Thailand Part II......Krabi

Sorry for the delay, we finally processed our photos from Krabi. So, we originally planned to take a ferry from Phuket to Krabi, but after more investigation, we found out that we had to take a bus from Naiyang beach, to Phuket town, buy a ticket on a public bu s and ride to Krabi. By chance we were surfing the net while at Phuket and figured out that we could rent a car and have it take us in one direction from Phuket to Krabi for less than 30 USD. After our fun on the scooter, we decided to give it a go. About halfway was a town called Phangnga, so we stopped there for lunch.

The landscape at Phangnga was alot like Guilin. Tour books said that the rocks near Krabi were karst limestone and they sure look and felt just like southern China:

This the main street of Phangnga. It was only one street and not alot to write home about ( guess, but here am I writing home about it)

Here is the hole in the wall we ate at...it was decent. Not much to look at, but it seemed pretty popular, especially with the local muslim crowd.

Cliff ate Thai chicken.....
and I ate garlic pepper fish....mmmmmm.
We finally arrive at Krabi...or more specifically Aonang Beach. The rental car ended up being a rather funny debacle. We had made a deal to drop off our car at the parking lot of the hotel and leave the keys at the front desk. The only problem was that our hotel was only accessible by boat and the boats only ran from 8-5. We called the car place and asked if they wanted us to leave the keys at a local dive shop or something, but they kept insisting that we leave it at the front deck like we already planned. After some arguments, we just gave up and just told them that we'd stick to the original plan. of course, they called us the next day all upset that they had to take a boat...haha.
Here is us on the boat...it was fun!!!! What you don't see is the two hiking backpacks, two carryone backpacks and one kiteboard bag that was piled up on the front of the boat.
Here is our approach to Tonsai bay...there are several places to stay on the bay, but the largest is called Tonsai Bay resort, which is where we stayed. There are no cars in the part of the peninsula...it was great.
Here is one of the climbing spot on the approach to our beach.
And this is our room...it looks pretty nice. The only crappy thing was that there was only electricity from 6pm to 9am, so if you wanted to go climbing and shower before dinner, then you were out of luck. The aircon was good, when it was on, the bathroom was passable, so we were content.
Here is the outside...we resided in only the left half of this bungalow...most people staying here are climbers, so no real late partying and everyone tries to get up early to get on the better routes first.
Here is the view from the front of our place...climbing routes within 50 m...nice!!!
Here is from the first night in Krabi, with a little hermit crab. I'm not sure why I was so amazed with this hermit crab...I know they obviously are from the wild, but this is the first time I'd seen one outside of a plastic box. In the background you can see the low tide...it was pretty rocky in the shallows.
And me....enjoying a boooootiful sunset...
The first day out we started our climbing and never looked back--this place had great routes, but unfortunately, there were not alot of beginner, intermediate walls, so maybe we'll have to go back soon after we get alittle more practice. Cliff thought that the walls at Guilin were graded alittle higher, so the routes were alittle harder.

We ate here after lunch...I don't think that this place had any sort of sanitary rating.
Here is Cliff and our guide getting ready for a tough route. You actually stand on the rock in front of Cliff and lift yourself up onto the rock and start climbing. it was pretty fun!



Here was the view from the rockwall...not bad!
the next day we decided to take a break and rent a kayak for some fun. I think that perhaps Cliff has some depth perception problems, as we had to Kayak for over an hour to get to an island (not pictured) and then another a hour to get to Aonang to do alittle shopping (and eat at burger king again). It was a beatiful day though...

Here is the rock wall right beside our breakfast table. It was neat, as we were able to have breakfast and watch people climb a couple difficult multi-pitch routes.

here is my husband, a coffee drinker. Cliff really never did coffee before this trip, but I think he's become an addict.

Here is one of our pics from a kayak...what you can't see is our sweaty, tired, sunburnt bodies, but we did get a nice pic if a local junket.
so, on the island we kayaked to, there were a couple monkeys, all of whom were used to alittle human interaction. I was able to get close to one who was digging in the trash and got two nice shots, this is the first one...


And here is the other...Cliff congratulated me on this picture...
And the obligatory wish-you-were-here shot:
After we parked our kayak, we soon discovered that it had been taken over by a large, well-trained brigade of monkeys...one even jumped on me and reached into my purse. The on below just wanted to take stuff off of our kayak.


