Cruise Day 2: At Sea

Fancy brunch, wine tasting, stateroom crawl, board games, a Disney show and formal dinner, ending with the comedy club and a poolside movie! Today is the first full day at sea.
Mediterranean Cruise Day 2: First day at Sea (May 16, 2010)

Today was a long, busy day. We started out by waking up at 7:15 and getting to the gym by 8, even though we'd been up late last night (I was ironing our dress shirts until 12:30 am). After a moderate workout at the gym, we tried out the steam rooms, which were nice (I like the aromatic steam room), but a little too hot while the dry room was a little cool. There's a nifty full-around shower but there was a problem with the cold water and the lowest setting was scalding, so we skipped that because we didn't have time to wait for it to get better. Instead, we headed to Palo's where we had a brunch reservation.

Palo's is the fancy, exclusive (as in "by reservation only") restaurant that costs a $15 surcharge on top of the cruise ticket. It's supposedly well worth it and we went to see for ourselves. We dressed up fancy for our fancy brunch (I wore some smart white trousers with a bright blue shirt, a white tie and a white hat. Ryan wore dark blue trousers with a magenta shirt, but no tie. When we were seated, the server took away Ryan's white napkin and brought him a black one so he wouldn't get white lint on his dark pants.

Dressed up for Palo's, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

We started with Chambord mimosas (Chambord and champagne), and then our server introduced us to the buffets. There were six or so different buffet sections: Sea food, danishes, hot breakfasts, hot lunches, cheese and salads. From the sea food area we grabbed black caviar, rock crab claws, king crab legs, scallops and sea food bloody mary shots. I had a slice of German stolen with blackberry jam, cream and mixed berries, and also a piece of sweet Danish bread. Ryan had some berries and cream, too. We got eggs (benedict for Ryan, with added spinach, and Florentine for me) and I had a short stack of pancakes from the breakfast section. The pancake syrup had orange zest in it and was very good, but the pancakes themselves weren't so awesome because they were pale and of a manner I think is too fluffy. We skipped the chicken parmesan and veal lunch options and the intriguing gorgonzola and grape pizza as well. (The Italian sausage pizza looked pretty good, but one has to make choices and some things inevitably get left out, so no pizza for us.) I tossed together an arugula salad with grilled vegetables while Ryan got his berries and cream, and then we hit the dessert table. We picked out four desserts to share and try and decided unanimously that the tiramisu was the best of the bunch. The two chocolate petit fours weren't that spectacular, and Ryan enjoyed his sherry trifle.

Part of the seafood section of the Palo buffet, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Palo dessert buffet, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

After brunch it was time to meet the DISBoard folks for a wine tasting. We sampled two whites (a Riesling and a Sauvignon Blanc), three reds (a Bordeaux blend, a Merlot and a Shiraz), and finally a champagne. We liked the Riesling, and I also liked the Sauv. Blanc, but neither of us liked the Australian Shiraz for some reason, because I ordinarily like those. Ryan didn't like the Merlot either, nor, I suppose, the meritage (the Bordeaux blend). We had small chocolates to pair with the wines just to see the effect, and I guess that Disney cruisers like chocolate? We also got souvenir pins, which I immediately ruined the Ebay value of by opening it. Oh well. (What am I going to do with a Disney wine tasting souvenir pin? Ryan says I should take it to a pin trading session. If you don't know about pin trading, believe it's a religion for some folks.)

When the wine tasting was over, we met up with even more DISBoard people for a stateroom crawl, meaning we visit the elite staterooms of those DISBoard members with elite staterooms who don't mind showing them off. I checked out only the first two rooms because the rank 4 one (1 is the best; we're in 12 or something) was almost identical to ours but with a veranda. The rank 3 room was pretty impressive, though, and fun to visit. However, I wanted to swim, so I left Ryan (who had been elected the leader of our tour group) and headed back to change into my swim suit. I got distracted, however, when I realized that we were organizing the board game session in a couple hours and I hadn't finished fixing the minor problems with our Luna Llena pieces yet. Luna Llena is a werewolf RPG that probably is fun to play with 4 or more players, but was pretty dull when Ryan and I gave it a two-player test run.

By the time I finished fixing the pieces, Ryan was back from the stateroom crawl and so we both went to the pool for a short while until it was time to play board games. We met in a lounge and two other people showed up: Adrian and Margaret. We played Modern Art, and Ryan won by about 5 kiloeuros). Margaret came in second.

