The beach

Ahh the last 6 or 7 days or so since the last update have been great. First we went on a trip to Ang Thong Marine Park where we did some snorkelling and Kayaking around a lovely little group of islands. Then we shifted house and came to Koh Pha-ngan and found a really superb little beach called Hat Yao on the North Western side of the island. We got a room for 200 baht (around $8) per night, right by the beach. The beach itself is really cool - it has a little reef that anytime apart from a couple of hours either side of high tide, protects it from any waves etc. So during the day you get heaps of people just sitting and playing in the calm shallow water. They make most of their money from the restaurant so meals were an extortionate 50-60 baht (around $2) from the 30 odd we were paying on the mainland. So after sitting in the nice calm warm water (just rubbing it in for the NZers reading this :), we decided to do our diving course there, so we signed on the dotted line and the next day we started. After 3 days we did two dives at "Sail rock" - a rock in the middle of the ocean that just rises vertically from the bottom and therefore makes great diving. The water was a crazy 29-30 degrees which made diving really quite pleasant. It was really nice to get down and see what had only tempted us when we were snorkelling. We saw a moray eel amoungst many other fasinating things. Apon completing our course we had a massage to congradulate ourselves - we really should have tried it earlier! We both had "Thai massages" which is where they push and pull your entire body to leave you feeling pretty relaxed at the end of the 1 1/2 hour session! Yesterday we decided we had had enough of the strenous stuff and had a lazy day sitting around on our lovely beach. We did some more snorkelling and also had another massage as we really enjoyed the one the day before! Today we are heading off reluctantly to Koh Tao that we're now just using as a stepping stone on our way north to Bangkok. We'll probably stay one night in Chumphon on the coast and then get a night train north the following night. Now we feel like we've had a honeymoon...