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Published: April 29th 2006
With our month in Thailand being the end of our 6 month journey, it was slated for bummin' around and doin' nothin'. We had originally wanted to end our trip in the South Pacific in the islands of Bora Bora, Moorea etc., but the cost of these islands proved to be prohibitive in the scope of a 6 month trip. We decided we could get more bang for our buck livin' it up in southern Thailand.
To open the photo album, double click on the first photo. This was the only part of our trip where we booked our hotels more than a few days in advance. Usually we would book one city in advance (if we booked anything at all). But we wanted our last 4 weeks to be close to perfect. We checked out our budget and decided we could afford to ramp up the quality a bit. We had been saving to stay in nice places at the end. We researched extensively and decided to spend 5 days on Nai Thon Beach, 4 days on Koh Phi Phi, 1 week in Ao Nang, 1 week on Koh Lanta and end with a really nice resort that
happened to be in Phuket near Kata Beach. We mostly tried to choose places that were known for being on the quieter side. (We know, Koh Phi Phi isn't quiet, but we wanted to stay there!)
It was all just lovely and more lovely. After being on the tourist run for so long it was quite luxurious to just sit around and read all day on the beach. Even with SPF 45, I managed to turn about 5 shades darker and even though Robin tried to get a little sun, he only managed to change shades a tiny bit. I must have read close to 3,000 pages in my 5 beach-perfect novels (I’m a dork, I like choose fat books so they don't end too fast).
We treated ourselves to rare treats like hotel rooms with televisions, $3 foot massages, $10 dinners, $7 one hour massages, $5 facials and other such creature comforts that we had not indulged in for the rest of our trip.
Oddly, we found the food in many restaurants not to be as delicious as the food had been for the rest of our trip. Only after we had had our third bad
dinner in a row did we realize how amazing it had been that we had almost NEVER disliked the food for the previous 5 months!
The waters of the Andaman Sea are a stunning 28º C (or 82º F)!! People, that is WARM! The extra salt content adds a fun buoyancy factor. Nai Thon beach is a super low key, quiet place. There are no souvenir shops, just a few restaurants and an empty beach. No one would think that the Phuket Airport is only a 20 minute drive away. We stayed at a great hotel called the
Phuket Naithon Resort. This beach was just heavenly! Everyday, we woke up early, had a quick breakfast and headed to the beach to wile away the day under the umbrellas. To save a little money and so we could stay on the beach longer, we even made our own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which were fun to eat on the beach. Every afternoon around 2-3 the heat became intolerable and we would go back to the room for a nice shower and a nap. Something about being in the ocean so much makes you wicked tired. We’d sleep for a couple of
hours, head back to the beach to catch sunset and then have ourselves an early dinner and go to bed.
(Want a little Thai lesson? “Hat” means beach, “Ao” means bay and “Koh” means island.)
After 5 days of this, we headed to the famed Koh Phi Phi. It is truly one of the most beautiful landscapes we have ever seen. Yes, it’s a little overrun and busy now, but the scenery makes up for any frustrations you may have. We stayed in another great hotel called the
Phi Phi Hotel. During our time here, my adventure man went scuba diving for the first time! He absolutely loved it! He said it was just like being in your own personal Discovery show! He even saw a clown fish (“Nemo") and an octopus! While Robin did his scuba thing, I hung out on the boat and went snorkeling. I will scuba sometime too, but not quite yet. I need a little more deep ocean experience first.
From Koh Phi Phi, we headed to Ao Nang. We wanted to go to Ao Nang because we had stayed there in 2001 and wanted to go somewhere familiar. Well, it’s amazing how much
Koh Phi Phi--Rebuilding After the Tsunami
We have a picture of us at a restaurant from this exact location from 2001. It used to be super lush with hardly any open space. It's nice to see that they are rebuilding, but chilling to think of the power of the wave that devastated this beach.can change in 4 years, because it was anything but familiar! This place has developed like crazy! There are now ATMs every 20 feet, a 7/11, a McDonald’s and tons more. The place had a fun, vacation city feel similar to tourist cities in Hawaii or Mexico (although the water taxi touts could get to be a bit much). The beach here isn’t that much fun to be in with all the longtail boat traffic. But the view was nice and we treated our time there as a resort vacation and took advantage of the hotel amenities. While here we did a day trip to Hat Railay where Robin went rock climbing. It’s the first time I’ve seen him do that and man, he was really good! Made me proud! There was even one climb where he was 70 feet up! As I watched, I wished I had also signed up to go! Next time.
From Ao Nang, we headed to Koh Lanta. Here we had booked a really nice beach bungalow at the
Narima Resort. It was breathtakingly beautiful and their food was excellent! The beach was rocky which made for wonderful crashing wave symphonies. I even got to
go into the kitchen and learn how to make their awesome veggie fried rice! Well, while we were here we had one too many experiences with some jungle critters. It started with a huge gecko in our room. The picture doesn’t do him justice, this gecko was almost a foot long! And orange and green! Very nice to see outside, but not so nice when you see one on your bungalow wall. And he had pooped on our bed and on my PILLOW! We asked them to come and take care of it. They sent a guy who came in with a big stick with a noose on the end. Well, at the end of the chasing ordeal, the guy ended up smacking him with the stick and killing the poor gecko. We felt horrible, we had no idea they’d kill him! Then, we had a squirrel living in our walls, which was fine until the morning that he became trapped in the bathroom and pooped all over the place. There were a few other incidents, like bats in the bathroom, so needless to say, we left this resort early. For the whole trip, we were always fine when stuff
like this happened, but somehow for our last few weeks and with our higher price range, it wasn’t something we wanted to deal with. It’s like this: when we paid $10 a night and had a tiny lizard in our room, Robin caught it and we were fine, but at $65 a night, we weren't prepared for foot long geckos! I must say that the owner of the Narima resort, Mrs. Nupawon was extremely kind and apologetic for our unfortunate experiences. She was shocked to hear of all our intruders. We decided to go back to the same hotel on Hat Nai Thon where we had started our trip.
After we spent our few days back at Hat Nai Thon, we headed to our very last resort, the
Sawasdee Village . This is truly the MOST BEAUTIFUL place we have ever seen. The grounds of this hotel and their design were just amazing. There are more
pictures you can check out. It was a small resort, and the room were nice, but the grounds were really stunning. The sound of water running and fountains was everywhere and the immaculately maintained trees and flowers made you feel like you were in a
paradise. It was a really magical place to spend the last week of our 6 month journey.
During our time here, we shared a lot of our most memorable moments of the whole trip with each other. It’s easy to remember the big things, but it was the small things that we wanted to be sure to never forget.
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Isabelle Stahl
non-member comment
OH SPACIOUS SKIES!
Dang how beautiful, paradisal and idyllic! You are totally inspiring me to go. Thanks for sharing the tips, the great stories (gecko poop made me laugh so hard I had to explain the whole thing to Ian McCullough) and the gorgeous pictures. Glad you will be winging your way home soon.