Rafted Up

I got up this morning at 6.00 to try to get a photo of the sunrise. Unfortunately, the sun rises here behind a massive hill, so it had already been above the horizon for at least half an hour before I saw it. The clouds weren't the brilliant colours they can be at sunrise! I will have to try when we get back to Koh Samui!

The bungalow is quite cool inside with the air conditioning on and the outside is quite warm, even first thing in the morning. I am finding that when I first go out in the morning the camera lens fogs up because of the huge change in temperature. I have to wait for about 10 minutes for it to acclimatise! Bit annoying if there is something right then that I want to photograph!

We relaxed this morning by the pool, swimming and reading. Our snorkelling tour left at 11. There were eight of us on the tour which was a nice number, not too many. We went to two snorkelling spots where the water was heaps clearer than at Anthong National Park. The water was also deeper and had a few more varieties of fish. The coral was a bit disappointing; most of it was dead so not very colourful.

The tours that are run over here are completely different to those in Australia! The guide doesn't really give you any information about what you are doing or when or where. They don't come with you to see any of the sights, like waterfalls or temples, you sort of have to find them yourself and get no history to explain them!

I have developed either a heat rash or an irritation to the massage oil which was mixed with sand from my massage last night! I am itchy all over with little red lumps! Not very appealing and very annoying!! I have powdered myself up with some Prickly Heat powder and it has helped a little bit! No more massages for me!

We have our last full day here on Koh Phangan tomorrow and have nothing booked! It will hopefully be a day of relaxing, swimming, reading and maybe a kayak!

There are a lot of fishing boats around here. I'm not sure how much fishing they actually do because we have seen a lot of them anchored in the bays all rafted up together. There were six this morning in the water in front of our bungalow side by side and we saw a lot more on our tour today.

Today's blip is of one of the groups that we saw, thirteen boats in a row anchored together in the middle of the bay! I took it from our boat as it was going along with zoom so it?s not as clear as I wanted! I have cropped it and used the 'I feel lucky' button in Picasa to adjust the light and shadows.