Koh Phangan monsoon

We moved from Hat Yao to Mac's Bay near Ban Tai, still on Koh Phangan. We were hoping for better weather after several days of cloud. Turns out it only got worse, as we ran into a monsoon and nonstop rain for the three days we spent there. One night I heard a huge crash on a rooftop next door and woke up, looked outside, and figured it must have been a coconut falling. Turns out it was a tree, and another one fell right between our bungalow and the one next door later that morning, while I was there. You can see the fallen tree in this pic, circled:




It rained nonstop for days, and many roads were closed. Some towns on the island were only accessible by boat taxi! Ron and I decided to venture to the little row of shops about a kilometre from our bungalow in the rain to find out about ferry info for leaving the island. Basically we got really wet.






After drying off and changing into dry clothes, we sat around inside for hours on end, just talking and reading and wasting time. One of our favourite activities was playing with the bread I bought on our ferry info mission.






We also went to a party, which was not too great but not bad either, and when I went to use the loo I found this guy on the wall! In the dark he just looked like a black spider, but I took a photo cuz of his crazy creepy legs. When I looked on my computer, I realised the flash lit up this guy's head and it looks like a human skull! Crrrrrazy!




Well we finally organised ourselves to leave Koh Phangan. We got a taxi to the ferry terminal, but when we got there found out we had 2 hours to waste, so we caught another taxi to some nearby waterfalls and spent over an hour walking there in the hilly jungle. It was really nice, though very warm.




I saw this local just chilling in the middle of the waterfall in the preceding pic, when I reached the top.




We hiked up to a viewpoint on top of some rocks which was nifty. This pic shows my farmer's tan starting to develop on my arm. It would be way more intense, but we've encountered very little sun and very much rain and cloud so far on this trip.




We ran into some time management problems in terms of returning to the info center to catch our taxi back to the ferry terminal on time, but caught the ferry anyways, and headed to the mainland. And for that, you'll have to check back here in two days' time...