THAILAND BABY!!!

Woo yeah baby 28 miles out of Malaysia and we were unofficially in Thailand! After 3 days of some beautiful anchorages, we arrived in Phuket - Ao Chalong.Clearance formalities took all of 10minutes in the one stop shop (immigration, customs and harbour master are all in the same building).
Things that were straight away different from Malaysia

were
1. the people seemed more free (not many muslims) and

happy smiling and showing their emotions more.
2. there are tsunami evacuaion route signs everywhere where there are tourists

3.clearer water

4. Many more tourists, many russians and europeans

This is what the Thai flag looks like

 If the below photo looks cliche its probably because Igot my inspiration from the hoards of russian tourists who flock to Thailand each year. It appears they come here with their intent to take poser shots of each other throughout their holiday break, they are pretty good at it actually, some even get their kit out.. but that just aint me. They kept Dudley busy with his binoculars!! perv....

Ta Chai Simalin Islands Thailand

At Tachai, Simalin Islands

What a breath of fresh air Thailand is, as soon as we arrived from Langkawi Malaysia we were like, why were we there for so long when we have this to explore!!

Freedom Bay, a few bays south of hectic Patong

Having sundowners on the beach

Duds catching squid - so the lure does work!

Patong Beach sunchairs everywhere

On the west coast of Thailand we anchored next to a thai naval base and from there took our pushbikes 26km to where you can swim, trek, and wash the elephants, our Guide couldnt speak a word of English so we didnt learn too much, however there was a young guy who worked there and at the end he told us a fair bit. A young (9years old)Elephant named Coco Channel (apparantly all Europeans love this elephant), was dancing, and swaying side to side, she looked like she was really enjoying herself! She kissed me, the Young boy wiped her trunk first and then it was like the sound of a vacuumn cleaner as she came for my cheek!!
We got told the food elephants eat passes straight through them as soon as they ingest, so they need to eat a shit load of food each day to survive. The guide has a pick he takes with him and uses it to hurry the elephant along by putting the sharp end right by her ear, it must be the most sensitive part of their thick skin. They have a chain around their neck when they are walking, and when they do no work they are chained by one of their legs.. poor elephants...but they look well cared for.
The part we enjoyed the most was bare back riding the elephant without the guide, but it was also fun to sit on those bench seats with a thai safety belt ( a piece of rope) over our waists!

feeding him a banana and you can see the pick that is used

Feet touching his tough skin

The guy had to pull me close to get a kiss with Coco Channel!

Dudley really enjoying kisses from Coco Channel

No Weeing in the pool!! So he does it beside the pool instead haha

aye!! No pooing in the pool eeeewwww!!

washing Mr Elephant, I was scared he was going to stand on me..

As you can see we had alot of fun with the elephants.

From the Thai Naval base we went out to the Similan Islands, a group of 11 Islands in the Andaman Sea, about 75km off the cosat of Thailand.

It was established as a national park in 1982, present day, it is a marine national park. Effectively all this means is that yachties and tourists who come here have to pay a fee to the governement, We had to pay 800baht for 5days about 25AUD.

People are not supposed to fish here, however we saw abandoned fishing nets everywhere while snorkelling, and the reef has been dynamited, its soooo obvious,  there are hardly no big fish swimming anywhere here, however we were lucky to spot a big family of parrot fish. There are many beautiful swim thrus and there are big boulders to swim around....



Duds rockclimbing underwater



A beautiful curious turtle came up to the boat and we were able to pat him on the head and swim holding on to him. When anchored in the Similans we were apprached by Thai navy officials whose job it was to do turtle research. They stay at this Island for 6 week rotations to observe the turtles coming to the beach and lay their eggs. The officials then collect all the eggs and take them to a nursery far away on the mainland, and when the turtles hatch and are strong enough they send them back out in the wild only to be caught by fisherman.. hows that for interfering with mother nature. The funny thing is these Thai navy officials had a bag

of all sorts of different fish, all caught in the marine park by the fisherman not anchored far from us 'he wants

ciggarettes' they exclaim (for the fish and money of course), we say NO to the fish and NO to the smokes and ask why the hell is he allowed to fish in a marine national park and with a big mofo net!! His reply was 'oh its selective'. WOW that makes it alright then!!



Amazing Koh Similan, sweet spot for a mooring

We found  a mooring in this cute wee bay, and there was a big water pipe with fresh water running constantly out of it, we had seen the dive boats come and fill up here when we were kayaking around. It was great to have all the water we wanted!. We washed the boat down, did the washing and the tanks were full!

The waterhose running straight to our tanks!

There are many liveaboard dive charters that go out to the Similans. They all seemed to love diving below Baikal (probably because we had the only bit of reef under our mooring worth looking at). Anyway, we were watching them with their guide, as they were going along the bottom they were holding onto the beautiful coral and we watched it snap off in their hand while they were busy taking pictures with their other hand...and the guide , the PROFESSIONAL GUIDE was watching all this unfold and didnt do a thing about it. WE saw this happen multiple times. Oh well I guess in the future everyone else will just be looking at hhhhmmmmmm nothing! Because there will be nothing left to look at!