Finding Nemo

After spending most of the day friday riding scooters and exploring Ko Tao Laura and i had to pack everything up once again for our long day of travel to Krabi. We met our transport saturday morning at 9 am... well, at least we were there to meet our transport at 9 am, but of course they didn't actually come until after 9:30. We have been getting used to "Thai time", basically they just show up when they want ;) We had to take a ferry boat for 6 hours from Ko Tao to Surat Thani (east coast) in order to catch our bus from there for another several hours to Krabi, which is on the west coast. This all made for a very VERY long day. We Left the pier in Ko Tao at 10 am and then did arrive in Krabi til about 7pm and then had to take another taxi to our guesthouse, where we were ready to collapse into bed... of course we wandered around the area a little bit first and happen to find a little cluster of food vendors right down the street, the meals were around 25-50 baht, which is around the $1 range. We knew where we would be getting dinner the next few nights!

Needless to say, we slept well when we finally got to bed saturday night.. come to think of it, we, at least I, have been sleeping amazing well in all the strange places we've been... Wear yourself out enough and you can sleep anywhere ;) The guesthouse we are staying at in called "Good Dream", we found it online and booked 5 nights here back in October. It was really nice to have the comfort of knowing after ten hours of travel that we at least had somewhere to stay! It wasn't quit what we expected, no beach bungalow, but the room is decent and the rate is cheap. The owner is actually American, he moved here about 4 years ago after visiting the area multiple times and falling in love with it. It has been really nice because all the information provided by the guesthouse is actually in english that makes sense, rather than broken english you have to decipher :) They also serve as travel agents and can book all the different tours and transport for us, which we have been taking advantage of.

Sunday we decided to take it easy and caught a long tail boat from the pier just up the street from our hotel to Rai Leh beach, about 45 min by boat. We neared the beach with the towering mountains loaming in front of us, it was an amazing sight, exactly what we were hoping for. The beach was white sand and the water torquoise blue, all surrounded by towering mountains and cliffs. Rai leh is not technically an island because it connects to the mainland, but you can only reach it by boat becasue of the mountains. We spent the day laying in the wonderfully soft sand and swimming in the perfectly warm water. Sigh, we are really going to miss this!
We planned out a rough schedule of what we wanted to do while we are here and were able to book a speed boat tour of Ko Phi Phi for Monday. We are planning on staying on Ko Phi Phi this weekend, but it is a huge area and you have to book a tour or charter a boat to see it all, there are 5 stops, Maya Bay (the location where they filmed "the beach"), monkey bay, viking cave, Phi Phi Ley, and another spot where we snorkeled called something that i can't remember... There were probably about 30 people on the boat total and Laura and I snagged the very front of the boat. There was a lot of wind however, which made for a VERY bumby ride. We held on for dear life and could not stop laughing and screaming. Once we got to our first snorkeling stop however, we realized not everyone enjoyed the ride as much as us. I turned just in time to see the girl that had been sititng right next to me throwing up in a bag. One thing that i really can't handle is hearing other people throw up! I immediately knew i had to get outta there before i joined her.. i headed towards the back of the boat to jump off and almost ran into another person that was on the floor throwing up into the garbage can and another further back.. I got off the boat as fast as humanly possible thinking "happy place, happy place"... not pleasant! The snorkeling, on the other hand, was great! The water is so clear and there are some really cool fish.. Laura and I found "Gil" and the puffer fish from finding Nemo, but we haven't been able to find Nemo! We are still on the lookout... I think my favorite fish so far in the parrot fish, they are super bright colored and look like they have a beak, they swim on the bottom and eat stuff off the corral, its cool because as you watch them you can hear the crunch crunch of their nibbling...
After snorkeling we went to Maya Bay and had about 40 min to hang out on the beach and swim. It was a really gorgeous area and it would have been amazing, but there were SOOOO many people! I think it has probably gotten a lot more visitors since the move "the beach" came out. So, while i did really enjoy seeing it, and swimming in the perfect blue water, i was not exactly sad to leave! We only stopped for a short while at viking cave, it was interesting.. there are people who live there and take care of the sparrows nests and they use the eggs for some kind of soup...? Anyways, we were supposed to do some open water snorkeling (as opposed to being near the beach) but because there was so much wind and the water was so choppy they canceled that and we went to a different spot instead after stopping on Phi Phi Ley to eat some lunch.
After lunch Laura and I used our freetime to wander the island a bit and decide where we wanted to stay when we got back there on thursday, which was nice because we weren't real keen on hauling our bags around while we looked for something.

To say that the ride back to dry land was a little bumby is a huge understatement! We sat in the front of the boat again and It was like an amusement park ride and even though our arms felt like they were going to fall off from trying to hold on, we throughly enjoyed it!
Back on dry land, we made it back to our hotel and were able to book rock climbing for today (Tuesday).
Our transport arrived bright and early (and on time even!) and 7:30 to take us to the pier where we would catch a boat to Rai Leh. We only booked a half day, which was four hours of climbing. It worked out really well, we had a guide all to ourselves and he taught us how to tie the figure 8 knot and to belay as he climbed the rock and connected our rope. We started off on a really easy rock and moved to harder ones after our guide realized we both had experience already. It was so much fun, we were climbing right on the beach and from the top you could see out over the water. We didn't even know until later that this area is actually world reknowed for rock climbing! By our last climb we were definitely at a stopping point, it worked out perfect, i don't know how people can climb all day!

And another day down.. we are starting to realize how soon we are going home and while we know we have to get back to responsibility, we are going to miss Thailand so much!
But we still have a week and we are going to enjoy every last minute!