All in all, thailand was awesome...we can't wait to go back and spend a couple months... :)

long time coming

Hi folks...just starting to post pics from vacation in Thailand. We've been busy since our return ...school started up fast and furious and we are looking at a 8 page and 20 page paper and Global Economics HW due on monday and a class presentation on tuesday...so we've been bbbusy. Cliff and I are finding that perhaps there are some cultural differences that we may never fully understand. It doesn't help that Cliff and I have a very military way of looking at things, so we value effectiveness, but more importantly, we value efficiency. Maybe the problem is that because we are all class mates, and there is no single person in charge, that there are too many chiefs (or pseudo chiefs) and too few indians. Maybe I'm supposed to be the indian??? Perhaps I'll try that next.

Back to Thailand. We left on vacation 4hours after we got out of school and headed to the new T3 part of the Beijing airport. its nice and new and was quite modern. Come to think of it, compared to dulles, its hard to tell which country is really the developing one! Anyways, after we checked in, we headed to the bus class lounge. Since Cliff is still 1K with United (at least until the end of th e year), we can go to the business class lounge if we've booked international flights. The food was OK...the free beer was nice. We were just excited to get going. Below is a picture of inside the terminal:And me taking advantage of all the good stuff they had to offer:

We stayed somewhere close to the airport our first night...our flight to Phuket didn't leave until 2pm, so we walked down the street for a quick bite to eat at a street food stall. I gotta tell you, it kills Cliff that I love to eat street food. We are both waiting for the impending gut centipede to strike me down, but it hasn't happened yet.
The food wasn't bad, expect we found out too late that the 'chicken' dish we ordered was actually a bamboo dish. The noodles were pretty good. On a side note, I drank the water out of a pitcher with ice...I didn't really consider the possible source of the water or ice. Again, avoided catastrophe one more time.
Back at our hotel, we sat in the garden while waiting for a ride back to the airport...we saw these cute little garden statues...they look pretty chinese to me!

and below are the various offerings to the gods...these are everywhere--in front of every business and in front of every home. apparently the gods like fanta.


We took a flight to Phuket (pronounce Poo-kut) and checked into the Naiyan Beach resort. We chose this area because it had the best winds at this time of year and also had a kiteboarding school. The beach was small and not too great, but the water was warm and clear, the winds were steady and the weather was pretty nice. Below is a pic of our room...this was the nicest room we've stay in Asia--its was about 45 USD a night, including breakfast.




our first night (and every subsequent night) we had dinner on the beach. We watched a beautiful sunset and got to see a couple of kitesurfers catch the last of the dying evening winds. Phuket was really, really nice--I didn't want to leave.
The next morning we took a stroll on the beach...the sand had thing interesting circular pattern about it...I looked closer and realized these we all balls of sand that crabs make when digging their holes (thank you Discovery Channel).

And here is a close up...kind of cool huh?
We had many great meals in Thailand and below is typical fair...spring rolls served with a tangy sweet sauce, jasmine rice and Chicken with baby corn. The fresh baby corn was soooo damn good. its was crispy and light and tasted like corn on the cob. All the dishes were spicy--it was heaven.
I also tried some street-beach food...here is me eating a whole grilled spanish mackerel. The eyeballs were kinda gross.
Our time kiteboarding was interesting. I took a three day course to get my IKO certification and Cliff took a day course and rented a board the rest of the time. Our instructor was a german guy who had been teaching kiteboarding for 10 years. His name was bob, but Cliff and I called him fritz, hiemlich or franz between ourselves. Mostly, he would just scream "sheet, sheet, sheet, letz go of ze kite!!!!!"...right before I would crash it into the ground. There is something about a german yelling a me that makes me want to wet myself.

AFter much trial and error, I finally got up on the board and was controlling the kite enough to get around. It was alot of fun...I just need some more practice.


Cliff, of course, excelled at this...he was walking up and down the beach, swinging the kite to and fro and boarding like a pro...he really enjoyed his time in Phuket.
On one of the no-wind days, we rented a scooter and rode abotu an hour down the rode to Patong Beach. The ride was quite exciting, as the Thai's drive on the Brit side of the road. Cliff had a couple close calls at first, but then things were fine.
Here is us at an intersection...you can't tell from the picture, but I already wet myself by this point.
Of course, since patong is a larger beach, they actually have larger restaurants...Cliff demanded to eat at Burger King. Boy, was I thrilled to be in Thailand eating American fast food. But, Cliff is pretty patient with all the crap I eat, so I was fine with eating alittle junk food.

Cliff also made a pilgrimage to his mecca. Here he is "Kop Koon Kap-ping" to Ronald (which means he's thanking him). For the amount of money we spend in McDonalds while in China, Ronnie should be thanking us.
We still have photos from Krabi, but still working on those....get them posted soon!

Cheers!