THAILAND
Sunday 10 December, 2006 – 16:07
For the last week we have been cruising the southern Thailand islands. Our first stop was the Koh Lipe, a small island in the Butang Group. It was bit like going back to the hippy era, a few restaurants on the beach, cheap accommodation and lots of Swedish back packers!!! – probably what Phi Phi would have been like 20 years ago. The next day we headed to Koh Rawi an island in the same group, for some rest after the excesses of the previous night. Besides the park rangers ashore we were the only people around. – Beautiful clear water, white sands and jungle back drop. From there we headed north to Koh Rok famous for its scuba diving and snorkeling – which didn’t disappoint. We then headed back, closer to the mainland, to Koh Muk. We anchored just off the shear cliffs, honeycombed with crevices and caves and took the dinghy to explore the Emerald Cave. It’s an 80 metre pitch dark passageway leading to a completely enclosed circular, cathedral –like Hong with a diameter of 60 metres. Totally amazing site. Phi Phi was our next stop- where we did some serious partying – or should we say Andy and Winton did!! One of the pubs had Thai boxing ring in it and it wasn’t too long before Winton donned the shorts and was up there trying to beat the crap out of his opponent aided by his second ,Andrew, with cigeratte in one hand and a beer in the other giving detail advice on the finer points of Thai kick boxing!!! The next day, once we had located our crew, we headed for Phi Phi Le where the “Beach” was filmed. We timed our arrival to just after all the tourist boats had left and shared this spectacular lagoon with half a dozen yachts. In the morning we went for a snorkel around the many caves and saw a great variety of fish in abundance, it was like swimming in an aquarium. We are now on route for the Royal Phuket Marina, where we will be staying for a couple of weeks. The next adventure is elephant riding and White water rafting in North Thailand with Cynthia. Watch this space for more adventures with P and P.
