Thailand has changed!

I must admit that my better half was right on this one... she's been saying for months now that Thailand wouldn't be the same paradise it was when she (and most of our friends) visited it 15 or more years ago.  I kept insisting that it wouldn't bother me as I just wanted to see it (especially the limestone cliffs of the Similan Islands) but the place is wall to wall people and that just gets under your skin after a while - or perhaps I've just gotten used to the slow pace of life in Africa!  (Which I still miss :-)

We left Singapore at 5 dark 30 and took the MRT to the airport and then hopped a quick (free) shuttle to our "budget" terminal for the short hop to Phuket.  We flew on Singapore Airline's budget carrier (Tiger Airways).  The tickets were about $42 each plus fees for everything they could dream up (even a fee for using a credit card to book - although I'd love to understand how you could pay cash when buying an e-ticket over the web!).  The airline itself was fine and the plane we actually flew on had Singapore Airlines livery so I had convinced myself that the maintenance would be OK.  The pilots were Aussies.  The price was right and we'll try Air Asia next trip.

Anyway, we landed on time in Phuket and then ran into wall to wall buskers trying to sell us accommodation, transfers, tours and anything else they could dream up.  This was the first place we didn't have ANY accommodation booked in advance so with a bit of trepidation we booked a taxi to take us to Karon Beach (Ko Karon in Thai) which was about 60 minutes of the most aggressive driving that we have ever seen.   Like many other third world drivers he figured the gas, brakes, clutches and steering wheels were binary instruments having only two positions (full one way or the other with NOTHING in between).  He tail gated even worse than my Dad who still sometimes thinks he's flying in formation with another CF-104 at Mach 2.  The A/C couldn't keep up with the heat and poor Rachel thew up at which point Andretti finally got the hint and toned it down a bit.

We finally (and safely) pulled up in a village (well the whole bloody trip looked like a village) and he was clearly at a loss as to where to go for our hotel (that we hadn't booked but I'd scoped out on the web wanting to see it first).  He drove back and forth a few times and then made a call and stopped at an alley and told us our hotel was down there.... so we hopped out and started hiking with all our packs only to find that he'd dropped us off in KATO beach... and our hotel was 3km's further down the beach... so back in another cab and he took us to ANOTHER alley and pointed that our hotel was down there....  trusting souls that we are (and not having much choice), we again hopped out and walked down the alley... and this time we found it.  The place looked OK so we all piled into one room and then headed for the beach.

Karon Beach would be a beautiful beach if it weren't for the 6000 beach umbrellas and 12000 overweight and pasty white Russians in thongs and Speedo's.  I suspect we were one of the only native English speaking families there.  There were a few Swedes but even the menus were in Russian!  The beach itself is about 2kms long and you couldn't walk from the street to the beach without going under at least three rows of beach umbrellas.

About 1/3 of Karon Beach (looking North)

The other 1/3 of the beach - and Brent WITHOUT his Speedo... definitely not fitting in

We also found that there were a fair number of jellyfish... both the mild types as well as the infamous box jellyfish (which can be lethal).  We were fairly disappointed with that and even though we'd only stand in the waves (looking out for jellies), we'd still run across the odd lose tentacle and get a mild stinging sensation that didn't make it very pleasurable.

One of the nasty jellies

Our original plan was to head over to Ko Phi Phi (another Island chain in the Andaman Sea) but the place was fully booked so we agreed to stay in Karon Beach for a couple of days until we got an open reservation in Phi Phi that we felt OK with.  We changed rooms and moved to a place with a pool which helped... and the next two days, the Jellies mostly disappeared so we ended up liking Karon Beach despite our initial impressions.  They had all kinds of neat stands that the kids (and Jen) liked a lot and the food was great (and relatively inexpensive - although Jen tells me is still 7 times what she paid).

On the 8th, we caught a ferry over to Ko Phi Phi (aka "Pee Pee") which was about 90 minutes.  The bay (that had the big Tsunami in 2004) was full of boats... from big ferries to "long tails" which are double ended displacement boats with a large engine mounted on the end of a long shaft driving a 12" propeller.  Most of them don't have mufflers so it sounds like the Indy 500 out there in the harbour.

A Long Tail at full bore - it's amazingly loud... mufflers add too much weight I guess!

An engine on a stick... amazingly effective and simple

Our place was right on the town end of Long Beach which is just about perfect as it's about 1km from the town and just around a point so no noise at night (other than the long tails) and yet a short climb over a hill takes us to Long Beach which supposedly is the best beach on Phi Phi.  Actually our hotel has two other private beaches that we liked even better so that was a bonus.  Because the place was so full up, we ended up in a large beach bungalow (on stilts) way up in the hills (safe from any Tsunami).  The place certainly isn't like the traditional beach bungalows of old... it has two bedrooms, a very large walk in closet, a HUGE bathroom with huge tub/shower with high end fixtures and a large veranda overlooking the main private beach - shades of Mokoma Bay in Tanzania.  We also have a large big screen LCD screen which we've put to use watching "The Glades" episodes in 1080p off my PlayBook.

