Sorry for the belated second half of my story. I've been so busy. Blogging is hard to keep up with!
After Bangkok I flew to Krabi, and from there I made my way to Railay Beach, which is still on
the mainland, but it's on an isolated peninsula and one has to take a longtail boat to it. Railay is divided between East and West sides. It's only a 10 minute walk between the two. My lodging was on the East side. There is no beach there, only a mangrove shoreline. The West side is where the beach was. I had really wanted to go to Kho
Phi Phi, which is a 90 minute boat ride from Railay, but everyone told me it was very crowded and frankly, by the time I got settled in Railay, I didn't feel like uprooting myself and having to search for accommodations again.Railay was pretty quiet, and not very crowded. Although I had five nights there, I managed to keep myself busy everyday. In fact, I only had one day that was totally devoted to the beach. And of course, I managed to burn myself to a crisp, as usual.
The sunsets from West Railay were absolutely gorgeous:
One day I took a sunset snorkeling trip. I had never been snorkeling before and it was pretty fun. The best part, however, was the sunset. After snorkeling for about two hours we landed on a beach to have dinner. As the crew set up dinner, we walked along the beach and watched the
sunset. It was a bright rosy pink. Then, suddenly, a huge flock of what we thought were birds started streaming overhead. They were pretty high up but they seemed really big. This couldn't be a flock of herons, could it? Nope, they were bats! Giant bats- with 3 feet wingspans- heading out for the night. There were thousands upon thousands of them and they kept coming for a good 10-15 minutes. That was one of life's beautiful images I will never forget: standing on a warm tropical beach watching the rosy sun setting behind some mountain islands as a colony of giant bats streams overhead, and I can see the silhouette of a heron fishings in the shallows. Then we topped it off with a delicious dinner of seafood curry while a member of the crew entertained us by capturing and showing us large nocturnal crabs. Here is a picture of that perfect sunset. The photo doesn't even begin to give it justice. If you look carefully you can see many black smudges in the sky, those are the bats.
The most exciting part of my trip was scuba diving!!!! I finally fulfilled something that has been a dream of mine for a long time. Three weeks before I left for Thailand I completed a training course here in Seoul so that I wouldn't have to do my pool training in Thailand. I completed my open water training in Thailand and am now a certified diver! I dove off the coast of Koh Phi Phi, which is where my diving instructor in Korea told me was the best place in Thailand to dive. The water was so clear! Visibility was 20-25 meters (~75 feet). It is something else to be weightless in the water and see the multitude of organisms down there. You see more animals in one dive than you do a whole week in a national park back home. It is amazing to have a school of literally thousands of bright yellow fish encircle you as they pass by. And they all move in perfect unison. It's incredible! The colors of the animals encompass the rainbow. We even saw neon blue annenomes. It looked like they were glowing. We also saw two sharks. They were docile leopard sharks, and they just sat on the bottom of the ocean floor. I don't think leopard sharks even have teeth. Nonetheless, I can still say I saw a shark! (Oh, and they taste REALLY good too. I had a shark fillet as my last dinner in Thailand.) The pic is of me and my instructor, Lex.
One night I was sitting on the deck of a bar and the evening entertainment began right after I sat down. And I happened to have one of the best views in the bar. There were fire dancers, who were mesmerizing, snake charmers, who were crazy, and Mai Thai kick boxers, who were a little boring. (I was a little disappointed by them, actually.)I went kayaking one day.
I almost killed myself hiking up a mountain and then down into it in order to see a lagoon. I
literally had to lower myself down on ropes to hike down this path. I received a nasty scrape. The lagoon was interesting though. It was like being in a big teacup. The shear cliffs came straight down to a small pond whose water level rose and fell with the tides. I was there at low tide so there was tons of mud. People had even made mud figurines. On my last day in Thailand I went on an elephant ride through the forest.Then it was back on a plane to Bangkok, and then Korea. My flight left at 11:30pm, December 31, so my New Year's Eve was spent on a plane. However, I got to Korea just in time to see the first sunrise of the New Year while I was on the bus back home. Can't say I've ever seen that before.
It was a great trip, and I will make it a point to return to Thailand one day.
The biggest spider I have ever seen in a web in my life! (It's leg spread was as big as my hand.)
Seafood salad and a coconut shake...Yum!
Seafood salad and a coconut shake...Yum!