Ao Nang, Thailand
Sunday, June 15, 2008
This morning I was able to chat with some of my family. The memorial for my Grandmother had taken place on Saturday afternoon, or early Sunday morning for us. It is nice that Thailand has affordable and accessible ways to communicate with home. So it was a bitter sweet start to the day. The weather had finally cleared out, sun all around. We were supposed to be picked up from our hotel at 8:30am for our Phi Phi Island tour. We rushed to get some breakfast, which meant Jes chugging his scolding hot coffee and me taking my toast to go once our pick-up arrived. There was one other couple with us, he was from Germany and she from Malaysia. We had a short drive back to the same pier where we walked out to the big rocks yesterday. We picked up two other young women before arriving at the pier. Our guide greeted us and told us to wait while the other people in our group arrived. Soon we were all climbing on our speedboat, there was about 23 people in our group. Our guide "Wit" told us what the plan was, we had to go over to Ton Sai beach to pick up a couple more people
. Krabi area is really stunning, limestone formations all over the place. It was a nice drive to the beach. After the two women were loaded, Wit told us we were going to go to Bamboo Island first. It was a 35 minute drive to the Island. We had 40 minutes to swim and relax on the beach. The water was so warm and clear. We took a few pictures and played in the water. There were some super cute hermit crabs along the beach, so of course I had to play with them. We started to walk down the other side of the beach, but people started getting back on the boat, so we followed suit. It was hard to manoeuvre 23 people in a speedboat, a bit crowded. We continued on to Phi Phi Ley Island and stopped at Pi Leh bay. We jumped in the water and had a short swim, surrounded by limestone cliffs. It was serene. There was a cave near the bay, Viking cave, that contained swallows nests which locals harvest to make clothing from. After our short swim we continued along Phi Phi Ley to Maya Bay. This beach is where the movie "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed. It was stunning. Crystal clear waters with powdered sand, surrounded by cliffs and palm trees. It would have been nice to have come here before tourism started to drain its beauty. I can't imagine coming here during high season, it was already too busy. We spent sometime in the water and taking pics. We didn't want to leave. But unfortunately we had to, so we climbed back on the boat. We then headed to Phi Phi Don, Ley's sister island, for lunch. We had a spread of Thai dishes set up on our table. The boat ride and the exhaust had turned my stomach a bit, so I didn't have much of an appetite. The food was pretty good though. We had another hour before we were set to leave, so we laid out on the beach. The Island is quite a bit bigger and has had a lot of development. Sadly the beautiful powder beach was a bit strewn with garbage and there was boats everywhere. We soaked up the sun a bit and took some pics
. Time passed quickly and we were back on the boat. One family had decided to stay on the island so we claimed their spot up by the driver, away from the exhaust. We arrived at Lohsamah Bay for some snorkelling. There were fish everywhere. We took some bread in with us but it was almost too much after a bit. Especially when the little fish started nipping at us. The area was pretty shallow so we couldn't stand up or we'd have a sea urchin in our foot. Sure enough the young woman from Malaysia stepped on one. Her poor foot was all swollen and spotted black. Ouch. There was a older Chinese lady who Jes and I thought was drowning at one point, but she claimed she was okay and continued doggy paddling in her lifejacket while coughing and splurting. We saw quite a few different fish and even one bigger black clown fish. After a half hour we climbed back on the boat. We zoomed to Hin Klang for some open water snorkelling. The water was about 4 or 5 metres deep. The reef was phenomenal again. Lots of giant clams, with pink and purple lips. We saw some bigger angel fish, like "Gill" in Finding Nemo. Near the end of our swim we came across an area busy with fish. There was a huge puffer fish near the bottom of the reef. Then I spotted a sea anemone at the bottom of a clear area, with 5 little orange clown fish. I went to the bottom and came millimetres from touching the biggest one of the bunch. That made my day. We then noticed that everyone else had gotten out of the water already, so we figured we should too
. They had some fruit out on the boat, so we all snacked for a bit. After Wit pawned the rest of the fruit off on Jes and I, the boat began the drive back to the pier. Again a stunning drive back to the mainland. We dropped off those two girls on Ton Sai beach and we caught a bit of a look at Railay Beach, where we will head tomorrow. Then we made our way back to the main Phi Phi Islands national park pier. We thanked our guide and got into our designated songthaew. There were some bitter French girls who were being shuffled around, into our songthaew. After dropping off the other people and chatting with the couple from our resort, we soon arrived. We walked with the couple, since she was moving pretty slow, I still don't know how she could walk on her foot. We wished them well and parted ways. We freshened up, since we had developed a permanent layer of salt. We grabbed some quick dinner, then decided to go back and hang out in the room. We were feeling the sun a bit and were getting pretty drained. We thought we would take advantage of the free wifi at the Irish Pub down the street. We headed there and hung out a bit, did the blog and such. Had some yummy nachos again, its nice to have some good salsa. We have to check out tomorrow, so we headed back and sorted out our stuff. Lets hope the weather is good! Ciao for now!
Zoe
