Thongsala

After a blissful week at the north end of the island, we headed back to the pier town, Thongsala, for a couple of nights, mostly just to facilitate the early morning ferry. We found a cheap bungalow steps from the beach, and since we were on the west side of the island, we got to watch the sunset (at Bottle Beach, the sun sets over the mountain about an hour and a half before actual sunset). While we were watching, a cute puppy came up, and absconded with Mark's flip flop! It was a bit of an effort to get it back, involving me chasing him down, trying (in vain) to distract him, and eventually just having to pick him up, and then he dropped it. Phew! To replace those flip flops would have cost, like 3 bucks, so I'm really glad we got them back.

The following morning I went to a yoga class at the nearby Siam Healing Centre. The studio was gorgeous! Open to the air on three sides, a beautiful blend of warm woods and concrete. The breeze blew through, and on one side we overlooked a field with palm trees (and some power lines on the otherside, but never mind those! look back to the palm trees!). Being in Thailand, I was not expecting a Russian teacher, nor was she, or the other student, also Russian, expecting me. But it was a really great class, and nice not to have to hike 5k to get there!

After class Mark and I got a few things to eat at the food stall area in the centre of town. There was a vendor selling 50 different kinds of fruit shakes. We went for combo #42: mango, beet, lime. Major yum.

Then we rented a moto and zipped up the west coast to visit a few beaches (Haad Salad and Koh Ma) to Chaloklum, and back on the main road where we ran out of gas... We've been consistently putting in too much gas, so we thought for sure we'd be fine. Yeah, we were wrong. But luckily it was a very short walk to one of the many roadside stalls selling gas in old olive oil bottles. And Mark did a stellar job of keeping to the left side of the road. We only got it wrong once, and only for a few seconds. No Phangan tattoos for us!

Sneaky puppy!

I found this "hilarious"

Thongsala

Haad Salad

Sea creature in the shallows!

Koh Ma

Koh Ma from the "view pint" that we reached after driving up some exceptionally steep driveways and a very short hike.