After all that travelling, we were nearing the end of our trip, and the only thing for it was to head for the beach. We took 2 very slow night trains to the south of the country and stayed in the small town of Krabi.
In Krabi we were overwhelmed with the number of tourist attractions. There is everything from beaches to waterfalls, national parks and islands. Every five minutes someone asked us.. Where are you going ? At first I thought there was something suspicious going on, because there are some parts of Thailand that are in a state of emergency at the moment and tourists shouldn't go there. I had also been told that you can't discuss it with anyone as it is dangerous for locals. Then we realised that its just a cultural thing, everyone asks everyone where they are going. They are just nosy. The other reason is that people wanted to sell us tours or boat rides or songathew rides. (A songathew is a giant tuk tuk)
It took a long time to work out where to go because everywhere seemed to be full of tourists, and we wanted some peace and quiet. The first day we went to a beach called ralley beach, which was beautiful, but pretty crowded. The next two days we hired a jeep and Leon felt like James Bond. Although we didn't visit James Bond island itself, (where they filmed the man with the golden gun) the scenery in this part of the world is all similar, huge rocks jut out of the ground like mushrooms.
We were lucky enough to stumble across a school English project where all the children had written projects about nice places to visit in their local communities. Most of these places haven't been discovered by the mass tourist industry for some reason ! there are just so many stunning places in Thailand that hopefully some of them will remain undeveloped. We got a tip-off to go to a national park called Thai Muang, and it was the best thing we did in Thailand.
First there was the totally empty beach in Thai Muang town. Thai people don't like to go out in the sun, so you never see them on the beach. Its actually very sensible because the sun is the hottest we have ever experienced and it is very easy to get burnt or heatstroke. We had to swim in the sea though, so I did as the locals do and went in with all my clothes on ! There are two reasons for this practise.. one is that there are a lot of muslims in this area, so women stay covered up a lot. Also , clothes keep the sun off, and when you come out of the sea they dry in about five minutes.
After the joy of the empty beach we headed to the national park. It was also empty.. the have recently doubled the entry fee to make up for loss of income after the tsunami, which affected some of the park. We had read about rare turtles that nest on the beach in the park. We asked about them but they shook their heads .. the turtles haven't come back since the tsunami.
In the park there were signs everywhere pointing to escape routes in case of earthquake. We didn't worry too much as lightening doesn't strike twice, hopefully.
We set about looking for a waterfall that had been recommended to us by one of the schoolkids. At this point we got rather lost and ended up in the bush. There was a sand track which required 4 wheel drive. We didn't worry as we had a jeep. Alas, the jeep was cheap. I saw some amazing birds and we stopped the car to have a look. When we tried to start it again it was stuck in the sand, and we were miles from anyone or anything. After some digging, we managed to get out, but the back door decided to break and it was swinging in the wind so we mended it with sellotape.
Amidst the confusion I saw a multicouloured lizard and lots of lovely birds. We found our way again, and when we reached the waterfall we knew it had been worth it. It was four tiered, and we could swim in the pool below it. It was starting to get dark though, and we were becoming mozzie food. Armed with our jungle repellent we marched through rainforest... the sounds were incredible. There are insects that make a sound like a car alarm. I think they are called cicadas. Other creatures sound like chainsaws.. and then there are the frogs, birds and crickets. There were extremely tall trees, medium ones and little tiny banana and palm trees and the atmosphere became very humid. Leon was freaked out by all the spiders webs, and I was convinced I was going to be bitten by a deadly snake, but we bravely marched on. We saw a Salamander diving into a stream, and a jungle rat scurried past our toes. There seemed to be even more creatures here than the forest in Laos.. it was a great surprise because Thailand seemed to us to be so built up. We eventually made it back with a mobile phone to light our way.. it was a shame but we had to start heading home.
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