Ko Tao to the jungle

After Kanchanaburi and a brief stint in Bangkok, we took the overnight train and then early a.m. ferry to Ko Tao, an island on the east coast of the Southern peninsula of Thailand. Ko Tao is absolutely beautiful so stay tuned for some pictures once i get around to uploading them. I finished my open water and advanced diving course at Buddha View divers in Ko Tao which means I can now dive to 30 meters. I saw my first sharks while diving! Grey tipped reef sharks which according to the dive instructors will not harm you...i'm still not quite so sure about that, but they def are not great whites so that's a plus.

After a fantastic week in Ko Tao, we unwillingly left after two days of checking out and back into the same hotel room (hah we had a hard time leaving), we spent a day getting to the West Coast of the Southern tip of Thailand-to Krabi. We stayed in the best hotel room there for only 10 dollars. It had a sea motif and an outdoor shower which was really cool. We spent a day on Ao Nang and Hat Rai Lay West beaches-completely beautiful and surrounded by limestone cliffs. Krabi and surroundings is where many people go to rock climb-it looked pretty tough to me, but I can see why they would choose that location.

From Krabi, we took a day journey to Georgetown, Malaysia (on the island of Pulau Penang off the West coast of Malaysia) and only spent one night there to get up the next morning and head straight to the Perhentian Islands on the East Coast of Malaysia. We stayed on the small island called Perhentian Kecil, which was gorgeous. The water was incredibly clear. We did two dives and were amazed by the first one. It was called Temple of the Sea and there were just so many different types of fish, stingrays (blue spotted-really cool looking), and sharks (really small-hide under rocks-bamboo sharks mostly-the only sharks i'm def not afraid of). The second dive was at Sugar Wreck-a shipwreck that sunk about a year and a half ago carrying sugar from Thailand. There were scorpion fish and other fish that completely look like rocks at this site---these fish are poisonous-well only if you accidentally touch them, so you have to be careful.

We then spent another day's journey to get to Taman Negara, Malaysia (right smack in the middle). Taman Negara means National Park. We hiked yesterday to the Canopy Walk, which was cool and made me aware of a slight fear I have of heights. We then hiked yesterday evening to a hide (a small building on high stilts) where we spent the night on the lookout for wild animals. We managed to see a Tapir (a large anteater-really cool looking). The hike to get to the hide, which is built near a salt lick (not exactly sure what that is hah even though I've been there), was a bit frightening as we were asked to wait a half hour to leave since it was raining and then since it wasn't letting up were told we'd have to go really quickly and hike as fast as we could. The hiking fast was not easy as because of the rain it was very muddy. To make things more frightening-about 10 minutes into our 45 minute hike we heard a loud growl. We never found out what it was exactly but I am convinced it was some sort of large cat. The experience was definitely worth it.

Tomorrow I leave for Singapore. From the jungle to a really clean city, I'm seeing it all.