trip report: krabi province, part I

On the first part of this, our most ambitious trip, we engaged ourselves with an aquatic adventure. As such, I'm going to style this entry with a Team Zissou feel. Furthermore, the scope of our trip was so large that I have divided my recounting of the trip into three sections: the first deals with our aquatic adventure to Koh Phi Phi, the second deals with getting away from tourist Thailand with a giant waterfall and the nicest bar-owner in the world, and the third covers our arduous trek to see Buddha's Footprint and Tiger Cave Temple in the Krabi Province.

We stayed in bungalows, like always.

Tyler had diahrea.

This was our vessel: The Belafonte. It is equipped with a spa, snooker table, cutting room, and studio. Its powered by a diesel truck engine adapted for aquatic use with a hilariously long drive shaft attached to a propeller.

I can't remember our pilots name (I'm sure his nickname was one syllable and his given name was ten or more), but he was quite skilled with the longtail boat, occasionally steering with his feet, with his genitalia only inches away from open and spinning belts on the engine. (Again, my oft-uttered phrase of "that's Thailand's style" comes to my mind.)

To be honest, this part of the trip isn't very conducive to a good story. It lends itself far better to amazing pictures. "We hung out on a real nice beech" just doesn't sound great. But when you see that beech...

I guess it makes a little more of an impression. Needless to say, the beeches were amazing and the water really was "the most amazing shade of turquoise."

There were monkeys on the island (surprised? we weren't, there are monkeys EVERYWHERE here). However, it was a good experience because we finally got to see Brian with monkeys for the first time. This takes some explaining. I would say that, since I have been here, Brian has said the phrase "I just LOVE MONKEYS" about a thousand times. He had seen them in Thailand before we had, so we knew he was for real. However, while we were on the beech with the extremely angry and ill-tempered beech-monkeys that were constantly scaring us into the water, we asked Brian: "I thought you loved monkeys?!?" He replied "I do love monkeys, I just don't like to be AROUND them!"

I couldn't blame him! These were the meanest monkeys I have ever seen. The scary thing about monkeys is, they aren't afraid to just run after you and grab on to you. However, these monkeys got a taste of their own medicine, with hilarious results. You see, Thai people are pretty good with monkeys. Especially if they are used to saving dumb tourists from monkeys. A boatfull of such tourists came upon Monkey Bay (I wonder why they call it that?) while we were there on the beech, intermittently running into the water to get away from the furious monkeys. They ran their speedboat onto the beech, and proceeded to run to the bow to see all the monkeys on the beech. They got more than they bargained for when a large monkey ran straight up to the boat and jumped onto the bow. Its a funny thing watching a bunch of people looking down over the bow of a boat suddenly want to not be there and run to the back of the boat altogether. The driver, no doubt experienced with this sort of thing, ran to the front of the boat and proceeded to try to grab the monkey. The monkey narrowly escaped. Here's my point... most people are afraid of monkeys grabbing onto them. This guy just totally turned things around on these guys by sprinting up to a monkey and trying to grab him!!! What do you do if you get ahold of the monkey?!?!? I don't know what he would have done, but I'm pretty sure the monkey wouldn't want to find out. Also, this guy had the legs of an Olympic sprinter (I feel weird saying that, but you would have noticed too!). Anyway, the overall point is, monkeys appear, chaos ensues.

The only other really notable part of this trip was the visit to the beautiful Maya Bay (where "The Beach" was filmed). Koh Phi Phi Leh is a very nice place to see, and its just beautiful all over there. The snorkeling was very enjoyable, with extremely clear water and lots of fish (though sometimes they all seemed to be the same species!). There were those wonderful parrot fish that you can hear as they chomp coral and pointy-nosed fish and clown fish and all the great stuff that goes along with snorkeling. I put my dry-bag to use, as we had to jump off the boat, swim to a hole in the karst-wall of the island, where we trekked about 1/4 mile to Maya Bay proper.

I did have one interesting run-in with an interesting creature of the sea. In Maya Bay I spotted a sea-snake under the water. It was very interesting to watch, and had stripes. Nobody else wanted to get too close to it. It was a prudent decision on their part; this snake turned out to be the highly venomous Banded Sea Snake. The closest I got to it was about one foot. Luckily for me, they are not hostile in nature and I was not bitten. Still, this is a reminder of how dangerous the wild can be! If anyone knows a good resource for identifying hazardous animals for different of regions, please let me know!