Celeb treatment in Phuket!

Woke up a little late as the alarm didn't go off - my bad - but still sorted and breakfast had ready to go to Phuket. I had another weird fruit today - will find out what it is - red and hairy! Yesterday's was like a Pikmin berry! Our taxi took 3 hours to get to Phuket but it turns out you can't actually fly from Krabi so it is the only way by land.

Wow, what a service we got when we arrived at our villa, a coconut on arrival, a lift to our spa villa which is amazing. We can lie in bed and look out to the ocean - it is truly magical, very much the celeb life. I wonder where the Kardashians stayed when they were in Phuket? We can see the Big Buddha from here too.

I am writing this as the sun sets over the Andaman Sea listening to the waves crash against the rocks below. You are definately forced to relax here! They rung us to check we were ok and gave us a platter of fruit! But the bell boy did accidently lock is in the villa! There was also a lizard in our room on arrival, we have a holiday pet! Oh Daniel was poorly (hung over) for an hour this morning but he fought through the pain! Drama Queen!!

Number of stray dogs and cats - lost count!

007 Heaven!!

Today was so action packed in true James Bond style! They day begun like yesterday by being picked up in a mini van then after quite a long transfer and collecting some others we arrived at Phang Nga National Park for our longboat ride. Everyone - about 20 of us - climbed into the longboat and that was it - off into the open waters. All around was the limestone scenery - Karst formations, it reminded me a little of Guilin in China. Speeding through the water we passed island after island and some fisherman but the island we were heading to was James Bond Island.

 

After 30 minutes or so we were there - not quite like Bond in the Man with the Golden Gun but never mind. It is smaller than I imagined and Ruddy our guide kept saying you can walk round to the beach but I was sure you couldn't as it didn't seem to have one in the pictures. Turns out you pull up and park on a nearby island that does have a beach and a very good view of the James Bond Island. We were there around 10am and it was busy and Ruddy said it gets busier than this - right decision by us to go from Krabi and not Phuket. There was also a little souvenir market on the island staffed from people from the nearby Muslim floating village it seems. There was also a crazy shard of rock face which totally looked like 127 hours type of rock where you'd get stuck at the top.

We re boarded our boat and that was our visit to James Bond Island over, though our next step was still very James Bond esq! Off we were speeding through the open waters again with the wind and spray in our hair when you hear clunk clunk clunk then silence! Our boat had broken down. in the open water. There we were bobbing about with boat after boat zooming past. A gust of wind came and blew us towards the cliff face of a nearby island. We could hear the motor whirring then cutting out over and over again. We decided it wouldn't be far to swim to the nearest island as we were practically blown onto it anyway and it had a small beach so we should be OK! Eventually the motor started and didn't give up - woohoo - turns out a piece of plastic was stuck in hte engine - bloody tourists littering! So we were back on our way! We reached not an island this time but a large vessel floating where we disembarked our tempramental longboat and boarded canoes! At least these can't break down, puncture maybe though!

Our canoest Manoon paddled us through caves, under wierd limestone formations - one looked like a tongue, into a lagoon where the only way to enter was to lay down on the canoe to get under the very low rock opening then into a mangrove forest. It was amazeballs. Our canoe guy was amazing - pointing out lizards and rude shaped rocks and mountains - turns out he is also a Man City fan! We gave him a good tip. You could totally see James Bond canoeing through the area with a villan in tow!

 

 

Back to our longboat which this time held out to get us to the Muslim floating village. 2000 people live on here, they have electric, internet, fresh water and all floating on water. It was weird, at some points it was obvious you were over water like being on a badly built pier and at other times it was a concrete floor and felt like land. It all fit together by a series of narrow alleyways that led through a market, to a school, a mosque and restaurants. I couldn't imagine living there, they look like they are building more too! It could end up mahoosive!!

