Day 3 - Koh Yao

Day 3 - Sunday, July 22, 2007
Bangkok to Phuket to Koh Yao

We left early in the morning to fly to Phuket, where we met our host, Fadi.


Look at Fadi hard at work (or hardly working?) at the MRI (Marine Research Institute). Fadi will be moving back to California next week, and SDRF will be looking to fill his vacant position. Anyone interested in this challenging position should post a comment.

Fadi was born in Egypt and moved to Corona Del Mar when he was 18. He attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and has been working in Koh Yao for the last 6 months. Fadi (pronounced fay-dee) is 28 years old (single, ready to mingle) and is the Director of the MRI (Marine Research Institute) supervising a staff of 3 locals - one aquaculturist, one fish net cleaner, and one marketing/PR person. The MRI website is http://www.marineresearchinstitute.net/
Fadi is the only Christian on Koh Yao island.
Here we are at Phuket airport.

I saw these Japanese (Thai?) skaters and surfers at the Phuket airport and I couldn't resist taking a picture with them.

From Phuket, we took a ferry to Koh Yao island (about an hour away). Here is the view from the ferry.

Before we boarded the ferry to Koh Yao, we walked around Phuket looking for food.
We found some duck fried rice for 95 cents each and we ate the food on the ferry.
We are staying at the Helavee Resort. Here is the guy's bungalow.
The guy's bungalow only has 2 beds and 3 guys so two guys need to share a bed...
and the winners are Kio and Myles. At first, it was tricky to work the mosquito nets.
Here is our toilet that does not flush. The bucket of water to the left is used to flush the toilet. You need to swish the water to effectively flush the toilet. The shower is also to the left of the toilet and the water drains to the little drain on the right of the toilet.

Here is the swamp/rice fields that we will be building the fence around. It's about 2-3 acres.

Here's the other half of the field.

We also visited the walkway/bridge that last year's STM team built. Here we are enjoying the view from the end of the walkway.

The completed walkway.

We get around the island on a pickup truck and this day it was raining hard...but it has been raining hard ever since we got here. Here is Kio and I wearing our raingear.