Busy Ao Nang & the stunning bays of Railay

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We have been back in the Netherlands for quite some time already, but I wanted to finish our ‘trip report’ with a relatively ‘brief’ (ok not that brief!) description of our last weeks in Thailand...😉

After an early morning flight back to Bangkok and waving goodbye to mom, who only just managed to catch her connecting flight back to Schiphol, I headed for our friends Penny and Amorn’s house in the suburbs of Bangkok. This felt like coming home! It was amazing to have a wonderful home to have as a safe haven between the busy trips we had planned (and don’t get me started on the amazing food we had there, it will lead to my longest blog ever…that’s how delicious it was).

I spent one night alone before meeting up with Jorn again at the airport (a place we knew inside out by now) and flying on to Krabi in the south of Thailand. We had nothing booked for that night, so we caught a bus to Ao Nang and thought we’d find a place to stay. Turns out it was pretty fully booked everywhere, not to mention about twice as expensive as any other place on our trip, so we ended up going to an internet café and booking a guest house through Agoda (where we found pretty good deals for quite a few places in the south). Ao Nang was bigger than we thought and we walked for about half an hour before getting to Ben’s House. It was a really nice hostel in a quiet location, not far from the beach and some restaurants (though there was a little climb up the hill which I didn’t love..). We ended up spending 3 nights there and we hung out on the beach, and headed for Rai Leh, which can be reached by longtail boat from the beach. There we walked around the island and gazed at the gorgeous scenery, rock cliffs and even a few cheeky monkeys along the path.

From Ao Nang we moved on to the chilled out island of Ko Lanta. It’s stretched out and has several beaches where you can stay; we booked a hotel for 2 nights (Moonwalk Lanta) which was in Klong Khlong beach. There isn’t much in this area but we didn’t mind, we were looking for peace and quiet. As we walked out of the resort to our right along the street, there was a very cute and stylish restaurant with lanterns and thick log seats. I don’t remember the name but it was so good we ate dinner there twice. Superb service too!

The next night the hotel was full so we checked out a few hotels along the next beach (where we walked in the midst of day (not to be recommended in the extreme heat!!) – we found the charming Good Days Lanta Chalets & Resort. We loved this place, you have your own little bungalow, there is a decent breakfast and you are RIGHT on the beach. It is alongside the river (which is obviously affected by low & high tide), so after visiting a bar on the beach one night we came back having to wade through waist-high water. Quite funny, especially to the guests sitting in the bar, watching us…

Because we were enjoying Ko Lanta we wanted to stay a 5th night before heading to Ko Phi Phi, but our resort was full yet again (we hadn’t figured out we needed to plan ahead a little more). So we moved to a third resort, the Ocean View Resort. We just stayed here one night and it was nice to explore yet another beach, although this one, closest to Saladan town, was a lot smaller, busier, but still very nice.

The next day we caught the afternoon boat to Ko Phi Phi, where we stayed in the wonderful JJ’s Bungalows. A great room, kind people, in a quiet location but close enough to town…the only drawback was having to walk past the sewage garden (yes it really was a pretty garden, filled with sewage water, so the smell was awful). Luckily our room smelled lovely and fresh!! Ko Phi Phi was beautiful but the town has been taken over by hundreds of shops, restaurants and bars. Some of which would remind you of a typical Spanish seaside town filled with rowdy teenagers, but there were some very stylish ones and the food was good too. We met up with some Bournemouth university friends here, Ed and I lived together in a student house in my final year so it was great catching up after 7 (!!) years. I won’t go into the details but after a beach party I ended up losing my slippers (this really upset me as they were my Vera Bradley sandals) and we spent most of the next day sleeping. Clearly we are not used to going out anymore…..

We were a bit unlucky with the weather in Ko Phi Phi, it rained a few times, but luckily when we went on a boat trip of several islands the weather was great…aside from the waves which made the boat ride a little bumpy (and scary at times). This trip included the famous Maya Bay, now not as deserted as when Leo DiCaprio was there - instead filled with tourist boats and about 300 tourists cramped on the beach….but stunning nonetheless!

After a few days in Ko Phi Phi we had had enough beach time (What? You can never have enough, is what I’m thinking now!) but had only a few days left. So we took a boat to Phuket where we spent one day, in the centre of town. The town is not that exciting, it’s pretty modern, but has an ‘old town’ (in brackets because there are approximately 3 streets of ‘old town’ and easy to miss). Other than that we went to a Robinson, a large department store, where we booked our flight back to Bangkok (for way too much money!). Dinner was in the restaurant across from our hotel, because the only other establishments in the area of our hotel were geared towards only men, if you get what I mean (“massage salons”..)

So we headed back to Bangkok to our friends’ house, where we spent two more lovely nights. Our last day was spent on a trip to the Summer Palace and the historic city of Ayutthaya, where our new friend Nuch and her friend showed us around. Amorn and Penny had asked their company driver to take us there, so the 5 of us had a great day out (even though Nuch & her friend were Thai, they had never visited themselves!), with a detailed itinerary which Penny had planned for us. An unforgettable end to an unforgettable trip!!

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