I am jet lagged so up at 3 am. Cocolicooo!
We just got back from Thailand, Koh Lanta Yai to be precise. We stayed at a beautiful hotel – Rawi Warin, with a frangipani garden, lily ponds with fish and our very own water monitor lizard. But the fun part was a tuk-tuk ride down to Klong Nin – a beautiful beach, where everything was happening…..on the beach. Young people lived on the beach in bungalows, rolled out, had breakfast on the beach, suntanning, swimming, eating lunch, more suntanning and swimming, free yoga at sunset, beer at sunset on the beach, and then the chill out continued on the beach, reggae bars, rasta people, cocktail bars, restaurants had cushions, tables and candles out on the sand. Smashing!
My daughter was running on the shore day and evening, happily jumping in the sea with her best dresses on, and then running around naked when they got dirty. Was not even bothered by the mosquitoes too much. She kicked around balls and sand castles, was unafraid and free.
The food was delicious, I could not get enough of prawns, tiger prawns, giant prawns, tuna, red snapper, veggies in oyster or garlic and pepper sauce, curries (I liked massaman curry best), pineapple, mango, papaya, red apple, lots of watermelon juice. The Thai people – smiling and service minded, joking a lot. We talked to other travelers as well, Dana was running and talking to people or wanted to play with them if they were playing something fun. So I chatted with an American girl who has been traveling alone for one month in Vietnam, a black voodoo woman who sprayed Dana’s foot with some liquid when she tripped on the stairs, a Danish couple with a baby girl, which Dana cooed over plenty.
We went snorkeling to Koh Haa and then Koh Mok and the Emerald cave. We saw parrot fish (long nosed one and surf one), angel fish, banner fish, butterfly fish, beaked coral fish, java rabbitfish, golden rabbitfish, moon wrasse, box fish, dragon fish, gobies, surgeon fish, trumpet fish (yellow and brown), trigger fish, porcupine fish, sergeant majors, anemone fish, snapper, eels, blue stars, cuttle fish, seal puffer fish ( the cutest!:), huge mussels with purple flesh, corals, crabs, you name it. Such a rich sea life, and though exhausting to swim around for hours, it was marvellous!
The Emerald cave (Morakot cave) itself was a tunnel of 80 meters, where you swim to get out into a lagoon and see the cliffs towering above you, with a patch of blue sky in a perfect circle – it was like standing at the bottom of a vulcano. Pirates hid their treasures there, swallows are nesting on the cliffs, and are unfortunately being robbed of their nests because of a precious delicacy market. We passed with the boat by a cliff with dog bats asleep in the sunshine, fluttering their bat wings with the wind. Looking at those huge limestone rocky islands, I imagined how thousands of years ago they were coral reefs at the bottom of the Andaman sea.
We are back now, Stockholm is cold and snowy, but not too bad – it is a our home and I love it. Occasionally, in my dreams though, I sit in the sun and watch the palm trees sway by the beach, swim with my goggles on and the waves push at my back gently.
The Passions of EkaLars 