Travel-Trotter

We finally got to the beaches in Thailand and they are awesome!  We stayed in the town of Ao Nang on the western coast of Thailand after flying into Krabi.  The weather is really toasty hot, in the 90’s with lots of sunshine, we will be in need of lots of pool and beach time.  Better stock up on the sun screen.  We arrived on Wednesday the 28^th and checked into our bungalow about 3 block from the beach.  We grabbed some dinner and took a stroll down to check out the beach front and the rest of the town.  The next day both Maddy and I took separate jogs down on the beach; it is nice to be somewhere where we are able to do exercise without the potential for getting run down by a moped.  We finished school and then grabbed lunch on the beach, it was a bit pricey, but it afforded us access to a pool, so we enjoyed that until the girls fought over our new inner tube and we had to leave.

We hired a long boat to take us to Railay Beach and, I love hopping on and off these small boats to get us to different islands; they just pull up on the beach and drop you in the shallow water.  The long boats have essentially a car engine mounted on a pole with a propeller extending into the water.  The views of the area were incredibly spectacular, huge limestone cliffs, that looked like they were melting.  Once we got to Railay Beach we walked 20 minutes through the jungle to visit the Ao Phra Nang Beach, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the area.  It was gorgeous, with a huge over hanging wall of limestone and stalactites.  The ocean was very calm, and we didn’t have to worry about the girls being in the ocean.  We just kicked back and relaxed on the white coral beach.

After returning from Railey Beach we grabbed dinner at one of the Indian restaurant in town, it was the beginning of Holi, a Hindu holiday celebrating the first full moon after the new year.  We didn’t see much organized celebrations, although they weren’t serving alcohol at all for the day due to the holiday.  We also didn’t stay up very later because everyone was very tired after an awesome day at the beach.  The next day was Friday and we finished up school for the week and decided that we would explore the pools in town and got a deal on a barbecue dinner and access to a nice pool so we got plenty of time to try out our new pizza floatie.

The next day we booked a four island cruise to Chicken Island (Ko Po Da Nok), Ko Tup and Ko Poda, (I’m not sure what the fourth island was).  We had a great day playing in the water of chasing little fish and floating on the ocean.  We ate lunch on the beach, then went snorkeling just off one of the islands.  The kids enjoyed it and are getting a little bit better, but Julie and Caroline are still scared of the sea urchins.  We got a bit of sun on the beach that day despite re-applying sunscreen three times.  We are obviously not used to the hot sun this close to the equator, we will have to do better job staying out of the sun.  The next day we boarded a ferry south along the coast for Koh Lanta to meet up with some of our other world schooling friends.