After a year with the luxury of time and the joy of flexibility, our days have dwindled and we have come to the end of our adventures – today we start our journey home to Wellington! We made the decision to not make Thailand a final rush, and instead chose to focus on just one activity – and it was perfection!
We flew into Phuket and then immediately took a shuttle north to Khao Lak, one of the hardest hit areas of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. For us it was a jumping off point for a 3-day snorkelling trip to Mu Ko Surin National Park.
After a rather rough speedboat trip out to the Surin Islands (glad for our last remaining sea sickness meds), the next three days were absolute bliss – the most glorious aqua-coloured water and a gazillion different species of fish, corals, and other sea life.
We joined up with four other travellers, and spent our days being transported via longtail boat to each snorkelling site, with a total of nine snorkelling sessions over the three days. We thoroughly enjoyed the company of Livia, Michelle, Mathilde and Paul and hearing about their lives and adventures.
On the second morning, Zara said to Alek (the guy organising all our meals and boat trips and who we nicknamed Mr Smiley), “I really want to see a turtle”, to which he replied, “I’ll come with you this afternoon and take you somewhere special”. Sure enough, in the afternoon Alek came with us and took us a long way out to Ao Pakkad (Cabbage Bay). If we were lucky, we might see a turtle, a shark, or a stingray – and boy did we feel lucky to see ALL three of these marvellous creatures…a Hawksbill turtle that we swam along with for ages, blacktip reef sharks, and bluespotted stingrays! Thanks to @guide_alek, @guidejunior77 and Logan for the (incredible) footage in the video below!
Our second snorkelling site in the afternoon was Ao Supparod (Pineapple Bay), and we all agreed it was the most spectacular of all the sites we visited – teaming with sea life and beautiful corals. Lucas and Livia even saw a banded sea krait – a highly venomous sea snake who was thankfully very placid! After a longer-than-scheduled snorkelling session, Alek and our other guide Junior then encouraged us to continue to enjoy beautiful Ao Supparod by leaping off the longtail boat and swimming in the magnificent water. When we arrived back at the beach 1.5 hours after we were timetabled to arrive, we felt so lucky that Alek and Junior had been so generous with their time to allow us to make the most of this very special place.
When we weren’t snorkelling, our home was the very relaxed Mai Ngam Beach. The kids enjoyed the swings, playing on the beach, and playing with the Thai kids living or staying on the island.
There were some really interesting creatures in Mu Ko Surin National Park – carnivorous monitor lizards, (sadly) scavenging macaque monkeys, so many hermit crabs, and nocturnal flying lemurs (who are neither lemurs nor can they fly!).
It was also wonderful to see two lumps in the sand in the Hawksbill turtle hatchery on Ao Chong Khat beach, indicating hundreds of eggs due to hatch in January. Good luck little hatchlings!
We had the most wonderful experience in Mu Ko Surin National Park! Lucas and Zara were great snorkellers, and it made carrying their masks and snorkels in our luggage for the past year totally worth it. Once again we were grateful that the kids are such good swimmers and so confident in the water, even when it was 8, 10 or 30 metres deep and the longtail boat was anchored many hundreds of metres away. It was so cool to see them diving down to get a closer look at the reef too. Our adventure to the Surin Islands felt so much longer than three days and it was the the perfect ‘last hurrah’! The remainder of our time in Khao Lak and Bangkok was very chill – all of us needing the headspace to contemplate going home. There is so, so much more of Thailand to see but our cups are full!
