One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.
I couldn’t seem to get that Dr. Seuss line out of my head when we were snorkeling off of the Phi Phi Islands. It was truly the best snorkeling I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve snorkeled with the sea turtles in Barbados and at the Great Barrier Reef – plus Hunama Bay in Honolulu). The water here was so clear – an amazing turquoise color.
There were indeed red and blue fish plus everything in between. One of my favorites was the multi-colored fish (no idea of the name, but there were a decent size). These ones were yellow, green, blue and purple – really beautiful all mixed together.
I wasn’t too crazy about the Barracuda looking ones, but they didn’t come near us.
At one point, Curtis and I were holding hands in our underwater world and realized we were in the centre of a complete circle of small fish. Thousands of silvery fish were swimming around us – we were the eye of their whirlpool hurricane.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of our magical underwater experiences because our waterproof camera chose this day to go on the fritz. Hopefully we can get it fixed in Kuala Lumpur!
Tom took some pictures of our day on the speedboat tour which I’ll post later.
Besides swimming in the clear water and snorkeling at some amazing spots, we also visited the beach where the movie, The Beach, was filmed. We boated past a cave where they collent the nests for birds nest soup and drinks (something I will not be trying) and past a bunch of monkeys eating crabs in the trees on the shores of Monkey Bay.
I’d had enough of monkeys by then though, after we were almost attacked by some on a walk last week. We were at the beach here in Ao Nang, walking along a path up one of the cliffs (this spot is known for monkeys) and were carrying some small bananas and one pineapple on a stick (in a plastic wrapper). One of the monkeys approached and I handed him a banana. He ate it while one of his friends came down from the trees, looking for food. Curtis handed him a banana. We watched them eat (they make the most disgusting grunting sounds when they eat), and when “my” monkey was finished his, he reached out and grabbed my arm. I handed him another banana. When he finished that one, he reached out and grabbed my arm again. I broke off a small piece of the last banana I was holding and handed it to him. He threw it on the ground and grabbed my arm again.
This time I didn’t give him anything so he got down off the hand rail he was sitting on and half climbed, half reached up my body and stole the bag of pineapple I was holding. He took off and we watched him eat if up in a tree. When he was finished, he sniffed at his tail and licked off the pineapple juice.
That’s when we noticed a cute baby monkey swinging from tree to tree high up, getting closer and closer. We didn’t think anything of it at first, but then it was right above us and we realized it was aiming itself towards us. We walked away so it wouldn’t jump on our heads but it came down to the railing and started after us. We were out of food by this point but he obviously wasn’t aware of this fact, because he kept following us. Curtis tried to fend him off with a bag of books we were carrying but the monkey just reached out and tried to grab the bag. It followed us for several minutes before finally giving up.
On the walk back we found it eating a biscuit some other tourists had given it. They were snapping his picture while he ate and I warned them that he had chased us. These monkeys are cute from a distance but up close they are aggressive little bastards (bahstahds as one of the British girls said walking by). When they are grabbing at you and stealing stuff out of your hands or chasing after you…they are not so cute anymore.