Boat trippin'

Anni's sister Riikka and her boyfriend Mikko were clearly very surprised to hear us yelling their names in the airport instead of meeting them later in a hostel in Ao Nang. After recovering from the shock of actually seeing a person you know and missed much after so many months, we took the taxi to a previously booked hostel. It was the first time outside Europe for Mikko. Their backpacks were full of Finnish chocolate and salty liqourice candies and mint booze for us. How much we (especially Anni) had missed those things! Since they also generously paid our hostel for us, we took the role of being guides and studying nearby islands, where we would go to spend most of the two weeks after a few shopping days in the tourist hell Ao Nang.

It is easy to see why Ao Nang first became so popular. The place itself is absolutely beautiful with the green karst peaks rising behind the blue water and sandy beaches. Only the songthaew (a pickup truck with benches-kind of form of public transport) ride from Krabi to Ao Nang is breathtaking. It is also a great place to start island hopping, because of the short distances to the islands and to Krabi airport. But it definitely is not a place to relax anymore. Nowadays it is a place for overpriced - though still cheap compared to Europe - shopping and partying. Coming from the north of Thailand, it was a shock to see the rapid rise in prices. Normally we stay in hostels or bungalows that cost maximum 350 baht a night for the two of us, but in Ao Nang it was hard to find anything under 800. The small town is full of street markets, dive shops, restaurants, tour agencies, hostels and tailor shops. The persistency of people trying to sell all this gets tiring within minutes. However, it was a good base for planning the trip and having a couple of drinks with friends. We thought that Riikka and Mikko would need a few days to recover from the jet lag, after all, so why rush?

On the first day after the arrival we went to spend the day on Railay beach, a short longtail boat ride away from Ao Nang. Railay beach is famous for climbers and sun worshippers and all beach goers alike. We were lucky to be there just before the peak season starts, so the beach wasn't too crowded and it was easy to find a corner for our towels. We also climbed to a viewpoint on top of a hill to admire the surroundings and even saw monkeys on the way! Later we saw them again, this time stealing food from tourists who left their belongings unwatched on the beach. In the afternoon we took the longtail boat back to Ao Nang and already then we decided that we had had enough of that and decided to move on to the islands the next day.

 

In the morning we took a big ferry to Koh Phi Phi. It is probably one of the most famous islands in the Andaman coast. Ben had been there 7 years ago and was excited to see how it has changed over the years. Soon we learned that it for sure hadn't changed for the better. We kind of knew that before going, but chose to check it out anyway, mainly because it was on the way to the next islands. The talk about Phi Phi island being a great party island is true for sure, with the music pumping away into the morning hours. It just happens that we are too old for that constant noise and party, but we get why it's popular. The party also brings along the downside of paying too much for things and not getting much back. Our bungalow cost 800 and was not much more than a broken mosquito net over a mattress on the floor. The island itself is a beautiful one with an amazing viewpoint over the big sandy patch that connects two islands, but when you take a closer look, you'll notice that the beaches are full of shattered glass, beer bottles and other rubbish. The shower water from the bungalows runs straight to the ground and both tourists and locals don't seem to care too much about where to throw their cigarette butts. We just wonder how long it will last like this.

We booked a snorkeling trip to check out the local fishes, but we had to cancel it in the morning because both Riikka and Mikko were sick and had barely slept. The nice lady from the tour office got us most of our money back even though we cancelled only minutes before leaving. Instead of snorkeling we had a relaxed day and booked tickets for the next day to get the hell out of the noisy Phi Phi.

 

Our next destination was Koh Lanta. Lanta is a bigger island with plenty of choice for accommodation, so we did not book ahead. Insted we read about beaches, and came to conclusion that we will stay away from the main beach to be sure that we don't have to listen to this crappy dance music all night again. I mean you come to an island to hear the sound of waves, right? So we hopped on a taxi and went guesthouse-shopping. People usually try to get you to stay in their guesthouse as soon as you step on the boat towards the island, so we had already collected a few brochures. Soon enough we found bungalows both couples liked, a cheapie for Anni and Beni and a nicer one for Riikka and Mikko.