We had a short amount of time before the evening show, which we squandered faking a nap and then realized the time and rushed off to see the big nightly production. We forgot the camera, so there are no pictures forthcoming.

The show tonight was called "Twice Charmed," and in it Cinderella's Wicked Stepmother turns out to have her own fairy godfather (who is also wicked) who sends the stepmother and her daughters back in time to ruin Cinderella's engagement to the prince. They break her matching glass slipper, and the one that the footman's got for girls to try on, and so the Prince is going to be forced to choose either Esmeralda or Drusilla. Instead, he flees the kingdom in search of the girl he met at the ball. He searches for a long time, then gives up. Cinderella also gives up and worries that she's lost so much already and doesn't want to risk losing anymore. This is a terrible flaw in their characters, but it's necessary to drive the moral, which is that true love never dies (though it does give up, apparently).

The main theater seats 900, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

The story is thin, sure, but the production is best appreciated for its costumes and dance numbers. The singing is also excellent, if the songs are a little stock musical in character. At any rate, we thoroughly enjoyed the whole show. There were wicked spells cast by the fairy godfather (a demoniac magician who doesn't care if the stepmother gets hers in the end because he's just, well, wicked. He seems modeled on the villain from the new Disney movie, "The Princess and the Frog"), dance numbers, tap dancing, amazing voices (I can easily imagine Cornelia taking this as a dream job), pretty dresses and handsome men in Renaissance suits, pyrotechnics, special effects, and even a dream sequence with a look-alike of Cinderella.

Main Lobby, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

We had a brief amount of time to change into our formalwear for dinner at Lumiere's. It's fun to have occasion to wear nice clothes so often, especially when I can keep them nice and I don't have to worry about street dirt or bad weather. I wore a grey suit with a pale purple shirt and a blue and silver striped tie. Ryan had on a brown pinstripe suit with a bold blue and purple striped shirt and a white tie. We tried to get a picture of our snappy looks, but I don't think we have a good one.

For supper we had a cheese soufflé, soup for Ryan (potato and sausage, but was missing the sausage) and salad for me (mixed greens, apple, gorgonzola, and candied walnuts), and then the main course. Ryan had a rack of New Zealand lamb (it was good, though the lamb actually in New Zealand was better, he says) and I had some portobello mushroom ravioli in a sauce of butternut squash. Dessert wasn't that great: the lemon cheesecake needed more lemon flavor and the black cherry compote was actually only three cherries in a spoonful of sauce.

After dinner, we split up to check out various nighttime entertainment options. Because I'd run into the comedian from last night's show in the launderette while ironing our dress clothes for today, I'd promised him I'd be at his show. There was no need to attend just for the sake of filling the audience, however, as the room filled up and entry was closed a short while after I arrived. The comedy was funny at times, though some jokes fell flat for me. Meanwhile, Ryan went up to see what the poolside movie watching was like. The film was High School Musical, which held no interest for me, but Ryan hadn't seen it yet so he didn't know better yet. Still, he had a good time. He had the pool to himself when he arrived (I guess everyone else has the same idea about HSM) so he swam laps while watching the movie. Then later some kids arrived and joined him in the hot tub, which is where I found them chatting when I arrived after the comedy routine ended. We talked a while (they've been planning this cruise for two years and can't believe they're on it at last, whereas we decided to get aboard only three weeks ago), and then the movie was over and they pool was closing at midnight. We headed back to our room and spent some time writing down our journal notes, etc., and then finally got some sleep. Malta comes tomorrow!

Our first towel animal, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

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Skipping forward in time...

We ended up leaving Argentina about 4 weeks early. We spent 1 of those weeks in Rio, and another in Morocco, but that left us with 2 more weeks. At this point in the trip, we were looking for something a little bit different, maybe more relaxing and more social. Something that might require less planning too.

Prelude

We ended up leaving Argentina about 4 weeks early. We spent 1 of those weeks in Rio, and another in Morocco, but that left us with 2 more weeks. At this point in the trip, we were looking for something a little bit different, maybe more relaxing and more social. Something that might require less planning too. We investigated want-to-see destinations like Istanbul and the Greek Island, and learning/volunteer experiences like helping at a Roman archaeology dig or counting sea turtles. We also looked into cruises. Neither of us has been on a cruise before, but we've both been a little bit curious about the experience. This turned out to be a winner, and we settled on something that might seem unlikely - an 11 day cruise on the Disney Magic, leaving from and returning to Barcelona. We got a great last minute price, but did have to do some shopping in order to have outfits for the formal, semi-formal, and pirate dinner nights. Fortunately, there are some cheap clothing stores in Barcelona, and the main thrift store chain was having and "everything is 2 euro" sale.

