i'm on a boat

Disclaimer: if you're getting tired of pictures of sunsets, or of limestone formations jutting out of the water, then you might not be interested in this post. But if you're interested in pictures of monkeys eating watermelon... well, that's a different story.

(Please note—this is Viking Cave, where bird spit (!!) is harvested for bird's nest soup. Yes, that sounds gross [and expensive] to me too.)

Our last day on Phi Phi Don was my favorite. We booked a day-long boat trip around the islands in the area, and though I was a bit apprehensive at first (due to a history of motion sickness and my general state of exhaustion when I woke up that morning), it ended up being the best decision to spend a day on a boat. We had a hilarious crew, and their English was pretty much limited to "buy Coke and beer in the cabin," "I take your camera," and "cliff? jump?"

Some highlights, in easy-to-read bullet form:

• Snorkeling. SNORKELING! Ahh it was so fun. The last time I went snorkeling was when Robbie and I went to Kwajalein in 2008. Unfortunately, we don't have an underwater camera, but Emily does, and she took some great pictures from snorkeling in the same place. What I wish I had captured: me trying to swim away from a thousand of those black and yellow fish that insisted on swimming toward me. It's a myth that a school of fish will part when you swim toward it. Also, please try to picture us snorkeling over coral heads at low tide. Sea urchins! Sea urchins!!! TOO CLOSE!
• Maya Beach (on Phi Phi Leh) is pretty gorgeous, but unfortunately, it's filled with hundreds of people and speedboats, so we didn't really get to enjoy it as much as we did the other beaches. It's pretty packed because it was made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach, to which I say—how can it be famous if approximately two people saw that movie when it came out?
• Feeding monkeys. Please note my intentional placement of the "BEWARE MONKEYS" sign near my completely freaked out smile/laugh after I gave that monkey a piece of watermelon.
• The school (sorry, I mean "smack," "brood," "smuth," "smuck," or "fluther") of jellyfish that everyone inadvertently swam through when we were getting back on the boat at Monkey Beach. It didn't hurt, but I did have some lovely red stings on my ankles. And I'm never getting back in the water again.
• The sunset. The captain dropped anchor for thirty minutes and we just enjoyed the sunset and some K-pop.
• The crew (as mentioned earlier). Aside from the ancient captain, everyone else looked twelve, even though they were all smoking and drinking beer. But they were just so nice and funny. A couple of them did some awesome cliff dives at the end. Maybe I should consider switching careers?
• The other tourists on our boat! Ahh I loved them. We met and chatted up a great older British couple that owns a B&B in Provence (umm okay, I'll go visit you), a Swedish couple that was actually Croatian, and a super nice Indonesian couple. Then everyone else was hilarious for other reasons, even though I didn't talk to them. The number of Asian women that would not get in the water? That made me sad, but laugh at the same time when I saw the look of fear on their faces when a twelve year-old crew member would kayak them to the beach. Surely you would want to learn to swim after putting your life in the hands of a twelve year-old.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted. But it was such a good exhausted. An exhausted that makes me really want to move to an island and spend my days snorkeling—which, if you grew up in Robbie's family, isn't that absurd of a thought. Be careful what you wish for...