Life's a Beach!

Our travel day was a little tedious, but it was expected. Bangkok has 2 airports & we arrived in one of them from Chiang Mai and had to take a bus to the other one for our flight to the south. We decided to fly to Krabi, and once there, we hopped on a bus heading towards Ao Nang (in a matter of 30 seconds we decided to skip the National Park, and make our route to the western beaches.) Both the eastern beaches (Andaman Sea) and western beaches (Gulf of Thailand) have great weather and peaceful seas this time of the year. They alternate good weather/monsoons the rest of the year.

Ao Nang was a picturesque little beach town that contained lots of buzzing tourists and New Years preparations. We stopped in at a beachfront restaurant where I think I had the culprit of my first (and only) food sickness experience. Bold Statement: I am never eating bacon ever again. Okay, too bold, let me rephrase: I am never eating bacon from beachfront restaurants on Ao Nang Boulevard, in Ao Nang Beach, Thailand ever again. Anyway, the bacon reappears a little later on.

We hopped on a longtail boat and made our way towards Railay Beach. We got off too soon (maybe it was because some crazy lady on the boat kept staring and mumbling to Amanda). We mistakenly got off at Tonsai Bay – a really raw backpacker sanctuary with tons of the world’s most famous karst cliffs and rocks! The island was full of rock climbers and beach bars, but not much else. We had a nice walk along the beachside rocks and we slept that night in a primitive 10.00USD bungalow – well, Amanda slept. There was a Civil War in my stomach. The Northern nasties were battling over my food with the Southern sick-os. Everytime one side would win, the other would mount a stronger attack in my entrails.

We woke up the next morning and decided to escape from Tonsai and walk to Railay. It was up a small overgrown hill (felt like Everest) that wasn’t really marked (Amanda got a kick out of it at my expense though). My body was void of any liquid so it was pretty exhausting, carrying all of our clothes and gear. Everytime we stopped to catch our breath the mosquitoes swarmed, but we made it down to the other side. Railay looked nice, but it wasn’t our scene. Most people get a hotel/resort and don’t really leave, but we were just in time to catch a ferry to our next destination, the magnificent Phi Phi Islands…