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Krabi → Bangkok 16.7 mi (26.9 km)* |
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Àrun sàwàt túk kon kap!
This is one promising morning: thin clouds, no sign of rain until much later… After lots of relaxation and good food, it’s time to get out and explore! Mom and I braved the floating dock once again and recruited a long-tail boat to transport us around the cliffs that fenced in the resort to the beaches of Railay!
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Railay Beach is one of Thailand’s most famous, and for that reason, it attracts a ton of tourists—tourism makes up roughly 20% of Thailand’s GDP—creating some major culture crossover. For example, there are mermaids in Thai mythology, but this one holds a conch like a European mermaid and doesn’t have a headdress like Suvannamaccha, the daughter of Ravana and lover of Hanuman in Thai tellings of the Ramayana! Along West Railay Beach, there was also a big Times Square/Bourbon Street vibe with hostels and English signs inviting folks to experiment with “happy pancakes” and “special shakes!” Morning was a good time to get here, before things got too rowdy.
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Railay is a peninsula cut off from the mainland by huge cliffs! After we walked through “party alley,” we reached East Railay Beach where the mangroves grew thick and the limestone cliffs towered super high in the morning light! I called out “Sawatdee kap!” to a Pacific reef egret, but it was too busy hunting for fish in the mangroves to chat!
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And then we entered a really cool path through a cave complex! Because this whole area is made of limestone, it’s full of caves, like its most famous Bat Cave and Diamond Cave! These caves go deep into the mountains, but I’d never seen caves like these before, with formations extending right out into the open air! Since Diamond Cave wasn’t going to open for a few more hours and Bat Cave was trapped behind high tide, we had to enjoy what caves we could find in our free time!
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This also happens to be a world-class rock climbing destination, even though the signs warn everyone to beware of rock climbing! It would have been really neat to ascend to the heights and get a great view of both beaches, but Mom’s bones weren’t having it. We decided to stay a little lower to sea level, which was not without beautiful sights!
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Some sights I’m a little hesitant about posting on my blog. In this photo, we’re standing in the shadow of Phra Nang Cave! Named for a princess, maiden, or fisherman’s wife (depending on which story you hear) this cave is supposed to hold the spirit of that mysterious woman who grants wishes for fertility! For that reason, generations of folks have filled the cave with huge, woody… dingalingas! Mom sure got an eyeful before we turned back to other towering pillars!
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These towering limestone formations were the major highlight of Phra Nang Beach! They’re part of what’s called the Ratburi Group, which formed before the dinosaurs during the Permian Period, 245-286 million years ago and can be 3,000 feet deep in this part of Thailand! Like the famous karst formations of China, they eroded into these neat, towering shapes thanks to the high humidity (water) mixing with waste from decaying jungle (carbon dioxide) to produce limestone-dissolving carbonic acid! I don’t think Mom was all that keen on the backstory of these beautiful karsts, but I couldn’t help myself!
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We’d only rented the long-tail boat for a couple of hours and hadn’t had breakfast yet, so we headed back to the resort for breakfast buffet (with a bizarre, lychee-like fruit called a salak) and some swimming. Meanwhile, the storm clouds rolled in, the surf intensified, and we couldn’t help laughing at the poor folks just arriving on the floating dock as the enormous waves flung them back and forth like dolls! But I still wanted to explore more of the area, so I talked Mom into checking out the Ao Nang Monkey Trail in the rain!
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The Monkey Trail gets its name from, you guessed it, the many monkeys who live along its edges! While we saw neither macaque nor langur on our hike, we felt like monkeys ourselves, scaling steep steps along this narrow jungle boardwalk! It reminded me of the last hike I took with Mom and Master Sae when I visited them in Seoul!
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But the Monkey Trail hearkened back to an important fact about Krabi. Monkeys were an important symbol here since the start of recorded history, appearing on the standards of twelve ancient towns in the area that fed into the Kingdom of Ligor, a predecessor of Ayutthaya! This is the longest continuously inhabited part of Thailand with artifacts, skeletons, and rock art dating back to 35,000 BC!
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The trail is still very active. As we walked, we met resort employees heading home from their shifts to Ao Nang, which is where the nearest streets connected with the main city of Krabi, and construction workers repairing the steep steps on the other side of the cliff we’d just traversed! I sure was glad that they were out there in the rain, because a lot of folks, and at least two beavers, might have been stuck or worse!
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Ao Nang Beach was about as fine for shell collecting as could be, with speckled clam shells, spiral auger shells, and even the stings from stingrays! It was so cool browsing for treasures that we didn’t mind the rain too much, until dinner time rolled around and it was time to return over the Monkey Trail to get some grub!
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Thus concluded our beachgoer vacation into the south of Thailand! Mom had only budgeted for the one week, and her tuho friends kept bugging her to come back and play. But I really had fun with her on a very different kind of vacation than I’m used to. The next morning, we caught a long-tail boat back to Ao Nang and returned to Bangkok, where we hugged goodbye until next time. As Mom boarded her flight to Incheon, I turned my sights to the west. I had a Wonder of the World to see in the midst of record-smashing heatwave. I could only hope I was prepared. Next stop: India!
Wái jur gan!
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Total Ground Covered: 375.2 mi (603.8 km)* *Just driving! Doesn’t include flights. |
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