Beach in the morning
I had a nice, long lie in this morning as we didn’t have anything to be up for early. For breakfast, we went to a nearby café and had my favourite breakfast of muesli, yoghurt, and fresh fruit. We were going on a boat tour of the Phi Phi Islands today, so we headed straight to the tour office after brekky. After a short walk to the boat, and a short wait for everyone else, we boarded the boat and were on our way to Bamboo Island.
The journey there consisted of many beautiful sights; pure, white beaches, exotic palm trees, and other islands scattered in the distance. What soured the experience, was sitting next to the engine for about an hour. I’m surprised I didn’t get tinnitus afterwards. After about an hour, our Phi Phi boat tour brought us to the beach of Bamboo Island. It looked very paradisiacal, just like I mentioned about the sights we saw on the way here. At first, we vaulted off of the boat, and made a dash for the beach and had a shallow swim. The waters were absolutely crystal clear, and the beach was golden.
After 10 minutes or so, we went to the boat to get snorkels. We returned with snorkels in hand, and returned to where we had been swimming. The pair of us donned the snorkels, and stuck our heads under water. Neither of us could believe our eyes; we had just been standing here and saw nothing, we stick our heads under water, and there’s a whole habitat here. Countless species of fish and different corals, it was mind boggling that they were here all along. After half an hour of marvelling at the sight, we returned to the boat, buzzing.
Snorkelling at Shark Point
Our next visit was to Shark Point; the name of this area got Mat and I pretty stoked. Apparently, they should only be black tipped reef sharks which are pretty harmless. It’d still be cool to swim with a shark, no matter the size. We got our snorkel gear on, and then jumped off the boat into the deep water; we were a few hundred metres off the shore. The captain dropped loads of food scraps on top of me when I was under water, this made the fish come to me like crazy. I was in a hailstorm of small fish, some started nipping me too.
For our boat tour in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, click here!
We swam around this large area for 30 minutes or so. There were no signs of any sharks, but the marine life here was still varied and really awesome. After swimming here, we moved on to the next location. This area was a sort of lagoon/bay; it was next to a secluded beach and was very deep. We spent a good amount of time here, and we actually caught sight of a shark. I couldn’t believe it, out of nowhere it was below us. We both tried to follow it, but eventually it got away. There were also some mini barracudas swimming around, we saw them go wild and eat some other fish. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you see it, it’s nuts.
Sharks!
The next place was a lot shallower; I could probably stand up here. Some areas were so shallow, that it was brushing my chest whilst I was floating. It’s cool how we got to experience a wide variety of habitats, some deep in caves, some fairly deep in the open, and some very shallow. What was crazy to me, is that in this shallow area, we saw 3 sharks. We followed the first one, and eventually a couple more popped up. Both of us were really close to them; in the moment we were both buzzing like excited bees over honey. We did come out with a graze or two from the coral/rocks though.
The last area was a brief swim, in the deep water near to the rocky island wall. There wasn’t too much to see as most of it was deep, but I did get to see another shark, and this one was the biggest so far. Gets me so excited when I see it! We returned to the boat for the final time, and watched the sunset. It was the perfect end to the day, watching what looked like the Sun descend into the sea. We did have a brief stop where we could get in the water to view the plankton, but this was quite anti-climactic.
Once we were back on shore, it was pitch black out. We returned to the hostel and showered down, although I’d had enough of water for one day! The pair of us nipped out for dinner; I had some delicious mac ‘n’ cheese, lovely to end the day there. Shortly afterwards, we turned in for the night. The boat tour of the Phi Phi Islands must be the best tour so far, really awesome.
