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Published: November 20th 2007
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Hello Everyone! We would like to tell you how busy we have been and have been unable to blog but it's just not true! We are truly in holiday mode right now. Lazy mornings, lazy afternoons and lazy evenings punctuated by meals in between! Not that bad actually, but we are living the beach life right now. We are currently in Railay, which is in the south of Thailand near Krabi and home to the most amazing beaches and ocean views. Weather has been hot hot hot!!!! This past week or so has been good in many ways but tough also, last Monday night, Shannon cut her foot on a broken beer bottle on the beach in Koh Toa. She got 5 stitches and has been unable to go in the water and has been limping around since then. It's made it a little tough for us to find stuff to do because snorkelling and swimming are out and so are hiking and long romantic walks on the beach!
We did however, attempt to do a hike at a National park west of Krabi, called Phenom Bencha. We went there with 4 french "friends" from Quebec with the intention of
doing this great hike to go see an 11 tier waterfall. Of course, some of us decided to take the "long" way around so that we could earn the waterfall view. Not my idea! Anyway, the nicely paved trail soon morphed into Jungle Root Weed Snake Trail in about 35 seconds. We were in the jungle. Monkeys calling. Generic Jungle Hissing. Lots of huge 200 foot ferns. (Shannon here - I thought the sounds were quite lovely. The jungle really sounded alive!) Anyways, Shannon, the trail started snaking up the mountain. And up. And up. Dense jungle, rocky trail, no signs. The french people left us behind. We had to go slowly, Shannon had only really started walking the day before and the only footwear she could wear were flip flop sandals. We were not prepared. But dammit, we had to see this waterfall! About an hour into the hike it started getting steeper and steeper. There were suspicious looking holes on the trail that I'm sure were snake dens. The trees were colored like snakes and vines were hanging down all over the place. It was not a place for a 35 year old white male with a severe
snake phobia. (Shannon here again: we reached a critical point. We could hear the waterfall about 200ft below us and the trail just continued "snaking" upward. Executive decision - let's turn around. No sooner did we admit defeat when it started pelting rain. Monsoon rain. The trail quickly became a slippery creek bed. So much for following the doctor's orders of keeping my foot dry. We picked our way back down taking about double the time it took to hike up. We eventually made it - I had to crab walk down a bunch of the time - not my proudest moment). You know what Shannon? We should just have different fonts. Anyways, it sucked! No sooner to we haul our wet sorry as@#@es back to the the parking lot, did our french friends (who abandoned us) show up and preceed to tell us that the water fall is like 300 metres from the parking lot, I then look up and see a tour bus of senior citizens piling out of an air conditioned minvan wearing only running shoes, bikinis and a couple of ill-advised speedos! (Hi it's Shannon again) With our tails between our legs, we followed the seniors
lead and walked the paved pathway up to the magical waterfall. Done. Let's get the rock out of this place!
On a more positive note, we went kayaking on Friday and had an excellent time. Our guide lead us through a series of narrow passageways lined with mangrove trees and towering limestone karsts. We saw a SNAKE SWIMMING THROUGH THE CHANNEL. Fortunately Greg thought it was a lizard and didn't freak out. It was only when I turned around and asked him how he felt about the SNAKE that he got a little sweaty. We also saw two kinds of kingfishers (orange and blue). The highlights though were a big lizard (70 cm long) that crawled out the lagoon only moments after the guide mentioned that we might see "small crocodiles native to Thailand". "Just don't fall out of the boat", I told myself. And we have to mention the cheeky monkeys that jumped onto our kayaks and walked on our legs looking for treats. One monkey even opened one of the waterbottles and took a swig - I'm not kidding!
Greg-Back to the snake. Who knew they could swim???!! WTF???? Man....Anyways....The monkeys were funny.
From here,
the next big event is "Shannon Stitches Removal Day", which only rivals the Superbowl in hype. So we are going to hang close the the beaches for a few more days. After the stitches are gone we think that we will have had enough of beaches and tourists and head up north to Northern Thailand and Chaing Mai. The beaches are great but it does feel quite touristy and we have had about enough of people asking us if we want to take a boat/bus/taxi/tuk tuk ride or if we want to buy jewellery/corn/watermelon/beer/massage....anyways, thanks for hanging with us on this blog, we are having fun but are both starting to miss home and all our friends and family. Take care and have fun!!!
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OK, hopefully this message gets through. Who knew you couldn't blog anything with "off color" comments or with a swear word or 8. I sent you guys a beauty and now you'll never know. Anyway, Deb, Joel, Sydney and Buddy are doing well. We went to the swimming pool the other day and to McDonalds for lunch. Got home and took buddy for a walk.........just busting your "stuff" I love the blog. I look about 5 times a day to see what's going on. Happy for you guys it sounds like a blast. If only the Thai peeps knew to throw the beer bottles into the ocean and not leave them on the beach it would be all good. Shannon make sure you have the camera near by when Greg gets bit by a snake.....priceless.