We almost had a problem when it came to buying the tickets. I'd seen a really good price on Expedia, but I'd also read in my investigations that if we bought through certain travel agents, we could get a hundred or two worth of ship credit. So we certainly wanted to do that. But, by the time the travel agent got back to us, the good price for the sail date we'd wanted was gone (it had nearly tripled). However, she said that it looked like the last of the discount cabins was only under hold, not purchased, and the hold would be released in 24 hours. She could put a hold on our second choice date, and then if the hold on our first choice was released, book that for us. It did end up getting released, and we got our first choice, the main advantage being that we got an extra day on the ship (a rest day at sea right in the middle) for no additional cost.

Now that we had everything settled, I tried to dig up more information about the ship and the ports, and found the DISboards, a bulletin board style forum for Disney fans. These boards included a meetup thread for every Disney cruise, so I connected with people there who had been planning their cruise for months and even years, and they filled me in on all the details and answered a bunch of questions. They're a very friendly and enthusiastic group of people, and it was fun to start out already "knowing" some people on the ship. We met up with several of them the night before the cruise to see the Magic Fountain (better than I expected) and had a great Mexican dinner with Kia, John, Nikia, and Lelani.

An Aside

We're going to try to liveblog this whenever we have internet access. A network connection on the boat is very expensive and very slow, so we might only post when we have a port day that we have some time at. There will probably be no pictures til we get back.

Embarkation Day - May 15

Even with all this prep, I didn't know fully what to expect for Embarkation Day, but we did have some worries already. First, we'd been assigned the early seating because the late one was full. Early here means 5:30pm, and we'd been eating dinner around 10:00pm. The early seating could also interfere with some of our port trips, since sometimes we otherwise wouldn't have to be back until 8:00pm. Our travel agent had waitlisted us for the late seating, and later on told us that we'd gotten it, but I could find anything on the Disney website to confirm this. We also really wanted to get a brunch or dinner reservation at Palo, the upscale restaurant on the boat, but all the pre-booked slots were full. I'd heard we could get reservations on the ship, but didn't know how many were available or if it would work with our schedule.

The embarkation terminal was just one of several large halls on the dock. There were 3 other cruise boats lined up there, 2 from Royal Caribbean and 1 from something else. I was happy because although the Disney boat certainly wasn't the biggest, it was the prettiest to my eye. It's built to look like a classic ocean liner with big smokestacks and gold painted scrollwork on the bow. The smokestacks are just decorative though - one holds the teen club and the other a giant LED screen where they show movies that you can watch from the swimming pool and hot tubs.

The Disney Magic, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

At the terminal, you turn in your forms, show your passport, and get your bags scanned. A lot like the airport, but less formal. We'd hoped to buy a bottle of sipping liqueur in the dutyfree, but it only had overpriced wine, and we'd already stocked up on that at the grocery store.

In the waiting room, there was some entertainment for the kids: a silver statue guy of a sailing captain, a flamenco dancer with her guitarist, and Mickey and Minnie in Spanish dress taking photos with the kids. We said hi to the DISboarders we knew and waited for our number to be called.

Spanish Mickey, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

As we walked onto the ship, I couldn't help but feel excited, almost as excited as when we'd first started our adventure. Here I was doing another thing that I never really expected to do, and certainly not on this trip. My first surprise was just a couple minutes later when I found out that we didn't just board the ship, we were announced. Every group entering gets formally welcomed over the atrium sound system, which echoes throughout the hallways of the ship. And then a line of cast members applauds and says hello. It's a fun touch, and made it feel very Disney right away.

Our first order of business was to verify our dinner seating, sign up for some tastings (martini, rum, and mixology), and try to get a Palo reservation for brunch and/or dinner. We got on the ship in the early crowd, so this was all very easy and we got everything we wanted, including brunch and dinner at Palo.

