After spending a few more days in Bangkok, we began our journey to the beautiful island of Koh Tao, which translates to "turtle island." First, we took the night train, which we had never done before. Luckily, Uncle M was able to reserve beds in the air conditioned car. As we were boarding the train, we noticed that many of the cars did not have air conditioning or beds! While Dad and I did not sleep very well, the girls slept through the whole train ride, and even if we didn't sleep well, it was still a pretty comfortable ride. We departed at around 8:30pm and arrived at 4:30am, and slept during the ride.
We woke up when we arrived at the station in Chumphon, on the coast of Thailand. We arrived at the pier in time to watch the sunrise while we waited for our ferry. Cousin time and beach play time make waiting much easier!
We couldn't check into our hotel yet, so we grabbed an early lunch at a Thai restaurant, which we ended up revisiting multiple times during our stay on Koh Tao because we loved it so much. This restaurant specializes in a dish called som tam, which is a green papaya salad, and many variations with other vegetables. I didn't get a picture of the food, but here is a photo of Sweet Pea and I sampling some coconut water at the restaurant.
After lunch, we settled into our hotel and then decided to hit the beach.
Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of this particular beach, but it was beautiful, as expected. We did some swimming and some snorkeling. It was pretty easy to snorkel right from the beach. We were able to see lots of coral, reef fish, and various other critters.
During our time on the island, we also visited Shark Bay and Ao Leuk beach for more swimming and snorkeling. We found that Shark Bay was a little more difficult for younger swimmers, but was good more stronger, more adventurous swimmers. Our cousins were able to see sea turtles! Ao Leuk had less coral and more rocks, which sounds less exciting, but makes it easier for younger swimmers because there are more places to stand, since you should not step on coral. There was still plenty of wildlife very close to shore, including small black tip reef sharks! Once we get more photos downloaded from our GoPro, I'll try to do a separate blog post about our snorkeling adventures. In the meantime, here are some other snippets from our time on the island.
Here is the walk to our hotel.
Here's the view from one of the restaurants we ate at.
Here is the view from our hotel.
We also found a Middle Eastern restaurant, which was quite tasty.
We also had roti, which is a delicious snack with a variety of fillings and toppings.
One of us ended up with an ear infection, so we also spent a fair amount of time resting in the hotel.
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