Day 2 - The first full day

Today was our first full day. Well, almost full….we slept late and missed breakfast. Oh well, it was almost lunch so we figured we would survive until then. I am not a breakfast eater in general, so I wasn’t overly bothered. We had woken up at 6:20, but both fell right back to sleep. We only woke up when we did because our room guy Farid, was knocking on the door. I think we were messing with his cleaning schedule :-) He comes twice a day - once in the morning to clean and make up the room, and once in the evening to turn down the beds and replenish any supplies. I could get used to this!! Wonder if Keith want as to make some extra money being my “room boy” at home?! Farid told us it was 9:30, so we rushed to dress so we didn’t miss the breakfast. But when we looked at the time, it was 10:07am. Too late.

Since breakfast wasn’t on the cards, we headed to the beach. Today was our day to chill after all the travel of the last two days. Hello pretty lounge chairs and white sand! Where have you been all my life?? Slather ourselves in sunscreen and we are good to go! A bit of reading, a lot of sweating and a snorkel 🤿 before lunch. Heaven!! Kat had gone way out and I lost her for a bit. I stayed closer to shore as I had found it hard to navigate through all the coral. Just that quick snorkel (without fins) gave us a good taste of what was to come.

Headed to the buffet for lunch and we knew it wasn’t included in our plan. Whatever. It’s the buffet. Food was good - but not stellar like the evening meal. Dessert again we edible but not the best. We ordered water as our only drink as we were both feeling a bit dehydrated from the sun. Before we leave, we are presented with our bill to sign -$130USD!!! What the actual F*#@???? Yeah - buffet is $55 USD pp, plus 23.5% gratuity and tax. And the water. Lesson learned the hard way!!! Ask prices before eating or drinking anything that isn’t included!!!! We did go to reception to complain, but they couldn’t have cared less. I tried the argument that even if we had been offered a menu (which we weren’t), the buffet prices were not listed - only the a la carte prices. There are how we other restaurants and if we had gone to ANY of them, we would likely have gotten a better lunch at half the price. I’m trying to “let it go” but am a bit salty about it. Breathe and move on Diane. Breathe and move on. Won’t make that mistake again!!!

One interesting thing at lunch - we saw a big fruit bat. I had no idea these flew around during the day. Cool!

After lunch, we headed to the dive centre so I could rent some fins and Kat could pick hers up. It is so hot and humid here that you literally sweat while just standing still. Sweat a lot! Anyway, with the fins, snorkelling was about to get so much better!!! We headed out as soon as we got back to our chairs. We were planning on sticking together, and going out to the drop off where the house reef ended. This was all good until I started panicking a bit about how close I was when swimming over the coral. I have no idea why it was freaking me out, but I had to stop and go back towards shore. Kat kept going. Once I calmed the heck down, I headed back down the beach toward where she was, and was able to navigate through and over the coral here without freaking. Finally caught up to her but was having knee issues and a charlie horse. For heavens sake!!!! After a minute stretching, we continued and Kat took me back to where she had seen a sea turtle. There is was!! We had found it again. After watching and following for a couple of minutes, Kat was pointing furiously. Not sure why she was so excited …. It was only a freaking SHARK!! I mean seriously - seeing a sea turtle and a shark in the same 3 min period! We also saw so many new and different fish, beautiful (and healthy corals), star fish, sea slugs and so much more. Truly a wonderful snorkel. And all this just on our little bit of the house reef! I ended up going back about 10 mins before Kat as I kept getting a charlie horse. But I was so excited by what we had seen, I didn’t care :-) We chilled a bit after the snorkel and chatted with other guests about the diving. The fruit bat here was active and interesting to watch. They live in the trees and it flew around about five times as I watched.

Time to head to the Thali Bar - it was Gin O’Clock and luckily, Kat is my gin buddy. Half price gin drinks for an hour! Yeehaw - we are in! Took us over 20 mins to find the stupid bar again, due to the trails and no arrows to this particular bar. So, we made up for lost time in a hurry!! We ended up staying almost 3 hours (closed the bar) and getting all the drinks at half price. Quite proud to say we tried every gin on the top shelf except the three we get at home. Two others we both tried but the rest of them one person tried a brand and the other had a sip so so we both sampled them all, in the end. Don’t even ask what the bill was or how many drinks we had. Suffice to say that luckily it was half price, and it came in less than our lunch bill as a result! We may have been slightly intoxicated and stumbled off to a late dinner. Neither of us were particularly hungry though, as the bartender kept giving us bowls of snacks with our drinks. Probably a good thing we were eating them, to be honest 😁.

Dinner was really good, but we were both super full after only small portions. We decided to take a walk on the beach in the moonlight (how romantic lol!). As we walked, I kept thinking I saw bioluminescence. We didn’t think it was just a reflection from the moon. Finally, we did see a glow on the sand. It was absolutely something bioluminescent! On the way back, we found another glowing piece of - whatever it is. So at least I knew I wasn’t that tipsy that I was imagining things. Kat walked a bit longer than I did and came back to where I was sitting, wringing out here cover up. Apparently she had stopped to pick something up from the sand and a strong surge of water knocker her on her butt! I’d have paid to see that lol!!

We headed back to our room and got ready for bed. I figured it would be another night of solid sleep as we were both exhausted. Pretty damn good first day in paradise!! (Ok, except for the lunch fiasco - but I’m letting it go!)Read more