We had about an hour and a half before we could check into our rooms, since the earlier cruisers had just left this morning. The buffet was open, but we weren't hungry yet, so we wandered around the ship. It's quite nice - the main decor is art deco, with lots of little Disney touches everywhere (old sketches and obscure Disney film posters on the walls, a Mickey Mouse hand on the elevator indicator, a bronze statue of Steamship Mickey in the atrium, a dining room called Lumiere's with glass encased roses in the chandeliers, etc). The ship is also clearly kid-focused. There are 4 fun areas for kids only - the teen hangout in the stack, looking kind of like a TV set of a college dorm lounge; a science lab themed area with microscopes, other science toys, and a set of video game stations; a fake bridge with a ship simulator program; and an active play area with a jungle gym, hula hoops, bean bags, etc. They looked like fun places to play, but we could only visit during the open house. There are 3 swimming pools - a kids only one with a waterslide, an all ages with the giant LED screen, and an adults only one. There are three main dining halls, one Caribbean themed, one French themed (Lumiere's), and one Disney themed (Animator's Palette), plus the fancy Palo restaurant which requires special reservations. In addition, there's a buffet, a hamburger and pizza place, salad and panini stand, and 24 hour soda fountain. All of this is free, as much as you can take. Pretty much only the liquor and coffee costs extra. There are also two huge theaters, one for movies and one for live shows (which seats 900!) - think big Disney shows with musical numbers and indoor fireworks and confetti cannons. Finally, there's a spa and an exercise room, and about 4 nightclubs, plus several lounges, some all ages, some adult only.

Kids-only pool, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

All ages pool with the aerial view, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Adult pool, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

When we got to our room, I was surprised how big it was. I'd heard that Disney has some of the biggest rooms, but it was better than I expected. We'd gotten the cheapest possible room (category 12) and been upgraded to something only a hair larger (category 10), but it was easily twice as big as some of the hotels we'd stayed in (specifically a certain hotel in Christchurch). We've got a king sized bed, living area with a couch, coffee table, and desk, a steamer trunk wardrobe, a double closet, a chest of drawers, a TV, a fridge, and two half bathrooms. I think a bunk bed folds down out of the ceiling too. It's all nicely decorated and very comfortable. I think it's been the only place where we've fully unpacked.

Our stateroom, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Now, the next order of business was to get some food. We hit the buffet, and while it wasn't awesome, it was OK. I knew that Disney Cruise Lines isn't known to be ultra gourmet, and that the buffet is one of their least appealing food offerings. They did have some tasty cocktail shrimp though. In line, we met Dr. Dolberg and ate lunch with him. He travels about on cruise ships giving lectures on the history of places that are being visited, and we hoped to listen to his talk on Malta tomorrow.

After lunch, we took a tour of the spa - it has a soothing rainforest room with a herbal steam room, regular steam room, dry sauna, 360 degree shower and several heated stone chairs. The spa also has some couples massage rooms and some very elaborate "villas" complete with jacuzzi on the exterior veranda.

At 4pm, we had an emergency drill. We had to get our lifevests on and proceed to our gathering areas. Ours happened to be in the Animator's Palette dining hall. We sat around and waited to see if our room would be one of the random ones called for checks, they explained some emergency procedures, and we headed back to the room to do some unpacking.

Next up was the farewell party. In true Disney fashion, a group of very enthusiastic and bubbly performers got up on stage on the center deck of the boat and got everyone dancing. The cover the main pool area and use it as a dance floor and gathering area. We only saw the last couple songs, and missed the confetti cannons, but we saw the remnants.

Bon voyage party, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Typically the evenings are dinner and a show, or if you have the late seating, a show then dinner. Tonight's show was "Let the Magic Begin", a sampler of all the shows to come. There was some singing and dancing, a comedic magician, and a comedian. The performers were all pretty good, but I was looking forward to tomorrow's show, which I'd heard was much better.

Dinners on the Magic are done via what they call "rotational dining". You cycle through the 3 main restaurants with the same people at your table and the same server and assistant server. We started in Parrot Cay, the Caribbean style restaurant. The theming for this restaurant is pretty light - some wall decorations and the ceiling in places. Later in the week, the menu is supposed to reflect the restaurant, but tonight was a special theme, so all the restaurants had the same menu. I had the fried calamari appetizer, seafood chowder, and the lobster and shrimp risotto, and the dessert sampler (small portions of three of the night's dessert). Danny had the bastela (a strange form of the Moroccan pastela), the same risotto, and an add-on of roast vegetables on arugula. The food was pretty good, but not stellar. I'd say the desserts were the most disappointing. Despite the server's warning that the steak was very tough tonight, several people at the table ordered it, and regretted it. The server had them choose a second dish as a backup and most of them took advantage of that.

