In Surat Thani, I booked a minivan that took me to the Orange Resort which was great, but a bit far from the beaches of Ao Nang. By staying here for five nights, I was guaranteed to get in on my 3-mile walk per day.
On my long walk along the beach, I was amazed to see so many restaurants that were run by Indians and featured Indian, Thai, and Western food choices. In these tourist spots, they used to concentrate on clothing and tailor shops, but being entrepreneurs, they have expanded their business categories.
I enjoyed visiting some of the music venues, especially the Boogie Bar and the Beach Bar.
One of the bar/restaurants had three floors of entertainment including a Thai music venue where the crowd was almost all Thais who favored their buckets of booze or bottles of whisky and sodas.
It also housed a hostel as well as a Ladyboy show called the Blue Dragon Cabaret Show. The performers wore lots of sequined and feathered outfits. They danced and mouthed many popular songs as well as many Thai language songs. It was a good value for just 600 Baht. In the end, the performers encouraged you to have a photo with them for a small gratuity.
During the days I went to the end of the beach where there were a couple of spirit houses that the monkeys seemed to enjoy—especially the offerings of coconuts that people left for them.
Beyond that, there was a wooden walkway they called the monkey trail that led to another small beach and resort.
I enjoyed renting a lounge chair for 100 Baht to watch the sea and beachgoers.
On another day, I enjoyed an all-day 4 island snorkel tour which has been one of my favorite activities to do in Krabi. This year it was the Phi Phi early Bird 4 islands tour. I was pleased to find out we would have breakfast on our first stop to Tup Island which has a sandbar that extends to a smaller island when the tide is lower. Last year this place was filled with long-tail boats so it was good we got her early.
Our next stop was at Maya Bay which was made popular by the Leo DiCaprio movie, “The Beach”. Our boat dropped us off at the floating dock along with many other boats and we and others dropped off were given an hour to cross the island to Maya Bay, Boats are prohibited from entering the bay and swimming is no longer allowed.
We jumped off the boat and swam in Pileh Bay which had almost no coral but many boats.
Here is an overhead picture my friends, Glenda and Harvey from Loreto Bay, sent me that was featured in “Beautiful World”. Spectacular!
We snorkeled near the Viking Cave where people farm the bird nests for bird nest soup, and at Bamboo Island where we saw lots of types of coral and several small fish. While on Bamboo Island we had a hot buffet lunch.
We motored by Chicken Island, Phi Phi Island, and Monkey Beach, but the monkeys were hiding.
Our last stop was Poda Island with its white sand beach which was the nearest island to our return to Krabi.
The 2,900 Baht fee which included a 400 Baht Park fee, two meals, and snorkel gear was double the price of the trip I took last year. Tourism is quickly increasing to pre-Covid era times, especially with the return of Chinese Tourists who used to represent 1/3 of all tourists to Thailand.
The fish and coral were amazing to view while snorkeling.
One evening, I went to the Krabi Muay Thai Stadium for a fee of 1,200 Baht and watched 8 matches, with two ending in knockouts. Both knockouts came from the victor kneeing the opponent in the solar plexus which resulted in getting the wind knocked out of them. Before each contest, the fighters do some elaborate slow movements all around the ring —kind of like doing a blessing or offering before fighting. The crowds were pretty sparse, so I imagine if the place was full, it would have been a lot more exciting.
For 200 Baht round trip, I took one of the Long-Tail boats to the nearby Railay Beach is now filled with restaurants, hotels, and rock climbing tour companies
From Krabi, I took a speed boat ferry to Phuket and was greeted by a minibus driver who dropped me off at my designated hotel.
I stayed at the Karlsson Hotel for five nights and on four of those nights, it rained just around dinner time, so I ended up having some dinners there which included IKEA-style Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, gravy, and lingonberries as well as some very tender tenderloin with béarnaise sauce.
Unlike last year, Bangla Street with all of its venues was going full blast with music, beer bars, free ladyboy shows, and go-go bars despite the early evening rains.
During the days, I enjoyed more beach lounge chair beach time reading, eating, and watching the beachgoers.
I caught the local bus, back to the Phuket City Bus Terminal where I caught a local bus to Phang Nga some two hours north.
In Phang Nga, everything was cheaper with a hotel room at the Sleep Inn costing just $18 per night. Most of the restaurants were upscale food carts with seating. In Thailand, they only sell alcohol from 11 am to 2 pm and 5 pm to 11pm. Here in Phang Nga, none of the restaurants I ate at served alcohol nor did they have menus in English—perhaps it is because this is a predominately Muslim area and not a well-traveled tourist spot.
Breakfasts usually cost just 20 to 40 Baht, lunch just 40 to 60 and dinner was about 60 to 100 Baht. Chicken, shrimp, vegetables, and rice were my go-to requests for food and eggs for breakfast—$1-$2-$3—with green Fanta of course.
The receptionist encouraged me to take the all-day tour which included 10 stops with MT Tours for just 1,300 Baht and it was amazing.
