Angthong National Marine Park, Thailand

On July 12th we hopped on a boat from Koh Samui to take us to the Angthong National Marine Park, a national park located in the Gulf of Thailand, just west of the island of Koh Samui. The national park is a collection of 42 islands covering an area of about 100 squared kilometers.

Taking a boat through the islands reminded me of my time in Vietnam. The islands here look very similar to those in Halong Bay, as most of the islands are large rock formations protruding from the water covered in greenery and trees.
We docked the boat on Wua-Talap Island to do some swimming, kayaking and hiking.

After kayaking we took a hike around the island.

We hiked up a steep and rocky path to a beautiful viewing point. I was wearing flip-flops for the hike – which made it much harder as they kept getting stuck between the rocks. Not exactly the best choice in footwear!

Once we got to the lookout point the view was well worth our struggles!

We then went to the island of Koh Mee Koh which houses the famous ‘Inner Sea’ -- a little lake in the middle of the island.


We had to climb up some steep stairs to see the inner sea, and from the top we had a great view of the bay and some of the islands:

We spent the rest of our time on the island swimming and enjoying the beautiful beach.

The Angthong National Marine Park was a beautiful park and we had a great time visiting it! That was our last night in Koh Samui as we would be leaving the following morning for the island of Koh Tao, Thailand.

Koh Samui, Thailand

On July 9th we had a flight leaving Singapore to go to the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. We had a slightly stressful time at the Singapore airport that morning as we visited 3 different airport terminals in search of our check-in counter for our flight. According to our travel reservation (which we had made online a few days earlier through Expedia) we were flying Air Malaysia from Singapore to Subang, Malaysia, and then from Subang to Koh Samui, Thailand. Little did we know that the Subang flight was actually with the airline FireFly, and it didn’t appear in any of the departure screens in the 3 terminals we checked. We eventually (after over 40 very stressful minutes) found the correct terminal and check-in counter, and after 7 hours of traveling we arrived on the beautiful island of Koh Samui, Thailand!
Our resort was awesome, we had a private bungalow only steps from the pool and Lamai Beach!
We spent the next day (July 10) on the beach relaxing and having some fun in the water and sand!

We took a walk down the beach to check out an amazing rock formation.

It was hard to see the rocks clearly from land and we wanted to explore them in greater detail. Since there was no land access, we trekked through the water holding our bags above our heads, and then climbed up and over the rocks (in nothing but our bikinis and bare feet) to an isolated cove. We struggled getting up some of the rocks, but luckily a very nice man saw us struggling and hoisted us up.

The area was beautiful, and well worth the scratches we endured on our body and feet from rock climbing!

Back inside the resort I made friends with a beautiful parrot:

The following day (July 11) we spent the day on a boat, taking a boat tour around the island of Koh Samui. It was really nice to see the whole island from the water as we saw lots of rock faces, beaches, villas, hotels and lots of greenery.

After seeing all the amazing villas on the island we made a plan for our future: one day (when we are older and have some excess money) we will buy a villa here together. Our spouses/significant others will become best friends and take lots of skiing, golfing and fishing holidays together so Mads and I can have some serious, quality, relaxation time in our beautiful villa.

We docked the boat on the island of Koh Tan to enjoy the beach and have some lunch. The beach was almost completely deserted! The only people on the beach were the 25 people on our boat tour that day. So far every beach we’ve been to on the trip had a fair amount of people on it, so having the beach to ourselves was amazing!

