We got packed up all our things and then got picked up at 9AM for a daylong snorkeling trip.

As you may have gathered from previous posts, snorkeling and scuba diving are Nick’s Thing that he is working on passing down to Millie. I personally have a fear of the ocean that lies somewhere between healthy and irrational. It is just so big. Anyway, today I decided to stop being a worry wart and join them. We arrived at the dive shop and got fitted for fins and masks.

The dive shop had this funny sign outside promising handsome guides. It made me chuckle but then when we got on the boat I realized they weren’t kidding. Our guide was half British, half Dutch, full hunk. Here is a photo I pretended to take of Millie while thinking “I gotta get a picture of this guy”.

I better finish this up quick before the police arrive after my last paragraph and photo. It was very windy this morning and the waves were intense as we were getting on the boat and to our first stop. There’s no way I could capture it with a photo, but imagine big sways on the boat. Luckily I had dosed both Millie and I with Dramamine and we did fine. It made her sleepy and she passed out for most of the ride there.

We didn’t last very long at our first stop. It was Millie’s first time jumping off a boat into the open ocean and the waves were too big for any of us to have much fun. The visibility wasn’t great and we were being sloshed around.

The second stop was much more manageable. She wore a life jacket and used fins for the first time. We jumped off and made our way slowly towards an island. If you are able to peel your eyes away from our supermodel guide in the below photo, you will see how calm and blue the water was.

We swam to the beach of the little island. We were so proud of Millie for how far and calmly she swam. Nick went back out to see some fish while we stayed on shore collecting hermit crabs and making a little house for them. We then swam back to the boat and had some lunch.

The third stop was another small island. The water was calm but she had had enough and wanted to stay on the boat. I was happy to stay with her and we waved goodbye to Nick as he set off on his last snorkel of the day.

We passed the time playing cards with a nice Swedish grandmother and her grandkids. They played Go Fish which had the exact same rules as when we play except that when we say “go fish”, the Swedes say “find it in the lake”. So Nordic.

Nick returned and we made our way back to the pier. We arrived at 4PM and had a bit of stress with timing. We booked a 4:30 boat to our new island and still had to go to the dive shop to pay, to the hotel for all our luggage, and then back to the pier. We worked it out by having the hotel bring our luggage to us and having the supermodel give Nick a ride on the back of his motorcycle (hubba hubba). Of course after all the stress, the boat was 15 minutes late.

We were exhausted and Nick and Millie almost fell asleep. The ride was quick and we were picked up from the Koh Kood pier and brought to our hotel.

We arrived at sunset and sat watching it go down. Millie stripped down and skinny dipped in the tiny pool on our balcony.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was either delicious or we were hungry from our day on the water. Millie ate her whole bowl of spaghetti bolognese (a new favorite) and then got her ice cream for Ice Cream Friday.

We played on the swings and basked in the full moon before heading off to bed.