Seven wells, two ferries.

** I forgot a day in here. We took a bus down from the highlands to Penang and then barely caught a ferry to langkawi, where we are a huge dinner because we hadn't eaten since hostel breakfast. We drove around on the rented scooter for an hour and a half trying to find out hostel, the tipsy gypsy, before going to sleep. **

We left our wonderfully cold room around  9 and went down to the beach for breakfast. There were no ATM's nearby and we were leaving Malaysia do we wanted to make it through the day with just the ringgits we had left. 

We walked down to the beach and then scootered about half an hour to another side of the island to see the seven wells waterfalls. I'm getting the hang of driving on the left side of the road and it's much easier without gretchen's bag stuffed between my legs. We'd pass big groups of monkeys running or sitting along the side of the road. 

We had to pay 1 ringgit to park and then started hiking up some steep steps. (About 600) to the falls area. They were a bunch of super clear pools with worn-away Rock between them. It looked like a fun water slide. We went out on the overlook beige and then we're going to go swim when a Chinese man told us up the trail further it was "more fresh". Sounded good to us, but after a while on the trail, didn't see anything that looked like a swimming area. I jumped into part of the stream, just to make the hike worth it, and then we went back to cool off in the first spot. I tried sliding down the rock slides and was successful, but opened a few cuts on the heel of my hand. First real use for my first aid kit! 

We hung out for a while and the scootered back down the mountain to the hostel. We were a little pressed for time and got back to the ferry terminal with barely enough gas left in the scooter. 

At the terminal, we learned that despite what we'd heard, there was more than one terminal on the island, and our ferry left from the other one. We bought a new ticket from here, and I was able to cancel the first one (which was great). We were crossing into Thailand so after going through immigration on the Malee side, we had to hang over you passports to the ferry operator.  I was convinced we were never going to see them again. The ferry was another high speed boat and took about an hour and a half to get to koh lipe. 

We got off on a floating dock in pretty big sweeps and crammed into a fishing boat with questionable seaworthiness. On the beach, we had to get out into knee deep water. Immigration here was a shack on the beach and took 5 minutes. 

The beach is beautiful and our hostel is a bungalow right by the water. Gretchen went to lay in the sand and I walked down the beach to try to find a coconut. On the way, I got distracted and talked to a free diving instructor. There's a two day clinic going on and she said she'd teach me the theory tonight and let me join the class tomorrow. 

We walked around the main "walking street"  for a while and ate a Thai food dinner before coming back to meet the instructor at our bungalow. The theory was really cool and took about 1.5 hours. Part of it covered breathing techniques to slow your heart rate to save energy. 

 I'm much much more comfortable in the mountains than I am in the ocean and this should be a challenge. I'm meeting here at 11 am to go out on the boat. 

This seems like more of a vacation island than the backpackers island we were on yesterday, but they're both beautiful. 

-AB

Diving deep

Oceans frighten me

Face your fears