Koh Lanta was a good place for renting motorbikes/scooters and driving from one beach to the next. Roads were decent in Thai standards and the distances are so long that it makes renting your own transport worth it. We rented motorbikes twice, and on the second day we had already learned to take them for a short test drive before renting. The quality of the rent bikes seems to be based on luck more than anything else.On Lanta we drove around the island, visited a national park in the south of the island, checked out some new beaches and did some shopping.

A friend of Anni's also came for a quick visit. Tero is travelling for 2 months with his girlfriend, their baby and a few other family members. We had tried to organise a meeting since we knew that we are travelling around the same places, but we never really got a chance before this. We were just having dinner, when they came visit us, so they joined for a drink to catch up.

On Koh Lanta we also tried to find good places to go snorkelling, but the water was not the clearest at the moment so there wasn't much to see. Probably should have done a snorkelling trip by boat to get to the clear water. A nice island, but we could still find better ones, we thought, and booked the next tickets.

An hour's bum-numbing longtail boat ride away waited Koh Ngai, also known as Koh Hai. We had booked our accommodation ahead, because the island only has about 10 resorts, most of them ridiculously overpriced. When we talk about ridiculously overpriced, we mean paying at least 8 times over usual. We were lucky enough to find a basic, sea view bungalow for 900. But what a view that was! A perfect sandy beach with turquoise water, a dark reef drop-off and a few islands and karst peaks at the back, jungle to the other direction. We felt like we had finally arrived at the place we had been looking for.

The snorkelling was fantastic so it kept us busy for a few days. On the main beach there is great snorkelling, but also a lot of boat traffic in the afternoons, so we took a 20 minute hike (40 if you go to the wrong direction first) over the hill on a jungle path to the other side, and found an empty beach with an amazing reef full of fishes, moray eels and whatever you might be looking for while snorkelling. It was fantastic, but getting in and out from the beach is only easy during high tide, so we had to time our next visit to the place better next time. We also tried to get lunch from a nearby resort, called Paradise, which according to a lady from our hostel had a restaurant. Sure, there was one, it just was not open. Starving and exhausted after breakfast only and many hours of snorkelling, we dragged ourselves back through the jungle. Next day Riikka and Mikko took the easy approach of renting a kayak while Anni and Beni were in the money saving mode and decided to walk.

After a few days of getting up and close with the marine life and almost at the end of Riikka's and Mikko's two weeks, we left to see one more island. Koh Kradan was only 20 minutes away by speedboat, so we decided to go there for one night. Weather was not amazing and the prices were again more than on the last island with the quality of food and accommodation still dropping, so we were okay to leave the next day. We were sad though not to properly have time to check out the snorkelling, which seemed fantastic with a nice beach with a reef drop-off. We highly recommend if you're not on a tight budget.

 

So after one night it was time to finish our island hopping and head back to town. Our visitors' flight to Bangkok was going back from Krabi, so we decided to go back to Ao Nang for a night to say goodbyes and enjoy the last moments with them. We first took a boat to Trang, from where we took a minivan straight to Ao Nang. Our visitors got to see the inland a little bit and also experience the local culture more closely by trying to play with local babies that someone just hands over to you while being scared to death by the "skills" of the maniacs that call themselves drivers.

Against all expectations we did arrive in one piece in Ao Nang, and after a bit of a hassle with the guesthouses, we checked in to the same place we stayed the last time. We celebrated the last night with pizza, then went to bed to wake up the next day to say goodbyes. We had a great time with Riikka and Mikko, and we were sad to see them go, but happy that we had such good two weeks. But soon it was time to put our attention into planning new adventures.

