We had a good time on Tarutao. It was rustic, to say the least. The shower was ice cold and I suspect the bed had fleas. And by bed I mean the plywood they gave us to sleep on. It was made off weaved bamboo, but it felt more like cinder blocks. So, with a hard bed, no fan and ice cold water you would expect us to be bitter, right? On the contrary, it might have been the best part of our trip so far.

Sure, I've been camping with better facilities, but for the most part Tarutao lived up to her expectations of being a remote tropical paradise. The time and effort it takes to get there is well worth it. If you're ever looking for your own private little strip of beach to call your own, this place is for you.

Like I said in a previous entry, we stayed at one of the basic bungalows (only bungalows) on the island for two days. We probably would have stayed longer, buit we wanted to make it back to the mainland to make telephone calls for Christmas. Two days was just enough time for us to explore a few beachs, enjoy a few quiet moments to ourselves, and a few really loud times with a screaming kid behind our bungalow. Come to think of it, there were 2 quiet times and 5 gazillion times spent with screaming kid.

The first night we walked down shore and onto a more deserted beach along the west coast of the island. We were pretty shocked at what we found there: garbage. Garbage everywhere! This included tossed-aside water bottles to discarded flip-flops. Not to mention the endless string of nets, fishing line and broken traps. The entire beach was like that ... for nearly a mile. We were horrified, but found ourselves curiously poking around to the remains that had been discarded over the sides of boats. It's pretty amazing what washes up on a beach these days.

After our walk, I realized I might have gotten a bit too much sun. When my left ear fell off I should have considered it a bad sign. Slighly crispy around the edges is a good description. I've never been much for wearing hats, especially the kind that I see so many tourists wearing. You know, the kind that look like Gilligan's -- only far worse. Needless to say, I'm the proud owner of said hat, and you'll all be happy to know there are a few pictures in the gallery of me displaying the latest in hat fashions. I'll probably get my ass kicked by some local for looking too stupid. But at least my ears can recover. Next time I'll remember sunscreen.

We had planned to spend our second day exploring some of the caves on the east side of the island. If you're a Survivor fan, this is the area where the cave camp was (and Magilla the bannana-stealing monkey). We figured caves = shade. We reserved a long-tail boat to take us there for a few hours. It was going to be something like 400 baht for the trip (US$9.50) and last a couple of hours, after which we would do something else.

At the last minute the information/booking desk informed us that another boat was going on a slighly different trip to a pair of smaller islands to the west for a snorkeling trip. We figured they were the same price and the same ammount of time so we agreeded. And by "we" I mean Susanne. I was still cringing at the thought of being out in the sun. Ok, it was really the thought of someone seeing me in my new hat that caused me the most stress.

We both heard them say something about being a "half-hour" trip out to the island. What we didn't hear was "one hour and a half." Big, big difference when you're talking about crossing an ocean on a Thai Longboat. Never-the-less, we made the voyage and had a great time snorkling with a Dutch couple who had brought their kids to Thailand for the holidays. I never got that when I was a kid ... but we'll talk about that in therapy another time.

Fortunately, the boat had a nice cover and after taking a few dives among the coral and fish, I retired to the boat for a few hours of shade. It's actually not a bad way to get over a sun burn. When we were moving it was kind of like having air-con, much unlike the fan-less bungalow.

I now know how that whole "... three hour tour" thing started on Gilligan's Island.