On Wednesday, January 28, 2026, after a lovely breakfast buffet at the hotel, a group of us decided to hike the "Monkey Trail".
Sure enough, before long, we saw our first monkey! Tyler told us not to feed or touch them, because when someone on an earlier tour ignored that advice, a monkey bit her and she had to go to the hospital for rabies shots. (The girl, not the monkey).
Monkey warnings. One thing I recently learned is that rabies is 100% fatal once symptoms appear. So even though the chance of getting rabies from a monkey bite is low, the consequences are so dire that any monkey bite (or even skin-breaking scratch) must be immediately treated with a series of vaccines. These monkeys are even more likely to carry herpes B, which is 80% fatal in humans, so that must also be treated. And they can deliver bacterial infections. So while they can be adorable, we were warned not to feed them or touch them.
We really enjoyed seeing them, though!
It looks like someone else fed this monkey peanuts already.
There was some litter around, which the monkeys seemed to treat as toys, though it was sad to see that.
It was cute to see them interact.
They are so good at balancing!
After hiking for a while, we could see glimpses of the beach area that we were headed to.
Finally we arrived at a beach that is encircled on three sides by a mountain. There is no road that comes here, even though there's a big resort with a couple dozen buildings, so everything there has to be brought either by hand (over the trail), or by boat.
The sun was just rising over the cliff at that point.
The outcropping looked cool in the morning sun, especially with a classic Long-tail Boat in the foreground.
We saw even more monkeys on the way back, perhaps because more of them were awake now.
These monkeys followed Linette and Roger along this railing.
Here's a pretty fun 30-second video of the above monkeys walking along the rail. I thought it was pretty cool.
Kelly took a picture of a cute monkey on a railing, and it surprised her when it jumped on her shoulder! You can just see its face captured in this frame.
Here's a close-up. Her husband immediately reacted by slapping the monkey off of her shoulder and into next week.
When people feed the monkeys, it trains them to look at people as a source of food, which is not good for them. We saw another one being pretty aggressive towards someone who was carrying food in a sack.
Other than Kelly's incident, though, they mostly ignored us, since we weren't carrying food.
And they were adorable!
Here's a monkey with a baby.
Babies are great at hanging on so tightly that the mom can run or even jump between trees while the baby hangs on for the ride.
Peek-a-boo!
It was amazing to see them leap! We saw some leap from high up in one tree clear over to another one. This one is jumping a shorter distance near the ground.
There was a rock near the beach with a bunch of monkeys hanging out on it.
These ones appeared to be grooming a juvenile. (And you can see the hands of a baby hanging onto the one that has its back to us).
Tourists were hanging out with monkeys at the beach, many feeding them
And this guy literally had "a monkey on his back."
I thought the monkeys were a barrel of fun!
Here is a 9-minute video of the monkeys we saw on The Monkey Trail.
Here is a 20-second video of "naughty monkeys", including one that wanted a guy's lunch; one that jumped up and grabbed a lady's arm (I don't know if the monkey bit her or not, but Landon's video made it look like it might have), and the brief photo of the monkey jumping onto Kelly's shoulder.
As we walked along, I thought this gal's bag was funny.
While we were doing that, Landon and Jen came across a big tortoise.
Valerie got a picture of some strange-looking fruit. This is rambutan, from the Malay word meaning "hair". They have been half-peeled to reveal the white fruit inside.
The wiring in Thailand is wild. They seem to be running separate wires to each house instead of having a shared thicker cable with "drop cables" for individual houses.
At 1pm, we gathered at the beach for our big adventure of the day.
There were lots of long-tail boats lined up along the shore.
Soon we all piled into a boat that took us out to meet our "pirate ship". There were multiple levels of selfies
Here is the nook we hiked to along the Monkey Trail. It has a resort in there with a couple dozen buildings, but is completely surrounded by cliffs, so you can only get there by boat or by hiking.
We saw cool islands and rock formations as we zoomed along.
Soon we approached our "pirate ship.' It was a 100-year old "junk" ship. (This word comes from the Malay word "jong", meaning "ship"; which the Portuguese wrote as "junco" and then the English called "junk".) It has been modernized with a motor and such, but apparently has been used for a very long time.
This is the anchor line, but kind of looked like a steering wheel.
The crew was very friendly and served us fruit drinks or soda whenever we asked for some.
It was a cool ship to hang out on.
I climbed to the top of the mast.
There were pads to hang out on down on the floor.
We had fun getting to know the crew members.
We used a motor for propulsion, so the sail was mostly just for show.
After a while, we approached this little island, called Ko Lao Pe (Ko=Island, Lao=small island/islet, Pe="raft", which someone thought it looked like)
They anchored the ship, and we donned some snorkel gear.
We jumped in and started exploring the area.
We swam into a cool cave.
I especially liked seeing the schools of fish swarm around inside the cave.
