Beaches, animals and food

Sorry for the radio silence, the wi-fi in our resort never revocered from another storm. Here's a post that's been waiting to go live:

Saturday was finally a lovely, sunny day after two windy and cloudy ones. We took advantage of it by going snorkeling at Haad Son beach, close to our bungalow. The visibility wasn’t super awesome and my new Pro Ear mask refuses to work properly even though I’ve shaved my hair around the ears to ensure that the silicone would stick to the skin and not let water in the ear cups. No luck so far, I think the mask might be too big and let the water in from the bottom of the ear cups and not from above the ear. Tomorrow I’ll try the dive shop’s smaller Pro Ear mask and see if there’s a difference. It’s really annoying to have to battle your mask all the time, so I hope I’ll get the situation sorted out. I did see a squid shooting by, though, and a sting ray hiding beneath a rock.  But I still don’t like snorkelling that much, it makes me claustrophobic and I feel like I’m drowning all the time… Bah.

More entertaining than the snorkeling trip was an animal encounter afterwards: we were sipping Chang in a restaurant, when suddenly a mouse fell down from the rafters on a pillow in front of us. Glancing upwards, we saw a thin, green-brown snake sliding toward what we took to be the mouse’s nest. And yes, a minute later, it started raining mice and snakes. Or just one of each, to be more exact. And then the snake promptly proceeded to squeeze the mouse to death and would have eaten it in front of our eyes, if the restaurant owner hadn’t started to poke it with a stick to try and kill it. The snake tried to make a last dash to safety with its prey, but then abandoned the mouse and slithered under the rocks to mope. Oh how I wish I’d had my camera with me, would have made awesome photos. Oh well, maybe next time, when a snake falls from the sky right in front of us…

We went and scouted out another beach as well, Haad Mae Haad, in the north-west tip of Koh Phangan, just next to the small island of Koh Ma. The beach itself was nice enough, and there were even some (quite a few, actually) tourists (most of them seemed German, Phangan seems to be really popular among them…). A word of warning, though: never eat at the restaurant at the end of the beach (nearest to Koh Ma): we ordered Pad Thai and got a sad pile of brownish noodles that didn’t taste much of anything, and a few pieces of chicken/prawns. Oh, and maybe two charred peanuts. Yay.

Haad Mae Haad and Koh Ma

Speaking of food (my favourite topic), it was quite a surprise to find that our resort, Tantawan, actually has the best food so far. And decent priced, good wine. Seems like choosing a French-owned resort paid off! Plus the restaurant is super pretty <3

 Seethrough bungalows also serves tasty dishes, although a bit more expensive because of the prime location on the beach. Apache restaurant is another one that we’ll avoid from now on: the currys yesterday were so incredibly spicy that not even S could finish his portion, let alone me… And the drinks weren’t very good either.

Even though it’s a hard climb up to our bungalow, we decided that we wanted to save us the hassle of moving our stuff somewhere else before the “final” move to our own apartment, so we booked the bungalow for 4 extra night with a small discount. An extra bonus to the resort is a cute pair of dogs, who seem to have taken a liking to us and sometimes follow us up to our bungalow to chill out on our balcony for a while.

Yesterday we did another dive trip with Haad Yao divers, this time they’re taking us to the east side of Koh Tao. And after the dives, we’ll go and sign the lease for our new apartment. Yay!

Ok, need to withdraw indoors, the rain storm you can see creeping in from the right in the picture below has reached us and the terrace is getting flooded. Until next time!