Trying to make sure that humans don't disrupt ecosystems too much is no mean feat, as you note by the coral reefs being graveyards - it is so hard to educate hundreds of thousands of tourists on basic manners because those manners can be life or death for some aspects of nature. But at least wild animals haven't totally fed - those are great shots of the monitor lizard and hermit crab! And it shows that at least there is still hope in reconciling tourism with nature. Nature probably can't evolve fast enough to pick for "can survive being stepped on by humans" as an evolutionary trait, so tourists themselves must adapt.

This is another great write-up of the beautiful places of Thailand, it truly does look like a romantic spot for say a honeymoon. I think a couple posts ago you wrote about the temples of north Thailand, now we have the islands of south Thailand, I'm certainly getting very convinced about picking Thailand as a tourist destination now! (I've heard about elephant sanctuaries in Thailand as well; have you been to those?)

Congratulations on finally seeing the Emerald Cave! I guess it's one of those amazing things that you always mean to visit, but just never got around to it even though you probably always have the chance to. Even more fortunately, it wasn't raining, that's crazy how it'd be raining 10/12 months in those pictures that you took? Excellent planning and luck!