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This morning we had arranged to be picked up at 7:15 to do a day trip to Ang Thong National Marine Park. The minibus took about 30 mins to get to the other side of the island where the pier was, but we were one of the last to arrive so the boat left right after. It took about 1.5 hours to get to the Ang Thong Park, which is a group of 42 limestone islands. It's where the book and movie The Beach was based (although filmed on Koh Phi Phi I believe) and it's a mixture of jungly islands surrounded by reefs. It's a very beautiful place and we were lucky to have a hot sunny day there. The ocean around these islands is so calm and very warm. First stop was Mae Koh Island, where you have to climb loads of steep steps and rocks to get to an inland lagoon that is connected to the sea by an underwater tunnel (which humans can't get through). After that we swapped with another group and did sea kayaking around the edge of the island and were picked up by the boat about ½ hour later. The islands are all eroded around the edges by the tides and waves so at low tide the islands appear to be floating on the sea. There are caves around the bottom as well but we could only go into one of them at low tide. Once we got back on the boat it was time for lunch, and Shane was happy to find they had massaman curry for us - very yummy. They also provided free soft drinks all day which is a first for a trip like this, but very welcome. In the afternoon they took us to another beach where some people could climb up the mountain for a view over the islands, but we took some snorkelling gear and a kayak and headed off to another beach to have a bit of a snork. I saw a black tip reef shark in the shallow water and there were a lot of fish and coral around, but the visibility was only about 40 cm so there wasn't a lot to see. Very warm water though. The boat chugged back to Koh Samui and we were taken back to our hotel - a very nice day out and we were quite worn out with the most exercise we've done in months :)