Our Bungalow...and Snorkeling

So, now we’re at Lanta Castaway Resort now. We are in a bungalow…and exactly what you “see” in your mind when I say bungalow is exactly what it is! It’s dark brown wood with a cute little porch (where I’m sitting right now, with my cute hunk of a husband). We have a double bed and the full size of the place would not fit another double bed. However, we have a small bathroom that is very “Thai”, meaning there’s a shower head in the bathroom, and no shower stall …so when you take a shower the whole bathroom gets wet…yuk…but that’s how our other two places were so far, too. We have many shelves to hold our belongings, as well as a table. It has a wall of windows that can be cranked open to let air in. Fortunately, we have a ceiling fan and corner fan, so that keeps us cool. It’s been cooler than normal for this time of year, along with a daily rain shower which is uncharacteristic, so, I’m glad to have the coolness, since we don’t have air conditioning at this place…however, don’t think we’re freezing, with night time temps in the low 70’s.

We have been snorkeling many short stints...usually 20-40 minutes at a time.  There are many rocks and that's where the fish and eels and all the other ocean wildlife likes to hide.  We've swum around whole schools of fish...my favorite was the angel-type fish bigger than the palm of my hand with a lot of color.  There was one school of them with at least 200.  There are also bright electric blue fish about the size of our fingers, and some bigger light yellow fish with dark lines and shiny yellow lines. We also saw another critter which we don’t know the name of, but it was round, brown, and swam along like a squid. We followed it and it swam very fast…eventually out-swimming us. I also wondered if I saw a snake under a rock, but I didn’t investigate closely. Under the rock, it looked snaky, but it just sat there. Fine with me. Since then, I've found out it was probably an eel...and we've seen several more eels, a cutter fish (when our friend, Craig, swam down to touch it...it turned from black to light tan...the color of the sand...immediately!), a baracuda, and many other beautiful colors of coral, fish, and plants under the ocean's surface.




Wearing a snorkeling mask and tube does NOTHING for your good looks!


I'm so glad to have had this opportunity to see under the water...so much more interesting than just gazing over the surface from the beach.  I think this illustrates a bit what it's like to live in another country.  If I were to just visit Mongolia, I'd get a surface view of the people.  I'd see they seem interesting.  But living there, I'm getting to see their uniqueness and learning little by little how to befriend them and develop our relationships.