At 9pm, in the middle of dinner, the ship cast off and departed from Barcelona. There was a gentle rocking all night long, sometimes a bit more than I expected, and I know that we looked like drunkards as we tried to walk down the long straight corridors. I was wondering if that would make me sick, but it didn't. After dinner, we checked out the dance club to find it empty except for a few kids moonwalking on the stage. So, we finished unpacking and went to bed early.

Barcelona, from Cruise 2010 - Ports

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Farewell to Thailand!

In which we look back on the best parts of Thailand...


Dec 23

From Krabi, we took the ferry back to Ko Phi Phi, spent a couple more days there (detailed in the Ko Phi Phi post), and then went back to Patong for one more night. In the morning, we got a shuttle to the Phuket airport and from there flew directly to Sydney.

As of our current spot in the trip, Thailand has been our favorite location. So much so that we even considered rearranging our flights to try and spend another month there, but we couldn't find a way to do it for a reasonable price.

Best food - Chiang Mai
Best nightlife - Phi Phi Don
Friendliest people - anywhere north of Bangkok
Most laid back - Cave Lodge
Least touristy - Phitsanulok
Favorite food and drinks: Café Buran (hot coffee served with sweetened condensed milk), Chiang Mai sausage, pad thai, Black Velvet (Guinness with a splash of black currant liqueur), fruit smoothies, shaking milks of Chiang Mai
Best celebration - Loy Krathong
Most fun - Phi Phi Don

Loy Krathong decorations, from Thailand - Ryan and Danny

Ryan's Top Experiences Tham Phra Wang Daeng Loy Krathong Festival Ao Maya camping Lopburi Monkey Festival First scuba dive

Danny's Top Experiences Tham Phra Wang Daeng First scuba dive Conversing in Thai Lopburi Monkey Festival

Cave Buddha, from Thailand - Phitsanulok Caving

Ryan's Favorite Eats Sunday Walking Street snacks(Chiang Mai) Dalaabaa (Chiang Mai) Just Khao Soy (Chiang Mai) Siam Rice cooking school (Chiang Mai) Cave Lodge (Pang Matha) Favola (Chiang Mai)

Danny's Favorite Eats Phitsanulok Night Market, especially soup and Kra Pow (Phitsanulok) 3 Kings Plaza festival market (Chiang Mai) Cave Lodge, especially bamboo sticky rice (Pang Matha) Thipsamai pad thai (Bangkok) Siam Rice cooking school (Chiang Mai) Chiang Mai in general

Sunday Market food, from Thailand - Food

Ryan's Best Sights Giant Buddhas and their Wats (especially Wat Pho, Wat Sri Chum, and Wat Phanon Choeng) Phi Phi Don Viewpoint #2 Swimming in luminescent plankton (Phi Phi islands) Khom loy in the wind currents over Chiang Mai Huge chambers in Tham Phra Wang Daeng (Phitsanulok)

Danny's Best Sights Phang Nga bay islands Ornate Wats of Thailand Giant Buddhas (especially Wat Kok Mai Daeng) Maya Bay at sunrise Swimming in luminescent plankton with scuba mask (Phi Phi islands) Khom loy in wind currents over Chiang Mai

Longtails at Ao Maya, from Thailand - Ko Phi Phi

On to Sydney and New Zealand!!!

Young monks, from Thailand - Chiang Mai

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Krabi

Our main purpose in going to Krabi was to do one last bit of caving. Unfortunately, I didn't have as good information on the Krabi area, so we were restricted to some of the more well known caves, plus whatever we could find on our own or with sketchy information. We rented a car for the day, since we'd be going well out of town.


Dec 17 - Dec 20

Our main purpose in going to Krabi was to do one last bit of caving. Unfortunately, I didn't have as good information on the Krabi area, so we were restricted to some of the more well known caves, plus whatever we could find on our own or with sketchy information. We rented a car for the day, since we'd be going well out of town.

