Day 3 plan was a boat trip. We had not had much luck booking one. The lady we had tried to book with originally had quoted one price but conveniently just before booking had just had an order from another customer so only now had a more expensive boat. This happened twice! On different days… Urm not suspicious at all! Needless to say we didn’t book with her. In the end we did book a trip via the front desk at the hotel.

The trip supposedly involved 3 hours on the boat and seeing some fishes… details of the exact boat didn’t translate well so we were not really sure what to expect. On arrival at the port there was an array of very smart boats which was reassuring but also a rubber duck!

Thankfully we were indeed guided to a yacht not an inflatable and in true China style at exactly 12 on the dot our engine started and we left the port.

After approximately 30mins of cruising the boat stopped in an area surrounded by a lot of others boats. There were also jet skis and rubber banana boats and hover craft everywhere. The captain said “this is we’re you can swim”. All of us looked at each other then at him like he was crazy! Then he added “just watch out for the jellyfish”. Safe to say none of us wanted to swim 1) with jellyfish 2) where the was a high chance of being run over.

After some conversations and miss translations we finally managed to explain that we didn’t want to go on any of the extra inflatable/hover/tow rides or swim with jelly fish and that we would prefer to go somewhere quieter. This was obviously not what the normal tourist wanted and our crew was quite confused.

They moved on a few more mins out of the main pack to an area you can snorkel. But they said we really needed to come in summer (obviously not that useful advice given it was December) but at least there was no speeding jet skis to run us over. And the view was rather impressive! Clear ocean and skies.

They told us a man could come take us snorkelling but actually when he turned up he could only take us diving. Which given 3 of our group were too young for wasn’t an option (not that the operator seemed bothered) we opted out of.

Instead we decided to make the most of it an swim in the sea. I went first with my mask to check for jelly fish! Thankfully I did not see any!

Not long after ditching the completely useless life jackets we started jumping off the boat into the water which is always fun in any part of the world!

Myself and Mrs Flintstone think we should now take up synchronised diving, given that we even fault the same! 😂😂

At the next stop the kids enjoyed some fishing. even though they didn’t catch anything, unless you count a plastic bag!

In summary, it was not the trip we had expected and we wouldn’t recommend to anyone else but we made the most of it. It was nice to be out on the water. It was interesting to see the coast line from a new angle and it was fun to jump off the boat!