Snorkeling in Ko Maa

I can't believe this leg of my trip is almost over! We left Ko Pha Ngan this evening and back in Bangkok. I was sad to leave our little beach paradise but if I believe in fate, then all signs pointed to leaving the island....

The day after the Songkran celebration, I cut my heel on a sharp rock (same foot as the first cut from the water fight) probably because I was trying to stay off my original cut and put more weight on my heel as I walked on the beach. Still following me? With two cuts on the same foot, it was hard to walk in the sand because bits of sand would get stuck. Yesterday we took a songthaew up north to Ko Maa, an small island connected to Ko Pha Ngan by a strip of sandy beach known for its nice beaches and snorkeling. What should've been a 5 minute walk to Ko Maa from where we were dropped off turned into a 20 minute walk because I couldn't walk properly. It was well worth it though, my first snorkeling experience was.... eventful. We definitely saw a lot of colorful fish swimming and sea slugs, sea urchins, and possibly a sea cucumber hiding in some amazing geometric shaped coral. I felt like I was in the fish tank of some fancy Chinese restaurant and we didn't even have to swim out that far. We turned around to return to shore and I noticed the sea floor was getting really shallow so I put my hand down on a rock to stand up and ended up slicing my index finger and the side of my left hand. I didn't expect the rock to be sharp so I'm guessing I cut it on coral? My finger was bleeding quite a bit so our snorkeling adventure had to come to an end. Fortunately I brought a small bag of medical supplies so I was able to clean out my cuts and cover it with a band-aid but that meant no more trips to the ocean for me.....

Nevertheless we were sad to leave Harmony Beach Resort and its remote beach, yummy food, and awesome staff. We took a boat to Ko Samui from Haad Rin and had some time to kill so I got a really great Thai massage while Haj continued to read The Kite Runner (I basically shoved the book on to him when he arrived) next door. Fast forward a couple of hours and now we are back in Bangkok, where we are far from the protests and had a delicious dinner on the street. There are several street food vendors on our block and we came across a noodle cart with a friendly older man who was more comfortable speaking Mandarin to me since his English was shaky. He gave us egg noodles in soup with wontons, slices of bbq pork, fried pork belly, crab meat, bok choy and scallions. This dinner is worth mentioning because it was SO delicious, even though the portions were very small. I love wontons and this was one of the best ones I had ever had, it had a peppery flavor that was just right and texture was tender (weird but I think the stuffing of a lot of wontons can be too gummy sometimes). And Dad, it looked like the meat was prepared ahead of time and they just cooked the noodles and cut the meat up and added it to the soup. I wish we had more time to eat more street food! Oh yeah, then I walked across the street to get some mango and sticky rice. What a perfect last dinner in Bangkok...

Tomorrow's our last day in Thailand and we are still trying to figure out what to do so I'm not sure if I will be able to update this blog after today for a while. I would like to keep up this blog in Shanghai but I'm not sure if the internet in China will allow access to Blogger. We will have to see but if I can't update from Shanghai, I will definitely write some new posts in Hong Kong, where I will be from 4/21-4/24. Jaimie will be in Shanghai when I return so we will be hanging out for a few days, who knows what kind of trouble we will get ourselves into!