Day 7: Tropical Paradise

Our main reason for staying in Khao Lak was to go on a snorkeling trip to the nearby islands of the north Andaman sea. We decided on a day-trip to the little tropical paradise of Surin islands, costing about 50€. In Thailand this gets you about 8 hours on a 800HP powerboat, four snorkeling spots and sunbathing on the beach, all food and drinks complimentary.

What it doesn't bring you is access to corals which are actually alive. All the ground life was dead, possibly from a recent low-tide that burned them out, possibly from a recent explosion in the Crown-of-thorns starfish population, a couple of which could still be seen foraging. Thus the ground was pretty uninteresting except for a few anemones. The sea above was pretty impressive though, and we spent hours chasing sea turtles, black-tipped reef sharks, and thousands of multicolored finned beauties that would all fetch serious money in an aquarist's shop.

Around noon we had lunch on the beach then went on a "Seychelles" photo shoot with both Julies. This got us a few nice photos, at the very reasonable cost of almost dropping my camera in the water and earning a nasty gash on my left heel trying to regain footing on razor-sharp rocks. Luckily a very nice thai nurse was idling nearby ready to clean me up and bandage the wound.

Back at our hotel, we had fun comparing the various sunburn patterns on our respective back. Mine was a perfect frontal cut: a crisp vertical line could be seen running down my entire side. Had I been a salmon I could have posed for a tutorial on skin-side grilling.

I really should have known. In Hawaii I remember Rolando returning from a day of snorkeling with his back a shade of red so deep it would look unhealthy on a tomato. Snorkeling in the tropics should only ever be done with a long-sleeved t-shirt or a reef suit, and I'm supposed to know it. Idiot. Anyway, after a very uncomfortable shower, I had fun playing Operation on my foot, gamely extracting the couple grains of sands still stuck in the wounds before applying 3M strips and a new bandage. Then I lied down, on my stomach, and fell asleep almost immediately.