The view of our beach from our veranda.  We're up at least 40' so no danger of Tsunami's here!

Our veranda where the french lessons get done (and my blog)

Every day, the kids and Jen do some french, we do some swimming and then hike into town for a late lunch/early dinner and some trinket shopping.  Jen/Rachel have picked up some sarong's and sun dresses they'll need on our temple visits and I picked up a pair of Oakley sunglasses for $9 to replace my Serengeti's which one of the kids on the bus tour smashed.  I figured they must have been clones but they had the full tags/labels and after using them today, I'm convinced they are real enough so am going to buy a few more pairs as I usually smash my sunglasses annually anyway.

One of the two private beaches... looking towards the village where the Tsunami came through.

Another angle showing the town more clearly.  Most of that was wiped out as the wave came from the other side and straight through.

Again, the food here is amazing and even the kids are being brave once in a while and trying something (Rachel more than Shawn).  The place is far busier now than before and its hard to tell where the Tsunami went through although its easy to see why so many people were killed.  There was literally no place for them to go.

I had heard that just before the Tsunami struck the waters receded a lot and people were wandering around on the ocean floor looking for fish and stuff not suspecting what was coming.  I remember thinking "what were they thinking?"... but after seeing this place at low tide, the water nearly goes out of the bays anyway, so I doubt there was much of a difference and anyone in any of the shops or bungalows wouldn't have noticed it anyway.  We saw a large aerial photograph mural of what it looked like the day after it happened and it just brings shivers to me thinking about it.  I'm glad we're way up on this hill!

Today, we went on a long tail ride around the other Phi Phi Island and visited a few bays and beaches for some swimming and snorkeling.  The first place we visited was called Monkey Beach which was a 5' strip of sand at the bottom of a 700' shear cliff that the little Monkeys come to play with the tourists in the waves.  They take food right out of your hands and are quite cute.

Waiting for the tourists at Monkey Beach

And a few of his friends... check out the big guy in the back... he looks like an Orangutan although these were all very small (12-18 inches).

Saying goodbye to Monkey Beach

Then we headed into a few nice bays amongst these large limestone cliffs and swam with the fishes.  At the first one, we didn't see many fish, but the second one I was swarmed by large schools of fish as soon as I jumped in (little did I know our guide was throwing watermelon all around me!).  They looked like a cross between a yellow perch and a piranha and they were acting more like piranha's going for that watermelon!.  Shawn is terrified of certain types of fish (anything that takes notice of him) and wouldn't get it.  Rachel and Jen watched me for a while and then came in for their chance.  I only got nibbled on once despite having literally thousands of them inches from me.

Monkey Beach looking back at Phi Phi village

Phi Phi Leh -the other Phi Phi

The Viking Caves where you can see the scaffolding they used to collect the birds nests (now illegal)

One of the many natural harbours

Stunning scenery

Another natural harbour... with dozens of boats

Most of the fish had gone by now as we were out of watermelon

Next we went to Maya Beach which is where they filmed Leonardo Decaprio's movie fittingly called "The Beach".  It's a beautiful spot but once again (like all of the other spots) had dozens of other boats and hundreds of people.  I had little interest in standing in a small roped off swimming area with  hundreds of other tourists so convinced the family to swim along the high limestone cliffs with our snorkel sets and it wasn't long before we saw some pretty fish.  Then Shawn pointed out a couple of sharks!  They were small (2') brown tipped reef sharks that really took no notice of us - in fact they'd swim off out of sight anytime you got close to them.  Rachel didn't see them so I took her hand and pulled her along with me until we found 5 just crossing into the shadow of the cliffs.  That spooked her right out and she took off like she was walking on water in the other direction!  Strangely enough, Shawn was just fine with these fish (but a 3" minnow is terrifying to him!).   We saw them a few more times but always just a fleeting glance as they'd take off when ever they saw us.

Where we saw the sharks at Maya Beach

The Beach

Then we went back to the beach and played around for a bit until it was time to come back to our resort.  They dropped us right off on the beach in front of our place which was nice.   We quite like it here in Phi Phi so have extended one more day.  We leave Monday am for Udon Thani which is an old US Air Force Base used during the Vietnam War and our transfer location into Laos.  We have one more full day on Ko Phi Phi and then we grab the 9am ferry back to Phuket for our 2:40pm flight.  I'm kinda keen to see Ubon Thani as its been featured in a few of my favorite Vietnam War books but I understand the town is nothing special.   We'll spend the night there and then make our way into Laos the next am on the local buses into Vientiane.

We have nothing booked (beyond the Air Asia flight) so will keep it loose but we plan on heading up to Luang Prabang (I just love saying that) before making our way down the Mekong to the coast and into Cambodia.    We've found Thailand (well this part at least) very expensive.  Our bungalow here is the most expensive accomodation we've had yet and about 30 times what Jen paid way back when.  Jen keeps saying "I told you so!" but I'm glad we came as it is still a beautiful part of the world although we wish the damn tourists would stay away :-).  We're hoping that Laos/Cambodia and Vietnam will still have some of the old style off the beaten track flavour although we hear that they are all well traveled these days.  We'll see.  Gotta run.