Beaches and Beaches........

Jan. 23, 2009 – Doing a little looking back since our last posting …. We left the wonderful island of Koh Lanta, one of our favorite islands in Thailand, for the mainland of Krabi. Our next destination is the area of Ao Nang which sits on the lower southwest coast of Thailand. Railay Bay is where we set up home for a couple of days. This is a place that has 2 bays, both as beautiful as the other. Tall steep sandstone rocks create the surrounding for each bay. If you have ever have seen a photo of the orient with a long boat heading out to sea and a beautiful sunset in the background, this is it.

We figured that we would search for a room when we got there. We do this about 50% of the time. We find that we can get lucky and negotiate a better price than when planning on line. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. What we do is get dropped off with all of our bags. Given our diving equipment which is a bag in itself for each of us, we have a lot of bags. Michelle shops for living quarters while I hang back with the luggage. Railay Bay is kinda funky on the east side, with hole in the wall bars like Mothers Kitchen and Skunk Bar, fabulous rock climbing, restaurants, and live music nightly. The hotel workers exit out this side of the bay heading back to the mainland. This inlet is surrounded by sandstone rocks and the only way on and off this piece of land is by water.

As we head towards Railay’s Bay West, we have the setting I described earlier, with hotels catering to the more elite. This is where the sun bathing, sunsets, kayak rides and longboats for tours can be found. There are no motorized vehicles here because there are no roads, just walkways and beaches.

We spent one day snorkeling but nothing much was seen. Then we spent another day kayaking around the inlet. In the afternoon we decided to check out the main town of Ao Nang . We were hit head on with the realities of life. Ao Nang, although still a beach town, felt like quite the mainstream. It was filled with cars, tuk- tuks, stores, and people hawking wares on the beach.
As we walked the town in amazement, we saw the familiar site of the golden arches, Mc Donald’s!!!!! We were both so excited for a real taste of America ….Micky D felt like an oasis!!!. As we walked…no wait…. RAN up to order our double cheese burgers and fries our anticipation was overwhelming. We don’t normally eat at McDonald's but when that is all the Americana offered and one has been gone for more than 6 weeks, the need to indulge was overpowering. We both laughed at each other and our reactions to this American standby. I’m sure the other people in the restaurant were wondering….what’s with them? (in Thai). Needless to say, it went down sooooo good but felt like lead later.

Our final day in Railay was a relaxing day on the beach of Railay West where we found some new friends from Canada (Hey now Lori and Lawrence!!!). We hung with them that day and into the evening. It was a pleasure to meet some folks and share some stories. We all had dinner and set off to bed early (11:00) to begin our journey to Pukhet. It is here that we picked up our boat for our 4 day and 4 night live aboard experience. We set sail for the Similan and Surin Islands on the dive boat the Black Manta.