After one more dive at Shark Island, my seventh, I decided to give up any more diving due to continued bad visibility. The weather here has not been so great either lately; somewhat cloudy most of the day, heavy rain for a while every evening, quite stormy and windy. It is still lovely to go swimming in the warm sea, though. We are at a nice place on the west side, on Jul Jula Beach.
One of my favourite discoveries here is the papaya breakfast. All you need is a ripe papaya, a lime or lemon, a knife and a spoon. Cut the papaya and the lime in half, squeeze each half lime over the half papaya, and spoon it out. Delicious!
The last two days I went for walks, one quite peaceful on my own from Jul Jula to the main village in Mae Haad bay, another more exciting adventurous cross country hike together with Nadia from Chalok to Aow Leuk Bay:
Among many other challenges, we had to cross a barbed wire fence and a deep ravine. I decided to jump it:
Nadia more prudently climbed around the top:
We were well rewarded at the end, in Aow Leuk Bay, where we met up with Daniela and Maurizio once again:
Unfortunately, after our successful return to Chalok Bay along the normal road, I stumped my foot on a stone on the beach and was unlucky enough to rip off my 'ring finger' toenail. I cleaned it up perfunctorily in the Alvaro Diving place and then after some hesitation decided to get it cleaned and bandaged professionally in the clinic:
That means I am definitely done for good with diving on this vacation, and can't even go swimming or snorkelling anymore, since the wonderful warm sea water here is also much appreciated by numerous bacteria. I am even taking antibiotics, the only tablets I have taken in the last decade or two.
I decided to leave the island, which is much too touristy for my tastes anyway. I booked a boat and bus to Bangkok for tomorrow afternoon.
