Sea Kayaking in Krabi

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We left KPGN on 2 January on the first ferry at 6am. We woke up at our final destination to see an empty ferry and a cleaning lady sweeping at our feet muttering in Thai for us to get off - oops! and began the journey to Krabi. We managed to negotiate the public buses again but our little overnap meant that we missed the ferry to Ko Phi Phi Island and were stranded in Krabi....in the rain . It is hard to believe that the weather haunts us so - matters were made worse when a lovely american couple decided to inform us that it had been so hot and sunny for the last 2 weeks that you had to live in the water. Grrrr.

So having weighed up the pros and cons of going to Bangkok early, (basically revolving around the issue of do we want to wait and see if the sun comes out,) we decided to wait in Krabi and book a trip to do the following day so that we did not have to stay in again and watch another movie. I swear, over the last 2 months we must have seen every film ever made at least twice - AND all new releases from the cinema. Pirating is not something SE Asia seem to frown upon. We decided to go Sea Kayaking.

Next day, no rain but very grey all the same. Its a shame because the pics cannot do the place justice - it was really gorgeous. In the light of day, although Krabi itself is not so great and we were not overly impressed with the beaches, the surrounding scenery is marked by enormous limestone cliffs jutting out the sea for miles around. Some of these have formed "hongs" which you can kayak around. We got in our first kayak, played around with some starfish and paddled ourselves to Hong Island where we had some lunch. In the afternoon we went to Ao Thalane. This is a huge mangrove swamp enclosed within the cliffs. There was a little bit of confusion over our next destination which led lara to decide she could hold the toilet, however the next 2 hour slog proved quite adventurous for her. First she had to wee in a canoe whilst pretending to take a photo(until you have been as desperate as me you have no right to pass judgement, especially with all the splish splashing) . Having baled out the wee subtly we continued our travels through the hong and ended up at crocodile cave. Having carefully scoured the water for crocodiles (which were lacking thank god) monkeys started landing on our boats out of no-where.

Our guides had lured them with pineapples. Michael was sitting there rigidly pretending to be fine whilst not so secretly pondering the possibility of a) monkeys stealing his shoes and b) their ability at knife throwing. At a distance lara found this highly amusing but her pleas to the monkeys not to come onto her boat fell on deaf ears and what followed was the single most funny piece of video footage EVER shot - its a shame the blog cannot capture videos becasue the sheer panic screaming and more wee which followed was hilarious. Cries of "get it away...i hate it..andrew do something" could be heard accross the Andaman Sea. Very amusing. Kayaking was great!

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