Advertisement
Published: April 3rd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Well, as you can see, it's been a while since my last update! Apologies, but beach life does make one become lazy!
We left Malaysia on 23 March (such a long time ago!).....the mini van picked us up from the hostel around 8.45am. It was a ten seater - James and I decided to sit at the back which in hindsight was a bit of a mistake but there were already people sitting in the front so we thought we could have the back to ourselves...there was not much leg room and James head was practically touching the ceiling! The van was supposedly air conditioned but it wasn't the best we have ever had! Anyway, off we set and within 3 hours we got to the Malaysian border where we got off to go through passport control..then again we drove a little through no man's land until we got to the Thai Passport control at Sadao. The man at passport control took a long time for each person going through...I didn't know whether I should smile at him or not when it came to my turn...decided not to in the end! Anyway, there were no problems and we all
got back into the van.
We arrived at Hat Yai around 1pm (12pm Thai time and with both of us nursing a few knocks to the head - think it was the combination of both the van and the road) and were told we had to get off and get on another van, picking us up around 12.30pm..we were like but it's 1pm and then realised the time difference! Anyway, the van arrived and we set off for Krabi Town.
We arrived at Krabi around 6.30pm and then wandered around trying to find somewhere to stay..every time I think we should book but we never do! But it's easy to find something......we booked into the JC Guesthouse, which also has a sports bar that...you guessed it...showed the football live!
First impressions of Thailand - similar in landscape to Malaysia. Thailand is also known as the "land of the smile" and I can see why! Not that people were not friendly in Malaysia, the Thai people just seem to have more expressive faces....and they are probably used to being bombarded with tourists/backpackers!
Anyway we spent two days in Krabi before moving on to Ao Nang beach.....we didn't
do much, apart from see what Ao Nang was like before moving there and of course watching the England vs Israel game...which meant we stayed up until around 3.30am! And afterwards we wondered why! What an awful game.......
Ao Nang beach - I confess we became beach bums again...we didn't do much at all during the week we stayed there, just sat by the beach, went to have a drink during the hot hours of the day, read, played Scrabble and slept! And of course went swimming - you know how long it normally takes me to get into the sea but here I just walked in as the sea was so warm, it was like taking a lukewarm bath! We did try to watch the England vs Andorra game but they weren't showing this at Ao Nang....made James wish we were back at the JC Sports Bar! Ao Nang is very pretty but very touristy so we are probably not seeing the real Thailand yet.
I must mention the monkeys on Ao Nang beach - there was a whole tribe of them at the corner of the beach. They were lovely, lots of young ones too. People
Me.....
..posing of course! were buying bananas and feeding them - they were so sweet, they came up and just took the bananas from peoples' hands, no fighting or anything. We also bought some bananas and fed them!
On the last day at Ao Nang, before we went back to Krabi, we stayed in a nice, expensive air con room, rented a DVD player and bought some DVDs and just watched them all day. It was good to cool down! James has been finding it very hard.......he says I am not suffering as much as him as my forehead is still dry...meaning that I still have a means to sweat whereas he doesn't! I got his point after a while!
Anyway, we came back to Krabi...speaking of which the local means of public transport is a
Songthaew (if you click on this it will give you the description!)...quite good fun really and very cheap. They don't drive that fast here which is probably a good thing! Here, we decided to do a 5 island tour and a kayak tour.
The 5 island tour was a snorkelling tour by longboat. Islands we visited were Hong Island, Lading (Paradise) Island, Pakbia and Rai
James
..not posing of course! Islands...for the life of us we couldn't really work out what the 5 islands were as this equals 4 methinks! Anyway, the views from the boat were brilliant but the snorkelling was not that good......and I got stung by a sea urchin...nice! Although it stung at the time within 5 minutes it stopped hurting so I knew I would live!
On this tour, we met an American couple, Jay and Eva. It was quite funny the similarities between us.....they have known each other 10 years, been married for three and Jay's family also come from Greece! They were also turfed out when Turkey invaded. But as they were Jewish, they decided to emigrate to Columbia during the Second World War, apparently a lot of Greek Jews went there. Jay loves scuba diving whereas Eva love horse-riding! We are going to try and meet up in Khao Lak.
The second tour we did was a kayak tour at Bor Thor. We kayaked through the mangrove forest and went through some caves, one of the caves had prehistoric paintings inside. We arrived back at Bor Thor for lunch around 1pm - I was glad as it was hot and one
Me...
..with an iced tea....delicious mainly because they put something sweet in it, not sure what! could feel the sun (the guide calmly told us it was around 35 to 37 degrees before we set off!). In the afternoon, we went to Tha Pom where there was a freshwater pool.....it was quite small and there were lots of people in it along with the huge spiralling roots from the trees but good fun! There was a bit of a tide too so it was hard swimming against it!
In between tours guess where we ended up - that's right, back at the JC bar to watch Spurs beat Reading - they really do keep up with the English football here.
Today, we are just lounging around (updating the blog of course) and having a rest. Tomorrow we are off to Khao Lak, where the tsunami hit. There's a museum there apparently and one can still see the effects of the tsunami - we will try and meet up with Jay and Eva here and then move on to Kho Tau.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.052s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0215s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb