Another quick stop in Thailand

After the pestilence of Laos, I needed to travel to Malaysia to start work. On the way, I met up with my buddy Daryn who was hanging out in Thailand, near Krabi. The trip down was a marathon: an eight hour bus ride, another five hour bus ride, several hours of tuk-tuks and dealing with immigration, an overnight train ride, a day walking around bangkok, another overnight train ride, a couple more hours in a mini-bus, and finally a fifteen minute boat ride. However, at the end of that I arrived here:

I only had four days, but we managed to do a lot in that time. Tonsai beach is famous for rock climbing, but that's the one thing I didn't do. I did however go kayaking, snorkeling, swimming, caving, and hiking. Not to mention a fair amount of drinking and slack-lining.


There were two "hikes" that had been recommended to us. The first took us to a really cool hidden lagoon. We scrambled over muddy rocks to the top of a ridge, then down over even muddy rocks on the other side, dropping down into a lagoon that's surrounded by cliffs on all sides. The water comes in and out with the tide through tunnels in the rock. Really a cool spot. The second hike involved climbing up through a cave that tunneled through one of the limestone headlands (the one in the picture above; we entered at the bottom right and came out about a third of the way up on the left). You come out in an alcove overlooking the whole bay, what a spectacular sight:

It turns out there's a climbing route that tops out in the same alcove, so we were lucky enough to borrow harnesses and ropes from some of the climbers and rappel down out of the alcove instead of going back the way we'd come. Perfect!

I had a great time catching up with Daryn and definitely enjoyed Thailand more than I though I would. It is definitely more touristy than some other areas in SE Asia, but it is a very beautiful place filled with very nice people. How can you complain?