11-18-2008
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#51 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,871
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Monday morning we met at 6:30 AM to go to the Similan Islands for 2 days. Since the hotels don't offer breakfast that early Frank and Nina had promised to get up early and come to the dive shop with their coffee maker. They didn't come to the Similan Islands but we were very grateful that they provided us with good, strong coffee.
  Once arrived at the Similans (1,5 hours speedboat-trip after a 1.5 hours bus tour to the port) we got ready for our first dive. Did 3 dives that day. The first one was my 99th and the second one was my 100th dive.       During our 3rd dive it suddenly got very dark under water and it was pretty obvious that it had started to rain which turned out to be true when we came up. It rained for the rest of that day. The next morning it had stopped so that after the second dive of that day the weather was nice enough to take some pics of the islands.     And soon enough our two days on the boat were over and we had to go back. The next two pics were from the port where we descended from the speedboat. I LOVE the colours of Thailand.  
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11-19-2008
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#58 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,871
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Wednesday was my last day 'off'
 before we went to Khao Sok National Park and I had to go home. So in the morning when the sky was blue I went on a photo walk before breakfast.   All over Thailand you see those flags. The yellow ones are symbolizing the king as in Thailand each day has a different colour and King Bhumipol was born on a monday. The colour of monday is yellow.  His late sister was born on a tuesday though and the colour of tuesday is blue:  Don't know how many times I walked down that street. To the left was the dive center and my hotel was behind K.T. optic.  Spent the day on the beach and my intention was to go back to the temple with the demon in the afternoon since the light would have been better for pics but it started to get clouded so it didn't make sense to go there again. That day was Loy Kratong, the festival of lights. Here are all our Loy Kratongs:  Sweetie Max (Monique's 7 year old boy) posing with the Loy Kratong he had made at school.  Unfortunately it was raining hard before we went down to the beach as I heard that it must be an impressing sight to see thousands of Kratong lights swimming on the water (in towns away from the coast they put the Loy Kratongs on the rivers). Here are a couple of Loy Kratongs though.  Then people started to light the silk balloons to let them fly.  And this one is not really sharp but I wanted to let you participate a little bit in the atmosphere of that evening. We absolutely loved it. 
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11-19-2008
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#60 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,871
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The next morning we had to get up early again. Since Frank and Nina were coming with us and we had heard there there was not electricity at Khao Sok National Park they left their coffee maker in the hotel and we had to go without any decent coffee that morning...
 On the way to Khao Sok we had to drive through Khao Lak. This area of Thailand was the worst hit area from the Tsunami Christmas 2004. Back then I followed the news about that area closely since I had my first Thailand trip to the Khao Lak area booked for early Feb 2005 and it was cancelled (went to Playa instead). Today Khao Lak is a very lively area that has been completely rebuilt. It's no longer a quiet backpacker-area but luxury ressorts have been built so it has changed when it was rebuilt. There is one thing that is a permanent memory of the Tsunami though. It's this boat that has been taken inland about a mile by the two waves of the Tsunami. It had been in Khao Lak to protect the nephew of the Thai king who had been on vacation in the area back then. When the Tsunami hit he was out on his jetski. Both the nephew of the king and the guys working on that boat died. The boat is still where it had been taken by the tsunami: 1 mile inland.  We had to drive about 4 hours to arrive at the lake in Khao Sok National Park. Once there we had an about 30 minutes longtail boat ride. 'Soon', our guide, drove way too fast and soon we were wet to the skin. After about 15 minutes I was so COLD that I wasn't able to enjoy the magnificent landscape. I was only waiting for arriving at our ressort to change into dry clothes. Finally we made it and these are some of the bungalows:  This was part of the view from our bungalows...  Andy, Mark and myself had scheduled one dive in the lake and do you see the catfish? We saw lots of them. Sight in about 45 ft. depth was not good though.  Sight got better when we went up shortly before the end of the dive.  After diving we went canoeing. Frank had always been a big cano-er so when he shouted 'we have a problem' Monique didn't even blink and look back since she didn't believe him (he is a very old friend of hers). I was around though and was laughing when I saw Frank and Nina slowly sink into the water. Nina tried to save the beer but in vane.  Looks like the guys of the ressort had forgotten to close a hole in the canoe so it got full of water and sank in the end. Of course we saved them. Nina came into my canoe and Frank went over to Mark. But we had a good laugh about it.  This is one half of my 'bungalow'...  Except this bed and the moscito net there was NOTHING in my 'bungalow'.  This was our evening electricity...  Dinner......  And our huts when it was dark. You might notice that there is absolutely no light except the ones by the lights that were lighted by a generator. Unfortunately there were no stars that night. Monique and I jumped into the lake again at 9:30 PM. It was great. Really. A very unusual experience to stay in a place where you don't have electricity and water (except the lake) but for one night I absolutely loved it. 
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