Aint no DiCaprio

---

From Penang in it was a ferry to the Northern Malaysian mainland then onto a mini bus up to and through the Malay / Thai border which was all very painless due to the driver stopping at the last Malay service area, where, for the princely sum of 15p I got the Thai entry visa professionally (and more importantly, correctly) typed up. I still don’t like it when you hand over your passport and money and the gadgee disappears for half an hour but I figured that if he was trying to scam me he would have asked for more money. Luckily I was right.

So then I arrived in Thailand which was quite a culture shock, especially as I had got to grips with the basics of the Malay language (although it did help being the same as Indonesian) and its writing, to a language based on tones and without a hope in hell of me being able to read - this is going to take some work.

From the mini bus to Hat Yai, it was then onto a very crowded (but at least, air-conned) bus to Krabi. From Krabi it was a quick journey via sawngthaew (sort of big jeep with seats in the back) to Ao Nang which is situated on the West Coast of Southern Thailand.
Even though this area of the Thai coast is pretty well protected by the Phuket peninsular and the islands in-between it still managed to get hit by part of the tsunami waves in December and this was made real when the guy who owned the place where I was staying showed a video clip on his computer of the sea wall (about 100 meteres away). When you see a boat just being lifted out of the sea and thrown onto the sea wall it sort of brings home the power that it had. Another reminder of the destruction it caused was when I joined a speed boat tour out to the Kho Phi Phi islands and saw some of the serious devastation out there… unimaginable ! On a lighter note… we also visited the island used in the film The Beach where we managed to anchor up and have lunch. This was fantastic as due to the lack of boats since the recent disaster we ended up having this most amazing tropical island to ourselves - this definitely has to be one of the highlights of my travels so far. As we were at the beach of ‘The Beach’ I tried my best Leonardo impression (unsuccessfully) but had better luck when I went snorkeling around the islands and saw the most amazing fish which was probably on a par with those that I had seen in Oz on the barrier reef. This area really is amazing and I would recommend anyone to go there, especially as they now need tourism more than ever after such a horrendous natural disaster.

From Ao Nang it was then onto Koa Sok National Park where I spent a couple of nights in the jungle lodge that was incredibly relaxing until the monkeys came crashing by at 6 in the morning, although laying in bed watching the monkeys swinging in the trees just outside my window has to be another amazing experience that I never imagined I would have before these travels.

From Koa Sok it was then onto the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok which was another unforgettable experience (squat toilets on moving trains is not the best of ‘experiences’). Due in at 6:30am I was one of the few tourists to start getting ready to leave at 6 but as none of the Thai people moved I suspected the timetable was fairly flexible and this was proved correct as we eventually arrived at 10:45 ! A Canadian guy said he had been told that we had hit a cow in the middle of the night but I suspect that was just another excuse to shut the moaning foreigners up - and quite rightly so. So here I am in Bangkok which I will write about another time as it is only a couple of days before I set off for the Northern part of Thailand to do a bit more travelling before heading back here at the end of April.

Until then.

---

Photos

The Beach
Aint no Leo... along the coast from Ao Nang

Aint no Indiana either
On the trail of the sacred Buddhist cave around Khoa Sok

Guardian of the cave
This guy was cool and gave me a quick lesson in Buddhism.