Today was the trip to Angthong Marine park and what an amazing trip. We booked this trip yesterday and before we had a chance to try and drop the travel booker down on price she instantly said she would drop it from 1850thb to 1400thb which is £27 each. This meant we paid for 3 people rather than 4, I guess as we booked late they wanted to fill the boat. We were debating whether to go on the larger group boat or a smaller speed boat, with a 600thb difference we went with the larger boat. After seeing how many people the squeeze
on the speed boat I'm glad we went for the large boat, as we had loads of room and a table almost to ourselves! Right into the trip it self:
We first got a mini bus from our hotel to the pier where we sat on the boat for about 40mins which was fine with us as they had jam sandwiches, coffee and bananas for free. We then set sail and the journey took about 1.5 hours which was nice in itself as you get to watch Koh Samui disappear Into the distance as Angthong emerges in front of you. This place is what you could assume every stranded island film or book is based on. Completely untouched islands in every direction and was as amazing as all the photos you see!
Our first activity was viewing the emerald lake, which as the name states is a emerald lake inside one of the islands, to get there you had to walk up what I guess they call stairs and we would know as rock climbing, hundreds of near vertical stairs wind there way up the side of a cliff until you reach a view point. At this point you can see the lake from the too of the cliff and it is pretty impressive - from ere you make you way down to two more view points, each getting closer to the lake and the stairs getting steeper as you descend. We took the good old tourist pics, enjoyed the view and made our way back to the beach where we started our kayaking trip.
This part is where we kayaked under the cut out cliffs which was pretty cool, the sea was quite rough which made it harder to paddle (especially as Hana was just enjoying the view!) but also made it more fun, with big waves crashing over the front and the roller coaster effect. We paddled from bay to another going through small rock tunnels and more undercut cliffs. Once we arrived we got a long tail back to the main boat for lunch. A good lunch and a quick journey through more islands we arrived at one of the main ones which you can either chill on the white sand beach, snorkel or walk up the 500m trek to the top of a view point - we chose the latter. This was no ordinary walk as it was made up of series of ropes and boulders that you had to scale to make your way to the top. Lauren and Shane had to make their way back at the 350m view point as felt a bit light headed and needed some water, me and Hana Carried on the path that continued to get steeper and steeper the further we got, until we reached what looked like the end, one last rock and we turned around and there was another 30m left of stupid steep, smoothed rock to climb. We managed to do this and the view was the reward - you could see a large chunk of the islands sat it beautiful green seas. Worth the effort of the climb. We probably didn't help ourselves by doing the walk in espadrilles! As the saying goes pictures say 1000 words! With all this excitement we got back on the main boat and made our way home. We got back around 7:30 so a full on 12 hour day - had a chill, few beers, a little shop and a McDonalds before we made our way to the ice bar.
I'm now going on a little bit so will wrap it up soon - the ice bar is apparently the only one in a tropical location so that's pretty cool. We paid our entry fee got a drink and put on our wooly poncho, hat and gloves (it's about 20 degrees outside and 11 oclock at night!) and made our way Into the bar, it was smaller than I thought but I wouldn't want to stay in there too long as it's kept at a cool -7! A couple of amazon ice sculptures including a life size tuktuk - we finished our drinks and made our way back to bed! Day done!