The first duty of the day was to get checked in. The ride to shore on the dinghy was OK since we were going with the 20 knots of wind. We decided to beach the dinghy instead of tying it to the pier. Since, technically, Ron wasn’t supposed to be on board, he scrambled as soon as we pulled up to the pier. All three departments are in one building at the base of the pier. While the check in process was definitely easy, Thailand is the new winner in the “most number of forms needing to be filled out and signed” contest. All in all, check in took about an hour.

We were going to go walk around a little bit and get lunch. Eric just glanced at the dinghy to make sure it was OK. It wasn’t. The tide had come in big time, and the dinghy was now floating, being bumped into the pole it was tied to with every incoming wave. Sigh. We needed to tie it to the pier, and unfortunately, we had forgotten the second rope back on Kosmos. The ride back was against the wind and incredibly rough, slow and wet. When we got back, Eric noticed that we had shifted closer to our neighbor. He decided it was a good idea to have lunch on board and make sure that we didn’t drift any closer towards the neighboring boat.

We have a friend at home named Jason, and Jason’s sister, Jennifer, lives in Phuket. We had plans to meet Jennifer at the end of the pier at 1300 (1:00 pm). At 12:30, Eric decided that Kosmos wasn’t drifting any more and that there was no need to re-anchor, so we headed back to shore. As we were tying up Kosmopolitan (the dinghy), a Thai guy told us we had chosen a bad spot and recommended moving her. We did. Then a cruiser came by and recommended another spot. We moved her again, but we were much happier with the third spot than the first two. Satisfied with the spot and the amount of rope we had out, we happily headed to the meeting spot where we were joined by Ron.

Jennifer called and let us know that, unfortunately, the car she had hired was running late, and we had a couple of hours to kill. Eric and Ron went to an internet café. Christi went for a Thai massage. We have heard lots of rave reviews about how amazing Thai massages are, so of course, getting one is a requisite for all visitors. The massage was a cross between yoga and acupressure. The masseuse used her entire body weight, leveraging arms, legs, elbows and everything else, to contort you into stretches similar to yoga positions, then while the muscle was being stretched, pushed on the pressure points. It was really good, and darn cheap at only $6.00 USD. Christi does think that an hour of her best yoga videos produces much the same results as the massage did, but, Christi absolutely loves yoga and swears by how great it makes you feel, so she may be biased.

After her massage was done, the three of us went to lunch. We were adventurous and tried some Thai dishes. We got a Thai omelet with pork and vegetables. Inside the middle was a sweet, runny tomato sauce with some vegetables and small pieces of pork. It was really good. We also got Tom Kha Gai, a coconut cream soup with chicken, which was also quite good. Phat Pak is fried mixed vegetables, but we didn’t care for the sauce it was in. Phat Gei Sei Mamuang is fried chicken with cashews and vegetables, which is also quite good.

Just as we were finishing up, Jennifer arrived with Koy, the driver and Koy’s wife. Perfect timing. We followed the road paralleling the water south to Kanchanaphisek lighthouse on the southwest end of the island. There is a Buddhist shrine set up in the middle of the courtyard area near the lighthouse entrance. Even from the courtyard, the view of the ocean is pretty. We noticed that just to the north there was a calm looking bay with quite a few sailboats in it. Hmmm”¦. We may be looking at our new home.

The lighthouse in and of itself is very new and modern, unlike any lighthouse we have seen before. In fact, it took a while to register that the decorative piece at the top is actually a light. The light at the top is flanked on two sides by gold elephants and inverted cones. Visitors are allowed in. The bottom floor has some displays about the construction of the lighthouse, the top floor is where you get the best views of the area. The view from here is beautiful, with ocean on three sides. The ocean is dotted with tiny islands, which adds to the scenery.

We followed the coastline north, stopping briefly in Nai Harn beach, which is the bay we were eying from the lighthouse. It looked like just as nice of an anchorage up close as it did from the distance. We are definitely considering moving. We stopped at another viewpoint, which has a picturesque view of the three bays to the north of it.

Our next stop was to a place where we could get an elephant ride, which Eric and Christi were excited about. Everyone else has already ridden an elephant, and the consensus is it is the kind of activity everyone should do once, but no real need for more than once. You could choose a 20 minute, 30 minute or hour ride. We went for 20 minutes. We walked up a staircase to a platform and loaded into the bench seat strapped onto the back of our elephant. The trainer was riding on her neck. Our girl is 36 years old. Christi was surprised to see that the elephants are covered in a sparse coat of very coarse, short hair, similar to a guy with a thinning but not bald head has a buzz cut that is starting to grow out. Our girl slowly meandered along a dirt path, up a hill and through a forest made up of rubber trees and assorted flowers and bushes. At first it was weird to be up to high and we wondered about how stable she and the bench are. It was a little bit bumpy in the bench, but no worse than on a horse.

To be continued”¦