By the dock of the pond, Turtle Island

I guess timing might be useful for framing this story. At this point, we had been in Southeast Asia for more than a month. On March 9th, we took a bus from Siem Reap to the Thai/Cambodian border, then a mini-van to Bangkok (I remember this being a very cramped ride), then a taxi to the train station, a train to Chumpong, a ferry to Ko Tao, and a taxi to Sairee Beach. Did I miss any forms of transportation? It was a long journey—we were coming from Cambodia, all the way west and then south down the Thai peninsula to one of the first islands in the Gulf of Thailand. When we got off the mini-van in Bangkok, it was interesting to be back in the city. The place we had stayed originally was near the train station, so we were familiar with the area and ended up eating at Hong Kong Noodle, where we had begun our adventures. We met up with two guys from Slovenia (if I remember correctly) and shared some of the transportation costs with them. The train was an overnight train, and it was freezing cold aboard. The passenger next to me was snoring so it was hard for me to sleep. (I’m not sure why Malone and I never seemed to be able to sit together.) The ferry ride is tied with the bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vientiane for worst travel. I took Dramamine before we got on the ferry, and I was fine for the first hour or so, but I then proceeded to throw up four times. Malone beat me—she threw up six times. We later found out that this ferry ride took place right after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan—perhaps the rough waters were a result of the earth’s activity there.

In any case, we made it alive to Ko Tao, “Turtle Island.” We found a place to stay at The Wind Resort, right on the beach. We soon learned that everything on the island was almost twice as expensive as on the mainland. That was still fairly cheap, but we were on a budget at this point. When we checked in, we took showers and naps (it had been a rough night), then woke up and had lunch downstairs and read on the beach in the late afternoon sun. The bay at Sairee Beach was calm and blue, with longtail boats in reds and yellows and blues and greens anchored close to shore. There were tree-covered mountains to either side of the short but pleasant beach. Lazy dogs slept in the sand next to us, and restaurants and dive shops lined the beach. Women walked up and down the beach selling sarongs and jewelry. As the sun set, we walked along the beach to find the best deal for a snorkeling trip for the following day, but we ended up booking one through our guest house for 650 baht (about $20). Dinner that night was sweet and sour tofu with tomato, onion, and pineapple. I didn’t take pictures of the food I ate while in Asia, but apparently I made pretty good notes in my journal!

The next morning, we had finally recovered from our travels. However, we carefully chose our breakfast, hoping it wouldn’t later end up as fish food. We were taxied to the main beach, Mae Hat, to get on our snorkeling boat. The sea didn’t seem as rocky as the day before, and we managed to avoid getting sick the whole day, though we did feel queasy at times. For some reason, we had the top deck of the boat to ourselves. There were too many waves to anchor at Shark Bay, one of the best snorkeling spots, so we stopped nearby instead. I didn’t realize that we weren’t at Shark Bay, however, and I brought my camera into the water to get some great shark pictures, but it was at this point that my camera met its doom. I had tested out the underwater camera case the night before and everything had been fine, but within three seconds of entering the water, the case was completely filled. Back on deck, I failed to revive my little green camera, may she rest in peace. To top it all off, as soon as I re-entered the water, I immediately saw a black tip reef shark. I didn’t follow it because I thought there would be many more, but I didn’t see another one all day!

We stopped at four different reefs to snorkel. The last two, Mango Bay and Japanese Gardens, were more spectacular than the first two. The visibility was poor because the water was so choppy, and many of the corals were dead, but I did see some living corals, colorful Christmas tree worms, sea cucumbers and sea needles, parrotfish, rabbitfish, and wrasses. I also saw blue sea anemones with small anemone fish hiding inside. All of the reefs were clustered against the rocky shores of the island, and though I had been expecting more beauty and life and diversity, I did get a splash of the wonders I had seen at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

The rest of the boat got off at a small island for a few hours, but since Malone and I hadn’t bothered to bring along the 100 baht landing fee, we stayed on the top deck of the boat, eating the lemon cookies, watermelon, and pineapple that was provided. I swam and snorkeled for a little bit, but back aboard the boat, Malone spotted a young male green sea turtle coming up for breath. If anything was going to brighten up my day after ruining my camera, this was it. But it would have been so nice to take a picture—he was so close to our boat! Ah, well. I had more sea turtles in my near future. That was it for us at Ko Tao. It was a rainy evening and we knew we couldn’t afford the island lifestyle, so back to the mainland it was! Plus, I had mysterious itchy spots appearing on my stomach and back...