This was the end of our boat section of the day where once getting it from the village back to dry land we headed in the minivan to Monkey Temple. It didn't feel as much of a temple as yesterday though there was a massive reclining buddha through the big draw here were the monkeys. They were a little vicious at times fighting each other and snatching food out of peoples hands. The caves again were spectacular. They have good locations here for thier temples and I can see why the monks would want to meditate in them.

Our final stop was to a waterfall but due to the amount of rain they have had (not whilst we have been here though) it was gushing. No one went in except a crazy Thai family who were not with our group, it didn't look safe at all!

Our last night in Krabi we decided to go back to our favourite restaurant Aning's on Ao Nang beach front and we got a tuk tuk there, I'm glad as it was so hot! We then got lurred into a bar on the basis that the guy liked Daniel's beard! Turned out to be an awesome bar with a band doing mostly rock covers, a lot of rock from the 80s too. The Chang was on BOGOF and they had Makers Mark for the price of JD, everyone's a winner! We stayed til about 1, took a little walk on the beach then got a tuk tuk back to the hotel. A great end to a fab four nights in Krabi.

Number of stray dogs #37
Number of stray cats #7

Elephant & Jungle Trekking!!

Today is our first activity day in Krabi. We are off trekking! First stop was the hot springs. On route we picked up the most annoying Chinese family to join our group then drove through Krabi Town. We saw some primary school kids all dressed up being paraded along - turns out it was their sports day. Puts our opening ceremony to shame!! The hot springs were hot, not as slimy under foot as we thought though.

We then went up the road to the Emerald Pool and this was cool, both literally cooler than the hot springs but also was a cool looking place. Clear glistering water that was a striking blue colour. Shame I couldn't touch the floor, Daniel liked it once he found out he could reach the floor throughout the whole pool! To get to the pool we had to go on a bit of a walk through the jungle. Very tall trees and constant sounds of clicking bugs. The walkway went over the mangrove areas - you don't know what was lurking in there! We had lunch here. There were lines of street vendors on one side and a couple of restaurants on the other. The vendors had some strange items - 3 eggs on s stick with yellow goo seeping out the holes - bleugh! Thankfully we ate at the restaurant. Green Thai curry, chili chicken and stir fry veg, though the Germans only ate a little of the rice and the Chinese ate the funny egg on a stick thing!

We went from here to Tiger Cave Temple - unfortunately no tigers! It seemed like a massive monk complex, a new temple being built, shrines all over and monkeys wandering everywhere. One was drinking water out of a water bottle! We didn't climb the 1247 steps to the top of the mountain as we didn't have time but did climb up and over a smaller mound to the monastery. Crazy to see the monks homes built into the cliff with their washing hung out. We went into the caves there - which looked like they are used for meditation. The trees were huge with massive buttress roots and even though it was shaded on the floor it was extremely hot. We made our way back and went into tiger cave temple, we were invited in by a monk and asked to sign a visitors book and they tide a good luck bracelet to our wrists. Monks were in there chanting and there was not end of the amount of statues of Buddhas. We climbed the stairs to the tiger cave, a tiny space with more shrines. After leaving a donation we made our way back to the bus.

From here we were heading to the elephant trek. Everything has included walking through the jungle I'm glad we didn't get too bitten! We passed a number of rubber and palm plantations before arriving in another area of the jungle. Out of a clearing came the elephants!! Plodding along. We climbed a wooden platform to get onto the elephant which was easier to get on the seat than expected. Ours was called Watna and was the leader of the trek. She occasionally wanted to stray off path but the guide shouted an instruction sort of noise and she was back on track. It was awesome. Up and down, bobbing around but it was something you probably won't get to do again. It wasn't dodgy as you may think, they were well looked after and seemed happy, eating everything they passed almost.

Definitely been an eventful day - with some insight into Thai culture. To end the day we walked into the transvestites from the cabaret show in Krabi, yet another element of Thai culture yet to experience!

Stray dogs #31
Stray cats #5