Southern Thailand

Following my trip through Laos and Vietnam, I headed back to Bangkok for a much needed night of sleep in my apartment.  But it was a quick turnaround because roughly 15 hours after getting home I was heading back to the bus station to catch an overnight bus to Krabi Province in Southern Thailand.

Our group from Vietnam had all headed separate ways for a few days but we had plans to meet up at Railay Beach in Krabi.  I was there first and spent some time walking around checking out hotels on the three beaches at Railay.  I wound up at the "backpacker" beach, Tonsai Beach.  It's definitely one of my favorite places I've been in Thailand.  Both ends of the beach run directly into limestone cliffs and the land behind the beach is thick jungle.  This means that the only way to get to the beach is by boat.  It was awesome;  incredibly quiet and peaceful.  There were only a handful of hotels on the beach and the tourists were at a minimum.  I wound up grabbing a cheap bungalow with just a bed and a mosquito net, and it was perfect.  I spent the day enjoying the beach and then walked around the beach a little bit that night before heading to bed.

The beach to my right.

The beach to my left.

My favorite Thai beach

The next morning, Katie and Chelsea arrived, followed a few hours later by Lee and Steph.  We had a great day hanging on the beach and swimming in the crystal clear water.  In the afternoon I took out a canoe and checked out some of the areas around the cliffs.  Speaking of the cliffs, Railay is famous for its rock climbing and, although we didn't get to do any ourselves, it was awesome to look up into the cliffs and see ambitious climbers scaling them.  That night was one of my favorites in a long time.  We checked out a few different places and eventually settled on a Reggae bar on the beach.  We had a blast and it was a late night.  We were all hurting quite a bit the next day.

Enjoying the Reggae bar

Despite the late night, we were up early the next morning to catch the ferry to our next location, Koh Phi Phi.  I had already been to Phi Phi once before but I liked it so much I knew I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go with this crew.  A few hours and some extreme nausea later, we arrived on Phi Phi.  We had heard about the opportunity to spend the night camping on Koh Phi Phi's most famous beach, Maya Bay, and knew it was an awesome idea.  Before we got to the beach though, we did a little snorkeling and I actually swam above two sharks.  It was surprisingly less frightening than I thought it would be because, before I even had time to process what I was seeing, they swam away.  The fact that they were only a few feet long and I wasn't staring into the eyes of Jaws probably helped too.  After the snorkeling, we headed over to Maya Bay.  Once the hundreds of tourists left the beach (better known as "The Beach" from the Leonardo DiCaprio movie) there were only forty of us left there to spend the night.  We had a blast.  We played drinking games and got to know the other foreigners who were with us.  Eventually, a guitar was pulled out and people started singing songs around the fire and the host company put on a pretty awesome fire show.  It is certainly one of the nights that will stick out in my memories of Thailand years from now.

Maya Bay

Hanging on the beach.

Setting up the sleeping mats for a night under the stars

The final night of our trip we checked into a guesthouse right in the heart of Koh Phi Phi.  The entire island is overrun with young foreigners and it has a kind of spring break feel to it but it was a lot of fun.  I managed to find a bar that was playing the BC vs. Clemson basketball game which was awesome (until we lost by 20).

The next day it was time to head home.  I've been back in Bangkok for a week now and I've been busy teaching a workshop for the science and math teachers at my school.  It has actually been great, they are very attentive students and I've really enjoyed the chance to get to know some of them better.

Sadly though, my time in Thailand has come to a close.  I head out Monday morning for the final leg of my trip, two weeks in Australia followed by a week in New Zealand.  I'll probably post some sort of wrap up of my time in Thailand and will there will definitely be posts about the last three weeks of my trip, so look for those in the future.