---

After a bit more than 4 months of traveling around the world we thought that we needed some rest. In fact it was a great idea to spend the last 10 days of the trip on Thai beaches! When you go to a beach holiday there is usually not much to tell when you are back and that is pretty much true for our beach holiday as well!

As the weather at this time of the year is usually better on the west coast (Andaman sea) we decided to ignore the east coast (Gulf of Thailand) and concentrate on two not-too-busy spots on the Andaman coast, which also ruled out Koh Phi Phi and its gorgeous beaches (too noisy). We spent one night in Krabi and then we went to the beautiful island of Koh Lanta by boat. We decided to go to the southernmost beach (Mai Pai), which is still almost unspoilt and we did not regret; a great decision! We had a quite bungalow on a beautiful beach and had to share it with only very few people.

The Krabi province is also well known for its extraordinary underwater landscape. We couldn't miss this chance to go diving, even if we did not dive for 2 and 5 years respectively. That's why decided to take a refresher course. We found that the extra-money was worth it and we were really much more confident after the refresher, which consisted in a few exercises under water before starting the real dive and some theoretical things on the boat. The incredible landscape and marine life underwater definitely revived our passion for diving! Well, for Annamaria, who had passed her certification in freezing Canadian water, it was the discovery of the pleasure to dive in clear and warm water! We liked it so much that we made 6 dives in total! We even had an unwanted adrenaline rush while visiting a very dark cave full with lobsters!

Unfortunately, we do not have pictures from these dives, but just imagine tons of colourful fish and incredible marine animals swimming or laying in, on and around many kinds of different soft and hard coral. Among others we saw: razorfish, nudibranch, many different shrimps and crabs, seahorses (they are so cute... around 2cm big only!), colourful angelfish, scorpionfish (poisonous!), beautiful lionfish, giant grouper, a leopardshark (very impressive!), a baby nurseshark, a blue-spotted sting ray, a big hawcksburry sea-turtle, sea-snakes (also poisonous), flutefish, trumpetfish, sweetlips, porcupine pufferfish, tuna, barracudas and many, many others...!

We spent the last three days in Railay. The beaches are sublime, but for us there is too much tourism concentrated on this tiny spot. It is beautiful anyway and we went diving (again), kayaking and relaxing at the beach.

After a one-night bus trip we are back in Bangkok for the day. In the morning, we had a very interesting guided tour in the National Museum. Tonight we fly to Abu Dhabi and tomorrow we are in Switzerland... Yet another country to discover?

Here ends our big trip! The conclusion of this adventure is coming in the next (and definitely last) entry of this blog.

---