Back on the mainland

Hello! We are back on the mainland from Poda Island. We stayed 4 nights and experienced 3 very different islands in one. But first I'll catch up on our getting to the island...

First of all as I wrote in an earlier post we found the island while on a snorkeling trip and only had about 45 minutes to visit it. While there we noticed some bungalows so we questioned how much. The cheap ones were 550 baht (about $16-17) a night. We thought that was a good price for a pretty quiet island. We then checked the menu for prices seeing as it was going to be the only option for food. It wasn't cheap but not too crazy. We were going to think about it.
So that snorkeling trip we were on ended about 2 1/5 hours too early and they didn't tell us they were taking us back. They just got to the beach and everyone was looking around confused. Well, we did go through some rough water so we understood that the boat couldn't take us to some of the places scheduled for the trip. Though in one of the good locations they could have stayed longer but only gave us 30 minutes to snorkel. So anyway when we got back and they were having us get off the boat nobody seemed upset. Everyone was just walking away. Jose and I started to question the boat staff why we were back already and they just laughed (that is just the Asian way of dealing with a situation. Don't take this comment the wrong way. It's not good or bad. It's just very different from the way we deal with situations. You have to come here and experience it. Everyone laughs in every situation). OK, so the boat staff didn't speak much English and told us to go to their office. Now, we don't expect anyone to speak English. We are in their country and have learned a few words to at least help us get by. Or to at least be polite. Well the tour office brochure says English Speaking guide. So in these situations we get a little annoyed. Especially because we have found many people to have "Selective English". When I spoke to one of the girls on the boat earlier she understood me very well but suddenly when we were questioning why we were back already they were uncomfortable and laughing and acting like they didn't understand. So, we walked to the office and only 4 other people on our boat went also. I won't explain it all but they were making up all kinds of excuses. It was really crazy. They made a final offer to give us 50 baht back (not even $2 for a $16 trip). None of us agreed to it and just sat there waiting for a better offer. One of the girls of the office was on a cell phone with the owner (we guess). She handed the phone to one of the guys that was on the tour also and when he said hello he was hung up on. None of them were being very friendly at all. It was just one excuse after another, and telling us it was bad weather. We were all laughing and asking, then why are there boats still going out with new tour groups?!
So, finally we negotiated a free ride out to Poda Island for the next day. Not nearly the equivalent to what they owed us but it was something. The others got some prices knocked down for other trips the booked. They just wanted to get rid of us.

So, we got to Poda on the 6th in the morning and checked in to our bungalow. It was nice and clean and more sealed than our last bungalow which had all kinds of creapy visitors that were able to get in during the night, which I have not written about yet. Maybe I can catch up with that in another post.
We asked how many other people were staying on the island and the said 2. We couldn't believe it! It was such a beautiful island.
We were told that the power would work from 6pm to midnight only. Luckily we noticed that our room fan worked independently from the power source.
So we dumped our stuff in the room and headed to the beach.
We ended up running into Carl and Kathleen (hi guys) from Alaska who we met a few days earlier on another beach. They have been sailing the seas for 10 years! They so kindly offered to give us a ride on their dingy out to a very small island to have a look. Then they gave us a tour of their boat and offered us some reverse osmosis water from the sea and some crackers and CHEESE!! Thank you for the cheese!! It made our day!
Our first night on the island...

To be continued... I'm hungry!!