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| Vanikoro Sweepers |
We saw some of the same fish as at Hong Island, but also some new ones. One of my favorites was the Moon Wrasse, which gets its name from the yellow crescent moon shape on its tail.
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| Moon Wrasse (aka Crescent Wrasse or Lyretail Wrasse), called that because of the yellow crescent moon shape of the tail. |
Here are a few more.
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| Streaked Spinefoot |
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| Goldband Fusiliers |
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| Hardyhead Silversides |
Dayna seemed pretty comfortable in the water.
The crew of the ship took a bunch of pictures of our group.
Sharon and Roger saw a Black-Tipped Reef Shark. They aren't very big and don't pose much risk to humans, so it was fun that they got to see one. Here is a frame from Sharon's iPhone video of it.
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| Black-Tipped Reef Shark |
I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't get to see a shark. Then as I looked through my GoPro video footage later, I realized that a shark swam by me and I didn't even notice it!
The deadliest thing I saw was this sea snake, which is called a Banded Sea Krait. They have a potent neurotoxin that is 10 times more powerful than that of a cobra. Fortunately, they aren't very aggressive, so they don't normally feel like biting people, unless you grab them or something.
I got some video footage of this one, but this frame came from when one of the pirate ship crew members dove down close with his GoPro.
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| Banded Sea Krait |
Here is a 12-minute video of the snorkeling at Lao Pe Island. See if you can spot the shark in my GoPro footage immediately after the shark shown in Sharon's iPhone video.
Back at the ship, several people took a turn climbing the ladder.
And people took turns jumping off the roof of the ship.
Tyler said it was a tradition for him to do a flip off of the roof in order to prove that he was spry enough to do another trip.
Here is a 2-minute video of "roof jumping", including a couple of slow-mo clips; followed by a couple minutes of "gnip-muj foor" (ถอยหลังโดด).
(My dad used to play movies backwards on the projector when I was a kid, and sometimes it is a hoot).
That was a cool little island and I really enjoyed snorkeling there.
It was fun to relax and hang out on the ship as we sailed along.
As we traveled, we passed by the iconic "Chicken Island" (Koh Gai), so named for the distinctive chicken head rock formation. (Koh=Island, Gai=Chicken)
Ya Wa Sam Island
Our second snorkeling stop was at Ya Wa Sam Island. Some people headed out on paddle boards.
Here is Linette on a paddle board with the "pirate" ship in the distance.
The snorkeling was very nice there, too.
We saw some more little comb jellies there.
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| Comb Jelly |
And here are three fish I don't remember seeing before.
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| Powder Blue Tang (aka Powder Blue Surgeonfish) |
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| Cigar Wrasse |
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| Copperband Butterflyfish |
One fascinating and slightly horrifying thing I came across was hundreds of fish attacking a jellyfish.
Apparently its stinging cells didn't stop these fish from enjoying a PBJ sandwich (hold the peanut butter and bread).
Here is an 8-minute video of the snorkeling there, which included large schools of fish, several jellyfish, and the above feeding frenzy.
While some people kept snorkeling, others hung out on the boat.
I got in a good photobomb on Sharon & Roger's selfie.
Then we set sail again, enjoying the cool rocky islands we passed by, and enjoying each others' company.
We weren't technically sailing with actual pirates. But they had a pirate theme going on throughout the ship, and the crew's T-shirts said something about how everything is better with pirates or something.
Soon we approached Poda Island.
It was interesting how far this section of the island overhung the water.
As we came around the island, we could see "Secret Beach", nestled within some tall cliffs on three sides. (It's not especially secret, of course).
A bunch of us took paddleboards in to the shore to check it out.
One of Linette's favorite things is to go for a ride while I paddle us around.
There were a couple long-tail boats moored at the beach as well.
There was a swing on the beach.
There was a shallow cave we could explore there. Here are Sharon and Roger heading up to take a look.
After walking through a tunnel, you come out in this opening, as Kelly demonstrated.
Linette and I headed up there, too.
Here is Devaughn peeking through a hole as well.
We all made our way back to the ship in time for sunset.
The view was awesome from up on the ladder as the sun started to set.
We all gathered on the roof of the ship to watch the sunset.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, I took one more trip up the ladder to the top of the mast.
Everyone looked that tiny from way up there.
Several more people took a trip up the ladder as well.
It was a serene, quiet moment at the end of a beautiful day.
Then the pirate crew served us some tasty dinner!
We don't drink or do drugs, but it would be hard to tell from the dance party that ensued at that point.
Here is a 5-minute video of the dance party. At one point, the gals all took turns jumping into the middle to do a dance that everyone else followed along with. They brought more and more people into the circle, including two crew members and another passenger who wasn't part of our group. I thought it was cute when they gave her high fives at the end for participating.
For a few people, including Becky, this was the last night of their trip, so we started saying good-bye to our new friends.
The rest of us were heading to Cambodia the next day for a couple more days of new adventures.