hi buy song, got yao noi

Still not sure of the literal translation, but this is the phrase we memorized as we paddled around the limestone islands off the coast of phuket, searching for fishermen to tow us back the hour or so back to shore… the 90 minute paddle out to the amazing islands of the ao phang-nga national park earlier in the day didn’t seem that taxing – and when we got to the islands we were met by incredibly clear blue water and bright white sand pristine beaches fringing the sheer 600 foot cliffs of the islands. there were caves, lagoons, and beaches to explore and so maybe we didn’t realize soon enough that the slight wind that had brought us to the islands had picked up substantially and we no longer could paddle against it (in our super-wide, super-heavy piece of plastic passed off to us as an actual kayak…pretty much the only one on the island where we were staying) when it was time to go home… a passing power boat towed us to the marine patrol station on one of the islands, but our hopes of getting back anytime soon were dashed when we finally worked out from the ‘ranger’ (a guy in a wife-beater t-shirt and shorts) through a ridiculous series of hand-signals that the ‘marine patrol’ boat was… not running right now. but we did get him to tell us the phrase we needed and point us in the direction of some other islands (even further from shore) where we might be able to pay some fishermen to take us back. So we paddled out, repeating ‘hi buy song, got yao noi’ (please take us to yao noi island… we think…) every 4 seconds or so so we wouldn’t forget it. It took quite a while of pointie-talkie with the fishermen, and then two liters of gasoline poured out of reused coke bottles and the equivalent of 3 us dollars, for them to load us and the kayak onto their tiny wooden long-tail boat and drive us the hour or so back to shore. but… the kayaking in Thailand was some of the best we have ever done so it was all worth it…

If you’ve ever tried something you’re really anxious about already and then had your instructor yell at you in the first 30 seconds of class (and be entirely wrong) and then every 30 seconds thereafter, then you know how we felt in our open water scuba certification class. we took our 4-day course with an extremely high strung german lady on the beautiful island of ko tao in the gulf of thailand… not super-relaxing but at least we now have our dive tables memorized forwards and backwards! we followed up the ‘academic’ portion of our trip with 3 very chill days on the nearby island of ko samui – stayed in an awesome ocean front bungalow, did some more kayaking and visited the islands’s water falls, hiking trails, and…we’re ashamed to admit, in order to satisfy our western chain restaurant fix... the island's mcdonalds and starbucks…