Krabi

Hello world.

We're now in the Krabi Province in a town called Ao Nang. It's quite beautiful here, although a little bit touristy and has vibes of a Greek island, albeit more tropical and the sea is warm. We arrived here on Saturday after our overnight train journey from Nakom Phatom. That was an experience, it's not easy sleeping on a noisy, moving train so we didn't get a lot of kip. We arrived after 11 hours in a town called Surathani where crossing the road had to be done with a local guide because there could be trouble from the locals otherwise. Odd.

We had a bit of breakfast there and then jumped on a coach to head down to our current location. After a brief introduction to the place by Erkan - our tour leader - a few of us jumped on a longtail boat for a short hop round to another beach where we spent that afternoon bobbing about in the sea, being stung by some unseen creatures in the water. We survived that, and grabbed another Longtail back to Ao Nang before meeting up with the rest of the team and heading out to a seafood restaurant. Neither of us like fish, but we picked our tuna and after about 15 hours wait, they brought the food out. The service here is shockingly slow but for some reason you just don't mind.

The whole group then headed out into Ao Nang for a few beers and G&Ts. Those still left at the end (male and female) finished up in a street which was lined with tiny bars, with dancing girls, he-shes and relatively cheap booze. The evening ended with a tuk-tuk race with half the group on one, and half on the other as we scoured the town looking for an open bar. Tremendous fun.

For the following day the whole group had booked a cruise round to the Phi-phi islands, so a 7.30am start on Sunday saw us heading bleary-eyed down to a couple of waiting speedboats. Charlotte's belly wasn't really in the mood for this, so she spent the morning fighting sea-sickness. We did a bit of snorkelling amongst the millions of clown fish and various other sea-creatures then stopped at Maya Bay - the location for the film The Beach. This was where Charlotte decided to deposit the previous evening's drinks, which will make that film all the more interesting from now on.

Then back on the boat to another of the small island resorts called Phi-Phi Don for a buffet lunch, then a bit more snorkelling and then finally ending on a tiny and deserted place called Bamboo island. A few of the group and us did a bit of exploring with one of the boat crew, and saw some of the consequences of the Tsunami. Ao Nang itself was hit pretty bad (there are some spectacular photos on the walls here) but all this area suffered. Bits of boat and even clothing were still scattered across parts of the beaches.

After an hour or so there, it was back on the speedboat for a direct route home across some very entertaining open seas, chucking the boat all over the place. Thankfully, Charl's stomach had recovered by then so there were no more deposits.

Last night, we left the main group and had a simple Italian meal, which was our worst meal here so far, and then had an early night to catch up on sleep. It's tiring, all this travelling you know.

This afternoon we're off elephant-trekking. At one point we're allowed to swim with them but they do have a habit of taking a dump in the water, so we'll see about that...