To those of you back home wishing our vacation wasn't so awesome and being jealous please stop. Our little piece of island paradise here at the mango house is now a touch less of a paradise.
We were woken up this morning at 740 to the noise of every possible construction tool and noise simultaneously going off. Hand saws, electric saws, hammers, sledge hammers, concrete chipping...you name it and I'm pretty sure I can hear it. I think there is an army of 300 right outside our front door and right beside us/ under us. They are working at the house right next to us as well as rebuilding some of the dock. So happy they started first thing in the morning. Before food and coffee. We are just laughing about it but man does it suck. We were excitedly thinking even if it does rain we can just lay around here on the hammock and relax reading. Perhaps not.
We escaped our construction by going to the cafe owned by the same people as our room. We used the wifi and had
Coffee and delicious mango pancakes. We relaxed for a couple of hours and phoned a lady Niki had been emailing about a boat tour. Her name is Suzanne and she has lived in Thailand for 8 years now. She said to call back at 11 to see if the water would still be safe for a boat ride. When we called back she said we were good to go and there was one other customer coming along.
Suzanne was here during the tsunami in 2004. It was interesting to hear her stories about it but very sad and unimaginable. She was actually in the water leading a snorkeling tour and was luckily in deep water. Tsunamis are dangerous in shallow water and on land. She said they had a 4 meter wave but before it came 4 meters of water was pulled away from shore. This left the water between where we went today dry. They then watched from the deep water as the wave crashed to the shore and got bigger and bigger as it hit land. When they went back to shore the pier and half the village was gone, including her house. This was the only tsunami in recent Thai history (within hundreds of hundreds of years). 30 people died here but 5000 on Ko Phi Phi! So sad.

Onto happier subjects...
Before we left for the trip she said they have beer on the boat but bring our own because it will be cheaper and we can put it in the cooler. So naturally we did haha.
We were walking down the street and she showed up on her "motorbike" Aka scooter and drove Niki to her place and came back for me. We then jumped in the longtail boat and set off.
The weather was great, cloudy but a perfect temperature and the water was my kind of water. Just like a bath!! Haha it was perfect.
We went to an island with nobody else around and swam about, then to another island with large dramatic limestone cliffs like you see in tv to a cool spot with a small cave we could (and did!) swim through. After this we went to a big cave. From outside it doesn't look like you could get inside but somehow our driver took the boat in. It involved him going onto the canvas roof over part of the boat and pulling the vines from above to guide us in. We looked around in here and took some pictures then set off for another island called Ko Bubu. This island is a small resort that opens Nov 1st but for now is just an island. We had traditional Thai food on the beach and relaxed. We had interesting conversations with Suzanna and the other tourist, also named Suzanna who is studying from Thailand but is from Spain, about the oddities of Thai culture (unlike most countries it has never been colonized by europeans so it is very unique). One thing that came up is that Suzanna's husband, who is Thai, went back to a monastery where he grew up from the age of 10 to 21 when she went on vacation to Europe. She told us that he called her a few weeks ago and said he may never be coming back! However, she did make it sound like the 7 year itch was fast approaching... But still! Then it was time to head back before the tide pulled too far away. Here the tide changes twice a day and when the tide is out then there is not enough water to get the boat to Suzanna's house which is right on the water.
When we returned we went back to our room at mango house and relaxed on the hammock (it was a tough day you know) then we went out for dinner. Ko Lanta old town where we are staying seems to shut down at around 7pm. It is an early to rise early to bed town.
We ate at "beautiful restaurant". It sure was beautiful. We sat at a table under a gazebo on a dock over the water. I had a crab in coconut curry soup. It was great but crab is hard to get at and eat! Niki has a sweet and sour chicken meal.
We were there for around 2 hours then went back to the mango house!