ocean, he's swim out and get it and bring it back to shore.

I didn't like the boat, however. It was too small, compared to all the other boats doing similar snorkelling trips around the island. This boat was just a single deck, and hard to maneuver around, not much space, because of the people. All the other snorkelling boats were quite a bit bigger, and had an upper sundeck on them as well. Oh well, next time I'll know.

Got back to the hut about 5:00, chatted with Carolina and Fredericko and wrote in journal.

Around 6:30, walked to Sairee beach and had a fish BBQ at one of the big restaurants that line the beach and watched a football (soccer) match with all the Brits in the restaurant. Of course, they all cheered or jeered when goals were scored.

Walked along the beach to see if any big parties were happening (no), but a number of mellow beach bars had customers. Then walked by Whitening, a bar we went to five years ago, where Anna (a Brit girl we were travelling with for a bit at the time) passed out on the sand. We had tried to wake her up to come back with us, but she wasn't interested, so we left her.

Walked back to the hut, stopped at Bubaloo for a couple of Singha's and watched an excellent fire show, then back to the hut about 11:30.