Krabi - Ao Nang

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We spent a nice afternoon in Krabi wandering around checking out the area. Chad was happy as the hotel we were staying in had the rugby league on :-) In the evening we had great thai food and a couple of Changs in a cool diver's place near our hotel.


The next morning we caught a sawngthaew (small truck with benches in the back) to Ao Nang. When we arrived I left Chad with our backpacks under a shady tree and set off in search of accommodation. We had agreed that we needed a little bit of luxury to recover from our travels so I had a budget of 1000 bht per night to spend (sweeet). After an hour ( I felt like I was flat hunting in Manly again - a quick 2 minute look around before dashing to the next place), I finally settled on Ao Nang Seafront Thai Resort. It ticked all the boxes for me - soft bed and pillows (keep getting bruises from all the hard beds here), balcony, seaview, fridge, pool and cable tv. All that was left was the haggling, fifteen minutes later, I skipped out of the hotel having secured a 1800 bht room for 1000bht including a buffet breakfast - bargain ! :-)


Ao Nang is a great location for boat trips to the various local islands and has a great vibe with lots of bars, restaurants and a lovely beach, not that we saw much of it as we were using the fab pool in the resort :-) We enjoyed a couple of days of movies, air con and relaxing around the pool.

During our time here we went by long tail boats to various island. Poda Island, where there was so many fish that I felt like I was being eaten alive !

Chicken Island, where Chad got freaked out by a couple of big fish whilst snorkelling, he still got back in the water though :-)


Tug Island, where we walked across the sandbank to another island only to have to rush straight back, as the tide was rising, in order to beat a massive storm. It was actually a good workout running through the knee deep water! We only just made it back in time to put our camera and stuff somewhere dry in the rocks before the storm hit us. The sky went black and visibility was so bad that we couldn't see the island we had just walked from. The only place to shelter from the torrential rain was in the sea. That's right, in the sea! It was like being in an outside bath, the water was so warm that we could see steam rising from it as the rain poured down, it was lovely :-)



We also visited Railay, with its limestone cliffs and spiritual caves, a hangout for rock climbers and backpackers. We didn't have a go as the rocks looked a bit too high for us wimps.

I have enjoyed our luxurious stay in Ao Nang (budget luxury of course!) and especially the buffet breakfast where I ate so much that I have probably put back on my lost kilos ! I made sure I had plenty of fresh fruit with my fried breakfast though :-)

We leave the west coast to travel to the east coast, next stop Ko Samui

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