January 17, 2020
Today we took a boat tour to 5 places, Railay beach, Phranang Cave, Chicken Island, Tup Island and Poda Island. Our boat was a traditional long tail boat our drivers name was Ahmed, he was 24 years old. The total price for the trip including the 800 baht ($35 CAD) national park pass for 2 was $128 CAD.
Railay beach is just south of Ao Nang. It is only accessible by boat. There are a few resorts on this beach and the scenery is amazing. Gary went for a swim here too, the water was so calm and warm.
Our second stop was Phranang Cave, another beach on the mainland. Its claim to fame besides it’s beautiful beach are a few caves. The main caves have statues of penises. Apparently it’s the location of a princess spirit house that is respected and worshiped by the local people. Some tourist women were also respecting and worshipping.
Our third stop was at Tup Island. It’s essentially two islands connected by a strip of sand. It was very scenic but the sand was full of shells and coral and extremely hard on our while soft feet. There were strong currents around this island and we saw several beached jellyfish. Some people swam here disregarding the signs warning of the perils of strong current and jellyfish. Maybe they can’t read.
Our fourth stop was at Chicken Island, of course it looks like a chicken. We stopped and had some great snorkelling here. There were lots of tourists, mostly from larger groups, we all had our own space to swim around. We were quite grateful to be on a small boat, just the two of us.
We made our last stop at Poda Island. This island has a lovely white sandy beach, ideal for swimming and sun bathing. By now we were staring to fear for our skin, as we had been outside in the sun for almost 4 hours. While we did have gobs of sunscreen on every exposed piece of flesh, it just didn’t seem like enough. We did swim a couple of times and walked around the beach with our towels over our shoulders. The sand there is so white and the sun intensity is stronger than anything you would ever encounter at home.
We headed back to the boat and our boatman took us to the beach in front of our hotel. We walked barefoot across the road and to the hotel’s outdoor shower to wash off the sand.
We had a beer in our room, relaxed in the shade and went for supper around 5:30pm. We had our first mango smoothie since our arrival in Thailand. It was amazing, it also helped cool off the pakora and tikka chicken. The green dipping sauce was very tasty and hot as hell. We picked up our laundry next door to the restaurant. The whole bag full cost of laundry cost less than $7 CAD. It’s clean and we didn’t have to do it.
Tomorrow we leave for Ko Lanta. We have a car hired to take us. It will cost slightly less than our boat trip today. We leave at noon.