FUN AT BANG PAE

Last Friday, Tim and I returned to Bang Pae Waterfall (see An Attempt To Catch Up) with Nadee, Jiab, and a new friend — Mary from Chicago — in tow.  This time, I had to pay the National Park fee for farangs (100 baht; avoidable if I had a Thai driving license) but it was well worth it since we had the upper pools beneath the falls virtually to ourselves.  Tim didn't swim as much as the rest of us, opting to take photos from the shore.  She actually shot almost a hundred photos but very few of them are in focus (I've selected the "best of the bunch" to display here); a little more instruction on how to use my camera is in order, I'm afraid...

Mary was actually someone that Jiab met at local market a few days ago and invited along at the last minute so I'd have a native English-speaker to converse with (I'm actually very happy being trying to talk in Thaiglish on these excursions).  It turns out that she had recently graduated from one of the other TEFL courses on Phuket and had spent the previous six years living in Japan.  She was a nice addition to our little group, if a bit reserved because we'd all just met.

I spent most of the time playing pranks with Nadee and Jiab and trying to coax them ever closer to the main waterfall.  It was difficult to get under it because the waterflow was extremely strong and the spray stung our eyes.  After some trial-and-error, I managed to perch on a few rocks at the base but the girls only made it to a large boulder about 20 feet away.

We left Bang Pae after a couple of hours of swimming and made our way to Surin Beach on the west coast.  The surf was almost non-existent and Tim even swam out rather far from the shore.  It was pleasant but I missed the excited of Laem Sing with it's massive waves.  I tried to teach Jiab and Tim how to float on their backs but without much success; I, on the other hand, float TOO easily and can fall asleep gliding on the water's surface...

Here are the best of Tim's photos (and one by Jiab) from the falls at Bang Pae: