Southern Thailand: water and sun

View upstream from Krabi town, where I spent my first few days in Thailand. This is still one of my favorite paces in Thailand. It's a place of real Thais, cheap food, friendly people, and just a short ways from the spectacular beaches and limestone cliffs of Railey seen in the photos below.

Kayakers dwarfed by the limestone cliffs around Ao Nang.

Longtail boats for hire.

climbing down into the Lagoon, a blue paradise ringed by palms and sheer limestone cliffs that open up to the sun in a circle. A bit of magic down there...

el lagoon...

...el lagoon cont....

...sad to leave this special place...and a little daunted by the climb back up, which involves three vertical sections assisted by rope. This is beyond the hiking and scrambling I normally do (but I couldn't have been happier!).


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West (left) and East Railay Beaches.

Phra Nang beach and cave.

Phra Nang beach. It may get the gold medal for "best sand" and "most scenic beach" of my life so far...

okay, just one more shot of Phra Nang beach...beautiful!

Sunset walk along the river in Krabi town.

I guess I lied - another shot of the Railey beaches area sneaked in here. :) Maybe you can tell I was loathed to leave this place behind.

thai dessert/snack: bananas, pumpkin, black rice...cooked in a sugar syrup and swimming in coconut milk, which is actually kind of salty. the pumpkin was my favorite - yum!

The moon over Krabi River. I watched it rising while I was having dinner under the night sky at the food stalls next to the river.

Two women I met the food stalls, Silvia, a retired nurse from Germany, and Marian (right), an environmental health inspector from Sweden who's getting paid to spend two months in Krabi "studying" energy and sustainability! Lots of wisdom all around me. Much to learn!

After Krabi town and beaches, I went to Phuket to meet my little sister Mamie, who was flying in from Hong Kong. We're travelling in Thailand together for 2 and a half weeks. It was great to see her big smile after months! :) Phuket beaches were a bit too overrun for my tastes and can't hold a candle to Krabi for scenic value. Not our kind of thing, so we got out of there and went up north a few hours to Kuraburi, the gateway village to Ko Surin, 60km offshore fringed by shallow reefs - great for snorkelling! The whole thing's protected as a national park, which is awesome, and they've got bungalows and tents for rent if you want to stay on a bit of tropical paradise for a while, so we rented a tent, and hired a guiding service by longtail boats to take us out to the snorkelling spots.

Mamie snorkelling in Ko Surin. Over two days, we went to eight or nine snorkelling spots around the islands,which are 60km offshore of Thailand, and much closer to Burma actually.

Mamie at the Mokken Village in Ko Surin.

The Mokkens are ethnic thais who are sea gypsies. Their village here was completely wiped out by the 2004 tsunami and all this is rebuilt.

Mokken pups trying to stay cool as they slept. It was burning hot!

Mamie snorkelling. We saw such spectacular coral and fish in the clear clear waters of Ko Surin.

From our tent.

Snorkelling guides turned out to be pyros at night. Mamie and I were just laying on our blanket at the beach watching the stars when an impromptu fire show took place.

Having lunch at the only restaurant on Ko Surin...the previous night the power went out in the middle of dinner. No one screamed or yelled. It was very peaceful, actually. Then all of a sudden someone turned on their flashlight, and then soon every table around us had a flashlight going - except us. The people in the table over offered us one of their lights! I thought it was so neat that people just took the power outtage in stride. Thais seem to be a very calm people, not easily panicked or loud (based on my measly two weeks of observations).