Back on the boat after lunch we passed through the Five Rock Islands, which is a collection of 5 islands where they have protected swallows nests. Swallows spend about 3 months creating nests made from their saliva. These nests are then harvested and sold (mainly to China) to make the famous “Bird’s Nest Soup”. This soup is one of the most expensive soups in the world, and a bowl can sell for between $30 (USD) and $100 (USD), and 1 kg of the nests can cost over $2,000 (USD). These islands are highly protected by guards with guns, and if your boat gets too close then you are in serious danger.
This is one of the islands:

We had a great relaxing day, and it was a nice way to see and experience different parts of the island.
Koh Samui was awesome. We really liked our resort and the area of the island we were staying in (Lamai Beach). This beach was different from Kuta, Lovina and Santosa. Kuta’s beach was very long and the sand was beautiful, but it was very touristy and packed with people so it was impossible to actually relax on it. Lovina had very dark, coarse sand and the beaches were narrow. Santosa’s sand was very fine, almost like powder, but there was a lot of pollution in the water so swimming wasn’t too appealing.

This beach was perfect! The sand was a beautiful shade of light beige, almost white, and it was very soft on the feat. It also only had a sprinkling of people on it at any one time, so we could enjoy some peace and privacy while relaxing on the beach. But this isn’t the case all throughout the island of Koh Samui. Chaweng Beach is one of the top tourist destinations on the island, and that area is packed with people, similar to Kuta Beach in Bali.

Chaweng beach is full of restaurants, bars, hotels, nightclubs, stores, markets, and tons and tons of people. It totally caters to tourists and you can find Starbucks, McDonalds, and many other American chains all throughout the streets. It almost doesn’t feel like you’re even in Thailand. The area offers many dining options, including dining on the beach on lawn chairs. It also offers a very active nightlife.

Koh Samui is a beautiful place and we enjoyed every minute of our time there! We were excited because the following day we had plans to see the Angthong National Marine Park, located in the Gulf of Thailand to the west of Koh Samui.

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Singapore: Sentosa Island

On July 8th we decided to spend the day on the Singaporean island of Sentosa. It is an island off the coast of Singapore that is known for it’s beaches, resorts and attractions. It also is the location of Universal Studios Singapore. It is a small island, only 3km by 1km in size and is packed full of tourists related venues. It reminded me a bit of the Toronto Island mixed with Canada’s Wonderland.

We took the cable car over to the island:

From the cable car we could see there was a lot of construction going on to build a new area of the park (this was not uncommon in Singapore as we saw construction everywhere throughout the city as they build new, cool, architecturally awesome buildings):

Once on the island we decided to check out Underwater World Singapore, an aquarium which is the home of a number of pink dolphins in addition to sharks, sting rays, turtles and many many different varieties of fish!

We then watched a dolphin and fur seals show where we saw the animals jump and do different tricks.

The fur seals were adorable!

The dolphins were also amazing, they are such graceful animals!

During the show they asked for a volunteer from the audience, so naturally I put my hand up! I entered into a hula-hoop contest with a dolphin. In the photo below you can see the dolphin behind me twirling the hoops around his nose.

After my hula-hoop debut I went into the dolphin tank to meet my opponent (and evidently… the winner of our hula-hooping contest):

We had a great time at the Underwater World, and on our way out we ran into some monkeys:

We spent the rest of the day on the beach:

The beach was different than the other beaches we have seen so far on the trip. Kuta beach was packed with people and the sand was semi-fine, with some very small rocks, while Lovina beach had very dark sand which was much coarser, but this beach had super fine sand, almost like powder. But there was a lot more pollution around this beach, and we could see water bottles and other pieces of garbage floating in the water. It was really sad.

We really enjoyed our time on Sentosa Island, and in Singapore. I would have really liked a few more days in Singapore to explore more areas and to go inside some museums, but unfortunately there isn`t time for everything!

One thing I would not miss about Singapore are the highly elevated prices! The prices in Singapore are almost equivalent to prices back in Canada, which was a major major shock for me! The past 6 weeks I had been used to spending $3 – $5 (CAN) on a full meal everywhere else in Southeast Asia, but in Singapore meals can be $10 - $15 (CAN)! I was excited to be going back to Thailand (and my cheap $3 dinners), and exploring the Thai islands! We had a flight leaving Singapore going to the island of Koh Samui for the following morning!

 

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