Vacation to Krabi and Koh Lanta

We're back! We had a wonderful week of exploring, relaxing, swimming, snorkeling, kayaking, reading, and sunbathing! :) We took so many pictures we made a slide show, so hopefully it will work and you can check it out!! If not, let me know and I will figure out another way to get all our pictures on here!

Krabi is absolutely gorgeous! The water is so crystal blue in areas it looks like you are swimming in a pool! Our hotel was called The Cliff and was really nice... they had a really cool swimming pool and a great breakfast too (oh, and a cute kitty I wanted to kidnap, lol)!

Last week was Songkran which is the celebration of the ancient Thai New Year. It sure was an experience! There were people all up and down the streets with barrels of water and hoses, and if you passed by you were getting soaked... Chris and I were in a Songtao (A pick up truck that acts like a bus, with two rows of seats in the bed) and we were drenched... we were sitting ducks in that thing! It was freaky riding down the road and then all the sudden getting splashed with water at 50 km/hr! If you are walking along the street, they will soak you and then rub powder all over you! Not sure exactly what it means, but it's supposed to be good luck. :) I didn't like the getting soaked part as much as Chris did... he stood in the street with his arms open waiting for them to soak him... (sorry, didn't bring my camera for that part because you know, water, electronics... don't go well together). But I did get some pictures of the trucks full of people all standing in the bed with huge barrels and buckets so they could have water fights while driving! Not the safest thing in the world I'm sure, but Thailand doesn't seem to care too much about safety. There was no shortage of families of 4 riding their motorcycle down the street with squirt guns either... oh, and yeah, families of 4, maybe even 5 will ride one motorcycle, the holiday was not an exception or anything. :)

We took a snorkeling and sea kayaking trip around the Islands near Krabi. It was so fun and we saw a lot of really neat things! We found Nemo and even saw a gigantic clam! But our favorite part was the kayaking. There were three other couples on our tour, two from Thailand and a couple from Spain who we spent the day with. We went through a mangrove forest and saw a lot of caves, stalactites, stalagmites, and beautiful cliffs. My arms are still sore from all the paddling though... I need to do that everyday! After a few days of touring around Krabi and lounging on the beach we headed to our next destination Koh Lanta.

Our hotel in Koh Lanta was actually pretty neat. It was called Relax Bay and is owned by a French man. The resort itself is nice, it's very private right on the beach, it has a pretty good restaurant (although it's kind of pricey) which also over looks the beach. They have a nice beach bar, areas where you can get massages, and even a place for yoga! All the rooms are bungalows and it was kind of fun having your own cabin. The bungalows definitely need a lot of work though... they were pretty clean, but they were falling apart and the water was brown and smelled bad! Yikes!

We took a longboat day trip to the Phi Phi Islands which were made famous by the movie "The Beach," starring Leonardo DiCaprio. We also went snorkeling and saw beautiful coral and parrot fish. Our tour guide threw a whole bunch of left over rice from our lunch into the water around us so we were surrounded by hundreds of fish! I even touched one! We then went to Maya Beach (the actual beach from the movie) but just took pictures from the boat because it was extremely packed with tourists.

Chris was disappointed we didn't get to see James Bond Island up close (the island was in the movie The Man with the Golden Gun), but we saw it from a distance, and it's tiny, so we thought that was good enough. He also didn't try any really weird foods on this trip... he did get a lot of seafood so I think that made him happy!

Now it's back to real life! At least for a few weeks... :)