 

Same same

In Chiang Rai we tried to find an affordable room and that was harder than expected. We walked around for about an hour and asked in every guesthouse we saw on the way and they all were full. Finally, in a side street we found a nice double room for a good price. We were accompanied by an English friend we met in Vientiane and as soon as we had finished lunch we shared a tuk-tuk to the White temple, a buddhist temple all in white with a lot of modern art built in. It's the lifetime project of an artist who devoted his life to this unique temple. After the visit we drove back in rain and said goodbye to our friend who left for Pai in the northwest of Thailand. We instead stayed for two nights and didn't do much apart from eating.The best place for dinner we found is the night market with it's numerous food stalls and hundreds of people, locals and tourists eating along each other. Chiang Rai wasn't something special but it's pretty quiet and a good place to explore the north of Thailand.

Next stop for us was Chiang Mai, we abandoned our plan of visiting Pai and the west, beaches was all we wanted now! So we decided to head south pretty quick also because we were expecting our first visitors in the beginning of December in Krabi. Chiang Mai was bigger than we thought and it was still very hot so we spent a lot of time in the hostel garden with reading or chatting. There are temples in every corner, on every street, but we found them all to look very similar and we already saw quite a few in Laos so we skipped temple visiting. Instead we went pharmacy shopping to stock up our meds and were impressed by the very well trained staff with very good english in almost all the pharmacies! We highly recommend pharmacies in Chiang Mai. Also on the recommendations list is Thai Cottage cooking school, where you can learn how to cook traditional Thai dishes in a fun atmosphere. We booked a whole day course and cooked five meals, including a dessert. The guys working there where doing an internship, explaining ingredients and instructing us how to cook them and learn english from tourists at the same time. All the staff was very patient in answering all our questions and explaining everything over and over again when someone didn't pay attention. If we opened a Thai restaurant now, you could get the best springrolls, papaya salad, pad thai, red and panang curry and for dessert either water chestnut in coconut milk or mango with sticky rice.

Anni also went for a massage, after the blind massage in China it was something special again. Lila massage, a chain of massage places offer jobs to former inmates in the womens prison in Chiang Mai. They get a long training before they are allowed to treat customers and therefor they're very well prepared (unlike many of the small massage shacks that line up on the streets in Thai cities) and Anni was very happy she spent those 180 Baht (4.5 € ) and her back was much better after an hour of professional massage. After 4 days we booked a bus again, the south was waiting. Chiang Mai is a perfect place for someone who starts travelling in South East Asia as it is full of sights, it's busy but not too much and the food is affordable.

Sukhothai was our cultural stop. The new town isn't very special but the old town, Thailands former capital is why you go there. Thais call it the "little Angkor Wat" and it was indeed impressive! With bikes we explored the central area which is surrounded by water and also around many ruins there's water and plenty of small lakes. We were there the day before the festivities of Loi Krathong, the most important festival in Thailand where they send millions of lotus shaped floating decorations down rivers and into the sea to thank the goddess of the water. Sukhothai was the first city that had this celebration so it is still the main place with the biggest events. The whole city was in transformation into a huge festival area and every guesthouse was full during these dates so we had to leave and decided to find a bed in Bangkok for the festival time.

I was in Bangkok seven years ago and I hated it. I stayed in the Siam area between shopping malls and office buildings and found nothing likeable about this city so I was curious how I would see the city now. We chose a guesthouse near the famous Khao San road in the Banglamphu area by the river. That was a very good decision! No high rise buildings, no hookers, no traffic jams but a quiet small town feeling. I started to see Bangkok with different eyes. One day we joined the tourist scam with a tuk-tuk that drives you to all the temples for only 20 Baht (and stops for "government owned" tailor and jewellery stores) but we had the time, spent 30 seconds in average in those stores and got to see the temples and big parts of Bangkok for almost no money. Later we visited the Chatuchak weekend market but we didn't want to buy more things as our backpacks were still full even after we sent clothes home four times already.

