Khanom Tourist Guide Trip

Last weekend I was invited to join the tourist guide students on their trip to Khanom, where they were going to act as guides for each other and the teacher chaperons. Khanom is a small beach town about an hour south of Surat Thani...I had never been before so I jumped at the chance to go with.

We started the trip on Saturday morning, surprisingly all of the students were early for the bus...and we wound up having to wait for the bus to show up! Sadly, we were stuck with the really old fan bus, who's doors had to be manually closed cause the batteries weren't charged...the nice air-con bus was busy or something.

On the trip our first stop was Khao-Wang-Thong Cave, the golden palace cave. One thing I love about caves in Thailand is that exploring them is more like spelunking. There are almost no paved trails and you often have to squeeze through areas or crouch down and crawl. On the other hand they tend to be up in a mountain so they can be hot and smelly. At the cave we had to wait for the guide to get back, only one group is allowed in the cave at a time, so we relaxed for about 30 minutes and drank coconut water, I don't really like it :(

AHHHHHH!

Mmmm....delicious!

Not gonna waste any of the coconut!

After our little snack we had to climb up the mountain to get up to the cave entrance, which was a window sized hole. Once we were in the cave we began an adventure where we had to squeeze through crevices and duck walk under low hanging rocks. There were some awesome cave formations, including a dinosaur which was my favorite.

Yay! Going to the cave! Hip-hip-hooray!

The view from the cave entrance

Crawling into the cave

Dino rock!

Is this really the exit?

After the cave we went to the beach and did some kayaking...even though the students are all scared of the sun (no one wants to be tan)! When we were finished at the beach we went to the guest house, where I shared a room with 3 of the students (Gift, Candy, and Mah/Andrew). We had a seafood Bar-B-Q for dinner and I ate a TON of shrimp :D

On Sunday, after getting some sleep...after I almost smacked Candy with my pillow for trying to leave the TV on all night, cause she likes listening to music when she sleeps. We had toast and seafood spaghetti for breakfast, I skipped the spaghetti cause it is SOOOOOOOOOO not breakfast food! Then we went on an adventure to search for the pink dolphins, which are Indo-Pacific hump-backed dolphins (Sousa chinensis). There are only about 150 of them left around Thailand and around 30 of them live in Khanom. We loaded into 5 long-tailed boats and began a race to the area where the dolphins are most often seen (our boat won :D ). The trip was a lot of fun and every time a dolphin was spotted the students would start squealing and pointing excitedly. We wound up seeing 3 or 4 of them.

The race is on!

Where are the dolphins!

There's one!
(I only got this picture because the dolphin just happened
to come out as my finger slipped and hit the shutter)

.