Beach, then back to Bangkok

We finished up our Thailand vacation with a few days at the beach.  While everyone we met had set aside at least ten days to explore the many beaches on the Andaman coast, we did not think we needed to spend our little time sunning on the beach.  Some asked why we even went to the beach at all?  We thought it would give us a good Thai sampler: city, country, beach.  On the recommendation of a friend we set Rai Le Beach as our destination.  Rai Le is attached to the mainland in the Krabi Provence, but is not accessible by roads.  One must travel there by longtail boat and can only do so during daylight.  Due to our flight schedule, we spent our first night in Ao Nang and had quite the culture shock!  Though English is widespread in Thailand, it was even more so at the beach.  Thais looked surprised when we said "hello" or "thank you" in Thai.  We don't think most tourists make the effort.  Another surprise in Krabi was the amount of cigarette smoking.  We were pleasantly surprised to see so few smokers in Bangkok and Chiang Mai (both tourists and Thais), but in Krabi smoking was everywhere.  

 After a night in Ao Nang in a hotel with a fun shower (see the slideshow), we took a longtail boat 20 minutes to Rai Le.  We were glad we were turned on to Rai Le.  Though exclusively a tourist destination, Rai Le is very chill with a small strip of hotels, bars, and restaurants and not much else.  It is also a very popular rock climbing destination.  Rai Le is also home to wild monkeys and we were warned by a maintenance man at the hotel to keep the patio door closed or else "Monkey eat minibar, you pay".  We enjoyed a beautiful sunset followed by a Thai boxing show fight.

One day we took a longtail boat to several nearby islands where we snorkeled and kayaked.  The islands contain caves many feet in the air where people live to collect bird's nests.  They live in the caves for about seven days, leave for a few to get new provisions, and return for another week.  The bird's nests are used to make bird's nest soup.  They are also claimed to be an aphrodisiac.  A kilo of nest can sell for $2,000.

So we admit it, we're jaded.  The beaches were beautiful and the ocean was that pretty blue-green, and everything was postcard-perfect.  But yet, we live on a pretty spectacular beach and the "wow" factor has been somewhat diminished now that we're in Hawaii.  We were grateful to return to the chaos of Bangkok where not everyone spoke English and the food was not catering to Western tourists.  (Restaurants serving Thai food, burgers, pizza, and Indian food rarely do any of them well.)

On our return to Bangkok for one last night we stumbled onto more celebrations for the King's birthday.  We told our cabbie to stop on the side of the road and hopped out to join the party.

We don't know why they were sitting in organized rows of chairs, since nothing was happening in that direction while we were there.  We only passed one other farang (similar to gringo in Spanish or haole in Hawaiian) and the Thais seemed to enjoy our being there to celebrate their king with them.  We were interviewed by two college students for a project, too.  If only we knew we would be there, we would have worn our pink shirts.  99% of the people were wearing pink shirts, which signifies their love for the king.

We ended up spending the wee morning hours talking to two Thai twenty-somethings in a 24-hour McDonald's.  We had one last Sprite (Wow, they taste better there.  Maybe it's real sugar in place of HFCS?) and one last trip to 7-11 (more ubiquitous than Starbucks in Manhattan) before heading to the airport to take our China Airlines flight back to Honolulu via Taiwan.

A wonderful trip.  We can't wait to go back.  More pictures are in the slide show.