Day 24: Snorkeling

This morning, Greg and Mark had some work stuff to clear out on their laptops, but once that was finished, we had the entire day free.  We wanted to go snorkeling, so we walked to the beach, and after asking around a bit, we found a boat that would take us out to the islands.  First, we stopped at Koh Larn, the biggest island, and the most visited.  We were told that where we were going, there would be no snorkels for rent.  The ride over took about 30 minutes, and was quite nice.  Our boat had a cover to keep us out of the sun, and the wind and weather were great.  Once on one of the north facing beaches, we went up to check out the snorkels.  They were pretty bad.  At the next shop over, they were selling some brand new which looked marginally better, so we went with them.

The boat we chartered; it was much nicer than expected (no leaks!)

Once we had our snorkels, we took our boat over to Koh Sak, where we would be snorkeling.  As you can see on the map, the two islands are very close together, but Koh Sak is much smaller (Pattaya is the long, curved coastline to the east).  We anchored the boat, struggled to get our masks on, and jumped in.  Under the water all around us there were thousands of tiny fish, and tons of coral.  The coral was very cool, though very brown, and we spent a while exploring it, chasing fish, and finding neat stuff.  There were no scary animals there at all; in fact, there were very few large animals due to overfishing.  The one thing we had to look out for were Sea Urchins, which were giant spike balls living all over the coral (they looked like this).  When swimming near the coral, you had to be very careful not to kick them!

Struggling with our cheap snorkel masks.

Looking down at the coral.

I had to explain to Mark how to get on the boat.

More snorkeling

Several times we had to get out and fix our leaking, painful masks.  These provided nice breaks before we jumped back in and explored some more.  Once we finished snorkeling, we headed back towards Pattaya.  Along the way, it was decided I had to ride a jet ski, as I had never done so before.  We walked along the beach and talked to a few of the salesmen, eventually finding someone that would rent a jet ski for a reasonable price.  We went out to the water, the guy in charge fired up the jet ski and took it for a test run.  He came back and I got on, only this time it refused to start.  He tried for several minutes to get it going before telling me to try another one.  Someone else came over to start the next jet ski, but it wouldn’t start either.  As both people were trying to get the skis going, the first guy finally got his going.  I went over and got on, and just before I pulled away, he added, “Don’t stop.”

On the way back to Pattaya

That is Koh Larn behind me.

Still sailing.

The pair in the distance are the jet ski guy and I.

Explaining how the jet ski works.

Second try to get a jet ski working.

I hit the throttle and I was off.  I started slower, but picked up speed quickly, as there were no waves.  I went all around the bay, hopping over boats’ wakes, chasing boats, spinning in circles, and just generally having fun.  The first time I went towards the wake of a boat, I was flying across the water, but when I saw the wake up close it was bigger than I expected, causing me to take away all throttle, which caused the engine to die as I went airborne.  It took me about 10 tries to get the engine to start again, but I was just glad I wouldn’t have to swim to shore.  I had a great time, but eventually my thirty minutes were up and I had to head back to shore and then the hotel.

Back to the first, and I'm off!

They kept trying to get it working.

I'm the tiny one chasing the boat.

I'm right in the middle, going to the right.

In the evening, we headed down to a restaurant on the water, where I got a taste of Thai food and a great view of the sunset.  The Thai food was pretty good, and the sunset was awesome, making for a great dinner.  After dinner we shot some more pool and went around to a couple different places.

Dinner with the sunset.

Sunset over the water.

The fading sunet