Spring Break Vacation to Thailand Part IV

On Wednesday morning (March 25) we woke up at 5:45 and got dressed.  Our driver picked us up at 6:15 and we drove to the East side of the island to go on our "Captain Mark Phuket Sail Tour."  We arrived at the office and had a light breakfast and chose our swim fins and life jackets for the kids and paid the balance of what we owed for the tour.  Then we walked out the dock (a long way since it was low tide) to our speed boat.  We were on the tour with four teenagers from Singapore, a young American couple from the Bay Area, and two families from Indonesia who had children.  Our crew consisted of the boat captain/driver, our guide "Captain Jack", the anchor man, and a girl who helped with everything.

Choosing our fins.

Loading onto the boat.

Heading out to sea.  The man in the back was the anchor man.  He crawled along the outside of the boat to adjust things as we were going.  Impressive!

Traveling is tiring.

Once we were on board we headed out to the Phi Phi (pronounced Pee-Pee) islands which were about an hour away.  The sea was quite rough, so it was an exciting ride.  Our first stop was the bay where the movie "The Beach" was filmed in 1999. Prior to the filming the beach was covered in garbage.  The film company brought in a tractor and a barge and cleaned it up.  Now it is a national park and is a popular tourist destination.  We anchored at the shore and waded in and spent about half an hour.  The kids loved picking up the pieces of coral that were washed up on the beach.

The Phi Phi islands are beautiful.

At the beach.  THE BEACH! The beach?

Plenty of beach and plenty of tourists out for the day.

Searching for coral.

Yulia wasn't sure I was having fun.  I enjoyed sitting in the shade!

Sophie digging in the sand.

Next we went to a nice little inlet and jumped off the boat to swim in the ocean. The girls and I all jumped in.  The girls all wore their life jackets and were quite brave.  Lina jumped multiple times.  Yulia was the only one who didn't dare jump in.  Not having a shore to swim to made her nervous. After about twenty minutes or so, we went to our next location - the Viking cave. This is cave where the birds that make the nests for birds' nest soup live.  We could only see the entrance of the cave and not go in, since it is privately owned. We made a quick stop at "monkey beach" but it was very crowded and our tour doesn't let us get out on the beach because of monkey troubles in the past.  Yulia got a glimpse of the monkeys, but the girls didn't.  I didn't even look.

Lina preparing to jump!

Papa with the girls swimming in the cove.

The twins got out and were given some fruit to snack on.  

Papa loves swimming in the ocean.  The water was the perfect temperature and beautiful.

Lina leaping from the boat - she went about five times.

Viking cave.  You can see the scaffolding to recover nests in the background.

More view of the islands.

Some monkeys on the shore.

Our next stop was snorkeling.  We moored off of a reef and the guides through bits of fruit into the water to attract the fish.  They were mostly zebra fish although I saw some sea urchins and other larger fish.  Everyone snorkeled.  Lexa only lasted for about a minute before she panicked about her mask and snorkel.  We snorkeled for about thirty minutes and then went to a cafe for lunch.  Lunch was nice Thai food - mostly different kinds of curry and rice.

Getting ready to snorkel.

Getting geared up!

Snorkeling.  You can see all the zebra fish that came for fruit!

Lunch!

Finding more shells after lunch.

Our last stop was at Bamboo island to spend about an hour swimming in the ocean and playing on the beach.  It was nice and quiet and relaxing.  After loading up, we headed back to Phuket.  The sea was still choppy, but we were more used to it.  The kids all fell asleep on the way.  When we arrived we unloaded, washed up, and got on the van to bring us back to the hotel.  The kids wanted to swim for awhile, so they did that while Yulia showered, and then she washed them.  We ate dinner at "The Coffee Club." They are more of a cafe and had American and Thai dishes.  We had a mix of things.  It was the quickest service that we've had, and the price was comparable to the Thai Cafe we've been going to.

Swimming on bamboo island! 

A view from the beach at Bamboo Island.

We let the girls stay up late to watch a movie after we got back from dinner. I did a bit of work and Yulia crashed.  We all had a great time, and I fell in love with snorkeling and swimming in the ocean.  It was a great day.