I also took a half-day car tour to four sites with caves and monkeys for 400 Baht.
One Buddhist site tour called Dragon Cave Monastery had characters that depicted Heaven and Hell. I guess it was to scare kids into following the Middle Path. Really gruesome.
The following day, I was joined by Nicholai from France—the other two who were coming got food poisoning so the two of us had this great long-tail boat tour from our Capitan Nok. We left at low tide and made our way through some very narrow passages through the mangroves and out to sea where we would visit several islands that had interesting caves carved into their bases and some petroglyphs depicting animals and sea voyages.
We were the only ones at one of the caves.
We stopped at the popular Ko Homg Island where we followed others, many with hard hats, through the water-filled cave and came out in the center of the island to a big room with very steep walls. This island and other karsts seem to be riddled with caves from the eroding limestone.
We then stopped at our private beach for a chicken and rice lunch prepared by Nok’s wife and enjoyed some swimming.
It was then on to visit the popular James Bond Island complex that included the leaning split rock. The place was filled with tourists who had come by speedboats, and other long-tail boats from Krabi and Phuket.
Our final stop was at the floating Muslim village that was filled with tourist shops and restaurants as well as a beautiful mosque and a soccer court. In talking to the Imam, he indicated that most of the first people coming here were fishermen from Indonesia who found this island and the homes built on pilings were both convenient for fishing and safe from enemies.
My next stop was on a local bus to Kuraburi that took about 2 hours with frequent stops along the way and cost just 140 Baht—$4.
I had reserved a two-day tour out to the Surin Islands which included one-night camping in a tent along the beach.
I had booked this trip with Andaman Discoveries since it was a company that my travel buddy to Ladakh, India in 2008 and Cuba in 2019, Erik Rogers, had been their webmaster. I had told him that one day I would visit him there, but that day never came because he killed himself.
Erik lived life to the fullest and burned out way too soon. He is featured in my two YouTube full-length travel videos of Cuba-where he sang a rousing rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Burning Fire” (link-https://youtu.be/8F2zckCbQIg ) and we danced in Ladakh native costumes at a party in our honor (link-https://youtu.be/dAFLv2-0IeE ) and he bunked up with me at our one week home stay in Lingshed and throughout our Cuba trip. He made everyone he came in contact with feel like they were the most important people in his world at the time.
I met Tui of Andaman Discoveries, who knew Erik well and appreciated the videos I sent to her of my adventures with Erik. My two-day trip to the Surin Islands involved minibus rides to and from the hotel to the pier where we boarded a big speedboat seating about 40 people for the hour-plus ride to the Surin Islands.
We stopped for lunch at the Surin Island headquarters to have a buffet lunch and had lunch with a State Department/USAID family with 3 little girls who were on vacation from their assignment to the Congo. May was a political affairs State Department Foreign Service Office and her husband worked for USAID—giving out money. Her department was on alert for the upcoming December elections and was hoping they would go better than the recent one in Nigeria. They were staying in bungalows while I went around the island to the camping site. There were just 2 of us in the longtail boat going to this camping site.
Nirin was from Bangkok and he had visited his son who was a Dr. In Kuraburi serving out his public service requirement. Nirin told me this was his third time at this camp and he was staying for 3 nights. I was here only one night and had a prime front-row view of the beach from my tent which included a pillow, mattress, and sleeping bag. It was so warm, I did not use the sleeping bag. It was like being in a sauna when the wind died down.
We took a long-tail boat and visited the Ban Moken ethnic village where they are animists and had totems at the entrance to their village.
When the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami came, a village elder told all of the people to leave for higher ground as he observed the sea backing out of their bay just before the tidal wave hit. No one from the village died and the tsunami destroyed the entire village. After a few weeks, the villagers returned and rebuilt their village, but in 2019 a fire destroyed the village and what you now see is that rebuilt village. One of the tour guides introduced me to the shaman who warned of the tsunami and the shaman showed me a tabletop book that had a photograph of the Moken people including him that was when he was 45 years old.
The first day we went to three coral and fish snorkeling spots and we went to another three the following day.
Andaman Discoveries subcontracted with various providers of services ranging from speedboats, longtail boats, food, and lodging. I was impressed with the level of organization they provided to all of us.
The campsite looked fairly empty though and our meals were at this central restaurant.
When I was planning to travel on to Ranong and stay for the night, some other travelers suggested that instead, I continue to Chumphon to catch the night train back to Bangkok,
Unfortunately, when I got to the Chumphon Train Station, I learned that there were no 1st or 2nd class sleepers, nor 2nd class seats for the next two days. So I thought about how bad could the 3rd class seats could be—they were bad. Cooling was by overhead fans and open windows. At least I had a window seat facing forward. I tried to sleep using my eye mask, but I am not sure how much sleep I got.
I was so glad to pull into the new Bang Wa Train Station and was pleased to see that they had just opened the MRT subway underground walkway to the Bang Sue MRT stop so I no longer had to cross a bunch of rail tracks and highways.
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