The Honeymoon is definitely over...

Well, it's official the honeymoon in paradise with the girl of my dreams is over. We have come away from our island escape, tired, hot, sunburnt, overspent and spend most of our time not speaking to each other. Ah, who am I kidding, it was AMAZING!!! I highly recommend Koh Nangyuan for a holiday. If you are interested in treating yourself to a beautiful, quiet (away from the multitude of 18-22 year old all night beach partiers), delicious, and overall great place. The website is www.nangyuanisland.com

Our first few days down south were spent at Koh Tao. A beautiful, and somewhat busy dive resort mecca. It has long stretches of sandy beaches and bars, restaurants and hotels of all ranges. We stayed in Sairee Beach on the West side of the island and it gets great shelter from the wind and waves. The downside (for normally landlocked prairie folk like us) is that the heat can be quite stifling with the humidity and shade is the only respite. Koh Nangyuan is only about a 10-15 min slow boat towards the northern tip of Koh Tao. It is 3 islands connected by broken coral (much more comfortable and cleaner than sand) sandbars. It gets lots of sun, shade on various parts of the island, and almost always has at least a light breeze to keep things cool. The other advantage is that there are three bays you can snorkel in at the resort and there is always at least one that is teeming with fish feeding on the dying coral that washes into the various bays. They also have an on-site scuba dive shop and if you dive, they give you a discount on the room. The divemasters are top notch and take you in small groups (most of the time, it was just Jen and I with the divemaster) to the great dives sites around Koh Tao, only about 5 mins from Koh Nangyuan.

The snorkelling just off the beach was amzaing, thousands of fish come up to thinking that you will feed them and some even bite your back fat (in my case anyway) if they are hungry enough. We also saw, a small octupus, that disguised himself like a rock so I called him a rocktapus, 2 squids, a blus spotted ray, several triggerfish, and lots of colorful corals, anemones, clown fish, and so on and so on. In addition, we recommend stepping up to the higher rooms at the place.

We splurged and got a room that had a 171 steps to get up to it, a beautiful balcony overlooking the resort and beaches. It was great to get away from the sun, crowds (at times when day trippers come snorkelling and swarm the beach), and drink a an overpriced mini-bar (again who am i kidding, 3$) beer on the deck while the sun goes down before dinner. They have free DVD's to borrow to watch in the evenings as the island has a licenced restaurant but no bar. It is also good so you don't carried away before diving the next day. The movies were really funny as they were all common titles, but most had the english soundtrack removed as they were dubbed over and subtitled. We enjoyed reading our favorite films nonehtheless. The food was excellent with lots of fresh seafood, fruit and tofu. We did not eat many lunches at the restaurant as we went to 7-11 (I know it seems lame but even the 7-11 has a great selection of food here) and bought some excellent yogurt, granola and fresh fruit to smuggle into our mini-bar.

The time there was great and it is common to have only a token canadian couple staying at the resort while the rest are form SE Asia, Europe and Australia. More smoking than we are used to but Canadian rules are hard to let go of someitmes.

I have probably gone on long enough and I hope to fill in more (read shorter) entries in the future.