I had some promising intel on a wild cave near Ao Luk, narrowing it down to a supposedly visible entrance in about a half kilometer of road. We drove out there, and spotted what might be an entrance on the side of the hill, but there was a couple hundred meters of very dense jungle between the road and the possible cave. While we were scoping this out, another car stopped, containing a British family looking for another cave in the area. They were very surprised to encounter Americans, since they hadn't seen many. I was surprised to run into another caver on such a random stretch of road. Since we didn't have a path or a machete, we had to punt on that cave.

On the way there, we'd seen several signs to other caves in the area, one of which I knew about called Tham Phet. Like many other Thai caves, this one was on the grounds of a Buddhist wat. There was a single monk at the cave shrine, and he waved to us as we approached and pointed us uphill to the entrance when he saw our headlamps and helmets. We left a small donation.

Shrine at Tham Phet, from Thailand - Krabi

The name of the cave is supposed to mean "diamond", and I could see why it was called that, because some of the flowstone was very sparkly. Overall, the cave is less than a kilometer, but it's got a couple of loops in it, and low crawling parts, so it is an interesting cave. It also has a monster tree root in it, about the size of a firehouse, that travels along the floor of one of the passageways for at least 150 feet. Here, I did get my first exposure to cave pearls. Some of them were old and no longer pretty, but I did find a large field of them at another point in the cave that looked more like the classic pictures I'd seen (except they weren't sitting in a pool of water). I think this was all the caves we did on the first day, because I was feeling kind of sick and wanted to rest. So, we called it a day.

Cave pearls, from Thailand - Krabi

The next day, I was feeling much better, so we set out again. We weren't entirely sure if the next cave, Tham Khlang, would be open or not. The information we had said that it had been closed after the tsunami, possible because its amazing formations had been damaged. We were close, so decided to give it a try anyway, and it turned out to be open. This was a guided tour, run by the guy who lived on the land, which looked like a plantation - some of the trees were palm trees, and some of them were another kind which were tapped and dripping a sticky liquid. We guessed that this was a rubber tree farm, since the tourist brochures mentioned them in the area.

The cave itself was very heavily decorated, with denser formations than I've ever seen before. Plus many of them were kind of hairy, having a coating of small crystals, or in some cases tiny helictites growing out of them. I didn't see any visible damage from the tsunami. On the way into the cave, I spotted a large (about 6' long) gray snake, but it got away before I was ready to take a picture. I don't know what kind it was. The end of the cave was another entrance, with a large Buddha shrine in front of a deep pool. As we approached the pool, the guide flipped a switch, which I thought might turn on a light, but instead we heard a long string of firecrackers going off, echoing all over the chamber. When we got out, we saw that his wife had walked around outside the cave to this entrance to light off the firecrackers. I'm guessing they don't get all that many visitors.

Tham Khlang, from Thailand - Krabi

Pool in Tham Khlang, from Thailand - Krabi

Driving around, I spotted some features in a cliff that looked indicative of a cave, and sure enough, we found a complex of small caves in the area. They also were associated with a Buddha shrine, but the area was deserted. We did find a huge hill of dirt full of shells outside one of the caves, and given that we were more than 10 miles inland, figured that they had to be from when Phang-Nga Bay was much, much higher. One of the caves in this set had a trickling stream passage and a large number of bats which flew about as soon as we entered.

Ancient shells, from Thailand - Krabi

At another promising roadside location, we didn't find a cave, but we did find a dumping ground for old household shrines. Cars honked as they went by, and we weren't sure whether they were doing so because it was a sharp, blind curve, or to give a greeting to any spirits there.

Shrine graveyard, from Thailand - Krabi

Our last stop was fossil shell beach, which we discovered was a tourist trap as soon as we arrived. There were booths lining the parking lot and partway down to the beach selling shells of all kinds, made into all kinds of silly things (like windchimes and trivets and boats). Of course, each store was selling the exact same thing. Fortunately, no one was there to collect the crazy high entry fee, so we got to see the site for free. The fossil beds date from 20 to 40 million years ago when the area was a swamp, and covered with snails and molluscs. The beds look like large broken slabs of blacktop, and the fossils run 1 to 2 meters deep in places. Most of the slabs we saw on the beach were pretty worn, either because of the wave action, or from people stepping on it. You were supposed to take off your shoes, but we saw a number of people ignoring this. It was still interesting though, to see such a vast and dense fossil field.

Fossil shell beach, from Thailand - Krabi

More pictures...

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Where are Danny and Ryan (part 5)

Have fun, we did.

Time: Recent
Difficulty: Medium (2 points)

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