Arrival on the Andaman
After crossing the border back into Thailand we had a few days stop-off in Bangkok with a necessary shopping trip for essentials, (& to fix our camera that I may have broken on our drunken night out in Siem Reap), then journeyed Southward to begin 'island hopping'. A 14 hour overnight bus to Krabi, Con air as the 'bed time' movie... classic!
On arrival we headed straight to Ao Nang, & straight to the BEACH. White sand, hot sun & islands a swim away... literally, a SWIM away! We rented a motorbike to get to the better beaches which was well worth the $5 we paid for a days rental. The following day we went on a boat tour around the nearby islands, larger & not in swimming distance, some 5km from the lapping shores of Krabi.
Our destinations included Chicken island & Poda island, which were stunning, but would've been better with a little more sunshine. A breif snorkel at Chicken, lunch at Poda, a few other stops to a sandbank & snorkel spot & we headed back to mainland in a pretty small boat on a pretty rough sea... which Nicky was less than impressed about!
The next few days in Ao Nang were not so good. Nicky didn't feel well & the rain came belting in with strong winds. We were room-bound for two days with only crappy Harry Potter on TV. Then, as if that wasn't enough to dampen our moods slightly, we discovered our hotel maid had stolen $100 from us!... cheeky bitch!!! We confronted management who did nothing, went 2 the police, who did even less, before discovering that the entire hotel staff were in on the theiving scam & other guests had had money stolen too!!! After management refused to return our money we determined the best course of action was to tell every guest to leave... which they did... & to stop anyone coming in to stay at the hotel... which was about 16 people. This went on for a few hours before the manager freaked out, kicked us out, & closed up for the day at 10.30am!!!! Bitter sweet revenge. I'd still rather the 100 bucks!
So we finally left Ao Nang for Raileh, which we had heard only good things about from people we had met. Raileh is on Thailand's mainland but can only be reached by longtail boat as there are no roads there. I found this quite odd, until we got there & I looked back at the plainly evident immense terrain jutting out behind the beaches of Raileh. A road was DEFINITELY out of the question.
It was a stunning setting of contrasts, with the density of trees & undergrowth dominating the back-drop of the beautiful beaches lining the coast. Had the weather been better it would've been really good & our stay prolonged. Alas, it was not, so after just one day we headed off by ferry... yes, ferry, not wooden canoe with a lawn mower engine & a propeller!!... to the laid back island of Koh Phi Phi, encompassed by the attractive Andaman Sea.