Career Break Central

Feb 28 – March 6

We had enjoyed the company of our new friends in Chiang Mai so much that we decided to get together for a celebratory dinner before we all went our separate ways. It was so nice to have adults to talk to (besides each other) and the kids loved their company too. After dinner, we took the kids back to the guesthouse to put them to bed and Claude was having such a good time that I told him I would stay with the kids so he could go out with the gang. I must say, it was nice to be the one feeling good the next morning while the rest of them nursed hangovers over breakfast. Since we were all heading back to Bangkok anyway, we decided to take the overnight train with Candice and Mary. The kids thought it was quite an adventure to have a sleepover on the train and had fun colouring and drawing pictures with Candice and Mary.

After we put the kids to bed we played cards until the unsmiling train matron came and told us we had to go to bed (at 9PM!).

Even though I got an upper berth that was about the size of a crib mattress, sleeping on the train wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Luckily, I’m a sound sleeper and the clanging and banging of the cars as we arrived at and left the stations en route didn’t keep me awake.

The next morning we arrived in Bangkok at 7am and spent the day exploring the city with Candice and Mary before catching our flight to Krabi in southern Thailand.

We spent the next few days in a cute little bungalow in Ao Nang at the Cashew Nut, which, while inexpensive (600 baht/$20CDN/night), was very clean, well-run and close to the beach. We rented kayaks at Railay Beach and paddled around the beautiful karst formations that the Andaman Coast is famous for.

The next day we caught a boat to Ko Phi Phi Don (of tsunami fame) where we stayed at the Andaman Beach Resort (because it had a pool). Despite its reputation as the playground of the rich and famous, we were disappointed by the island. Although the white sand beach was beautiful, there was a lot of garbage washing up on shore and there was a layer of scum on the water from the many tour boats in the area discharging their holding tanks nearby. We quickly discovered that Phi Phi (pronounced Pee-Pee, to the kids delight) is an expensive island and ended up paying more than three times as much as we had in Ao Nang. Our room looked like they had simply put a coat of paint on the walls after the tsunami because there was mildew on the walls and ceiling and the place had a musty smell.

On our first day, after spending a few hours on the beach, Claude decided to go explore the island while I took the kids for a swim in the pool. We quickly found chairs by the pool and the kids starting playing with a group of other kids already in the pool. After a while, Alexa came and asked for the key to our room so she could go to the bathroom. After a few minutes, she came back and said she couldn’t find our room. I repeated the simple directions and she went off again, only to return again and insist that it wasn’t there. Exasperated, I hauled Simon out of the pool and the three of us tromped off to find the room. The only problem was it wasn’t there! We had mistakenly gone to the almost identical resort right next to ours when we returned from the beach. Red-faced, I packed up our stuff and we skulked off to our resort where the pool was not nearly as nice; it was so murky we couldn’t see the bottom and it smelled strongly of chemicals. I was tempted to head back over to the nice pool next door.

On a positive note, there was a nice beach bar and restaurant nearby called Carpe Diem (our mantra).

At night, they laid out bamboo mats on the beach with low tables and candles so we could sit right on the beach and enjoy the evening.

At 9PM, there was a fire dance show and about 20 different dancers put on an amazing exhibition of their skills.

I was glad we didn’t sit too close, though, because some dancers weren’t as skilled as the others and flaming sticks and balls occasionally went flying and bounced into the crowd. One spectator was taking a photo of a dancer when a spinning ball flew straight at him and hit him in the chest. Luckily he wasn’t hurt and walked away with an amazing picture. While watching the show, we started chatting with a couple of girls beside us who were enchanted by Simon (especially after he gave them hand massages). One was a magnetic Norwegian girl named Sivi who seemed to know everyone in the place.

She was relaxed and laid back seemed like a throwback to the sixties. Sivi fell in love with Simon and built sandcastles with him in the candlelight before promising to join us on the beach the following day. We spent the next day hanging out on the beach with Sivi before taking a sunset cruise to Ko Phi Phi Lei (Phi Phi Don’s uninhabited sister island) where we snorkeled and strolled on “the beach” of Maya Bay (made famous in the movie “The Beach”) before watching a spectacular sunset from the boat. Unfortunately, my camera picked the moments leading up to sunset to cease functioning permanently and I wasn’t able to capture the beautiful sight. A fellow Canuck on the boat promised to email me her photos, but I’ve yet to receive them.

Alexa celebrated her eighth birthday on Ko Phi Phi and Claude created an exciting treasure hunt for her on the beach (just like Simon’s in Fiji). I’m sure neither of them will remember what they got, but they’ll never forget those treasure hunts. For the rest of the day, we hired a longboat and went out to Bamboo Island where the beaches weren’t so crowded and the water was clean. The only thing we had to contend with was the sea lice which are tiny bits of jellyfish stingers that have broken off and float unseen in the water, waiting to give you a nasty jolt when you least expect it. I’m particularly vulnerable to their sting and went home covered in little welts. This happened to me anywhere I swam in the ocean in Thailand.

After three nights in Ko Phi Phi, we were definitely ready to see a different island and booked our boat trip to Ko Lanta.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under South East Asia, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.