An Underwater Report

Now to tell you about my favorite part of our vacation…the snorkeling trip.

The island of Phuket is surrounded by 120 smaller islands, as our tour guide for the day Jenny told us. Some of them simply look like rocks jutting up out of the ocean. When flew into Phuket, it was a clear day and seeing these islands was a site to behold. I tried to take some aerial shots on the plane as we left but it was too cloudy to get any clear shots. Anyways, the main stop on our snorkeling trip was to 2 of the more well known islands of Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Lei. When you see the pictures, you might recognize these islands from their movie fame in The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I have not seen the movie but now I might have to give it a watch to relive our trip. The Phi Phi Islands are about a 1 hour boat trip from the Royal Phuket Marina.

On our way out, we made our first stop just 15 minutes away on Koh Kai Nok or Fried Egg Island in English. It was named such because the island actually looks like a fried egg. It seemed like a lot of the islands were named after food. I guess there were some hungry sailors around. The boat dropped us off at the beach and we were given some bread to feed the fish. A school of hungry but friendly sergeant major fish greeted us just steps into the water. I don’t know that I have ever been surrounded by so many fish. Being the kids first time snorkeling, I wasn’t sure how they would take to being in such close proximity to the fish. I am very grateful to say that they did not freak out and loved looking at the fish and even let them eat the bread right out of their hands.

Another 45 minutes on the boat and we arrived at the Phi Phi Islands. During the rest of the day we would make several stops on the 2 main islands of Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh. We went to…

-Monkey Beach, where monkeys come down out of the jungles to get the bananas and
watermelon the visiting tourists kindly toss their way.

-A quiet lagoon/beach area for a picnic on the beach. Apparently one woman (not on our
tour) thought this was a topless beach. Didn’t she get the memo that kids were going to
be around? I guess she thought we needed more sights to see. Really, it wasn’t that
bad. Also from this beach we could see the local gypsy village with its houses on stilts.

-The local swimming hole, where we watched a guy jump from a rock outcropping into the
ocean below. Then the boys took their turn jumping from the front of the boat into the
ocean. We also got to see real, live Nemo fish living and hiding in big sea anemones.

-An awesome snorkeling sight. It was amazing. Best snorkeling I think I have ever
done. So many different kinds of fish to see and they were everywhere. Our trusty
guide Jenny even dove down and brought up a huge starfish for us to check out.

-The famous beach that was used in the filming of the movie, The Beach.

It was a great day. And there are still so many more places to see. I would love to go back some time and check more of what Phuket and its surrounding islands have to offer.