The last day we spent in shopping malls in the Siam area (where I stayed on my first visit), drove to the central pier by sky train and back to Khao San road by boat. We also explored this most famous road in Bangkok but got tired of all the annoying touts selling suits and dresses. Back in the hostel we enjoyed the nightly thunderstorm from the rooftop terrace like every night so far.

Then it was time to approach Krabi, our visitors were a week away from arriving there and we wanted to go closer not to miss them. From Ranong we took a boat to Ko Chang, a small island next to the Thai- Burmese border. The only similarity with the bigger, famous island in the east is the name, our Ko Chang was pure nature. Rainforest around our bungalow, its animals around and in it. One of the big geckos, locals call it "toke" for the sound it makes, became our beloved pet for our stay, because it shared the bungalow with us. Every morning we woke up by the sound of dozens of hornbills, big birds with huge beaks.

The water is not clear enough for snorkelling and it rained the first three days so we did what we did for the last few weeks. Nothing apart from eating and reading. Our place was called Contex bungalows and the food was amazing! Because it's the only place on a small beach unlike the ten or so resorts on "long beach" we always ate there. Only on one day when the expected rain didn't show up we left our hideaway and walked 20 minutes through the rainforest and rubber tree plantations to the long beach. It was a relaxing time, sadly though the whole area of our bungalow "resort" was a construction site, garbage piled up in every corner and the bungalows were half eaten away by termites. They were building bigger houses with air con and fancy bathrooms so they were clearly upgrading the whole place for better paying tourists. Our bungalow cost us 250 Baht (6 €), we don't know if we'll find one for this price further south... Anyway, we left totally relaxed, back to Ranong and straight on a bus to Krabi.

We decided to stay in Krabi for a night and to pick up our friends from the airport the next day. With them we then head to Ao Nang for a couple of days before we join the masses on the famous islands in the Andaman sea. Krabi was same same, but different, as the Thais say. There wasn't anything that would make us go back there, it wasn't bad either. A pretty average Asian city. Night markets are usually great places to eat dinner but the one in Krabi was different. We ate the worst food we had in Thailand so far. And the karaoke show in front of the kings photo didn't make it better.

The next day we had to go to the airport, but we couldn't figure out where exactly the bus to the airport leaves, just on the main road was all the information we got out of people. On the main road we then found a stop for songthaews, the pickup trucks with two rows of seats. The first driver we found said that he doesn't drive into the airport area but close enough to walk. Good enough for us. We planned enough time for the journey, the airport lies somewhere outside Krabi but our songthaew drove so painfully slow and stopped for fuel and at imaginary pick up points that we started to get a bit nervous if we would make it in time. Our friends didn't know we were coming to the airport, their plan was to go straight to Ao Nang so they wouldn wait for us. Suddenly the driver stopped and signalled us to get off. Earlier than expected! With my backpack still on the roof he drove off but the screams of the passengers made him stop again and let me get my bag. Then we had to walk to the terminal, past an army checkpoint where everyone seemed to be amused by us and along the road to the airport building. We found the arrival hall, checked the flights on a screen and saw that the plane was landing in a couple of minutes. Well done! Then we waited and waited and no tourists came out of that door we were facing. Is there another airport? No. So we waited more. Still nothing. Is there another terminal? Anni asked at the information and there they told us that the flights from Bangkok all arrive at terminal 2! Where were we? Terminal 1. So we grabbed our stuff and ran through the whole airport to the other arrival hall. There were still a lot of people waiting to pick up passengers and that meant that we made it in time! Soon the door opened and a plainload of tourists poured into the hall, all without luggage, everyone had to pick up his luggage outside, piled up on the ground. Some of the last in the crowd were our friends, very surprised but happy to see us, or maybe just to finally having arrived. Now we will hop from island to island and enjoy some easy beach time, starting with Koh Phi Phi, the overcrowded party island. I was also there, seven years ago, a year after the tsunami, and it wasn't that crazy yet. Let's see how bad it is this time...