Lockdown is, as I am writing this, still pretty much in place in Scotland, where I am from. With all the madness happening in the world just now I am just looking for a way to have a bit of a break from real issues and look back at my travels in 2017. Black Lives Matter! I am just not any kind of authority to talk about what is happening.
Our original plan after Vietnam had been to head to Thailand via Laos, however we had a volunteer stay at the Elephant Nature Park booked already and decided that we would not be giving Laos the time it deserved. We had originally planned to visit the South of Thailand earlier in the trip but ended up going to Singapore instead. So this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make that trip.
This was not my first time in Thailand, my first solo trip many years before had actually been to Krabi or more specifically Ao Nang in Krabi province, so that is where we decided to head to. A little trip down memory lane. This was actually one of the first places I had gone back to, after being a child and going back to the same resort in Greece year after year, and it was very interesting. Many things were the same like the beach and all the surrounding nature, but Ao Nang itself had many more bars, tour shops and general tourist shops. Definitely a changed place from my first visit more than 5 years prior.
That being said we spent most of our time there either on the beach or on day tours, so we were pretty glad of the tour companies. The beach itself had not changed with the possible exception of there being a few more long tailed boats, but this only added to the natural beauty.
There was even the little shrine at the far end of the beach that I had thought so unusual and exotic on my first trip, however by this time it backed onto a car park.
Also at that end of the beach I remembered there being a monkey walk, we found the walk but unfortunately at that time there were no monkeys.
One of the first little trips we did was just round the bay to Railay, which is only accessible by boat, so we hopped on a long tail and were off.
Railay beach itself had a small roped off area for swimming and a lot of boats, so we didn’t spend long there, we wanted to explore the peninsula and my Husband had heard about rock climbing in the area so he wanted to find out about that too.
We walked through the village which reminded me much more of how Ao Nang had been and makes me wonder what Railay will be like in a few years and came out to another bay on the other side of the peninsula.
We continued following the path and eventually came to what I now believe to be Phra Nang Cave Beach but we didn’t know that at the time.
It was pretty busy but we found some people rock climbing and it was very pretty so we spent some more time there. We also found a shrine there which reminded me I had been there as part of an island hopping tour on my last trip. Certainly a difficult sight to forget.
Eventually we headed back in search of a rock climbing company to book my Husband a climbing session, and on our way we saw the monkeys I had hoped to see on the monkey walk just chilling on a fence.
We found a climbing company and my husband had a wonderful time impersonating monkeys a few days later between downpours, it was the wet season after all, while I had some chill time with a book and youtube.
Quite Ready For Another Adventure 