A slow and painful start today – our legs are very sore from climbing the hill yesterday and I am pretty sunburnt from yesterday. Craig has organised a driver to take us around the island today. Our drivers name was Pon. Craig had secured him for 2000B for 4 hours and 1000 if we went over. The driver picked us up at 10.
Our first stop on our adventure was the Big Buddha. We’d seen this from where our boat left yesterday and I’m glad we got the opportunity to see it. Only downside was everyone was there – need to remember it is an island with an economy driven by tourism.
After Big Buddha and a bit of shopping we went to a temple called Wat Plai Laem. This has 4 different temple complexes and what I think was a buddhist school attached to it. I paid 10B for fish food to feed the biggest cat fish you have ever seen living in the lake. At least here was quieter than the big Buddha.
From here we drove through the fisherman’s village (we are going to have dinner here tomorrow night) before we headed to a look out at the south end of Chaweng. The driver took us down to Lamai where we had lunch on the beach at Sabienglae which was recommended by Pon. The food was beautiful and the view amazing.
From here we went to grandfather and grandmother rocks guess which is which. There was a sweet story about them dying in a storm going to meet their son’s parents in law to be. I also tried coconut icecream in a coconut.
Then it was on to a waterfall which was barely flowing as they havent had much rain on the island. On the upside we got to feed an elephant and learnt that after our hike tomorrow we’ll just go straight back to the hotel.
Our last stop was the secret garden/magic garden. As Stu said not so secret as 2 minutes after we got there a couple of vans of loud tourists turned up – a couple even started smoking in the middle of the garden. We’ve noticed Europeans smoke everywhere and any time.
On the way back to the hotel Stu and I got dropped off at the tailor to pick up my shirts and we walked back to the hotel for cocktail time. Note i am still sunburnt.
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