Paradise Found

We had taken the precaution of pre-booking our first few weeks of accommodation in Southern Thailand because of the school holidays.  This turned out to be inspired as there were holiday makers everywhere. 

We were waiting with trepidation to see our accommodation in Krabi at Pan Beach Bungalows – it all looked good on the internet being right on the beach but we did also know that there was no electricity during the day until they turned their own generator on at 6pm and also no hot water.

We were pleasantly surprised – as you will see from the photos, this place is complete paradise and cheap as chips!  We immediately decided to stay here for 6 nights, particularly when we discovered how good the food was.  We had 2 separate bungalows and ate incredibly fantastic Thai foodat their restaurant (ie open verandahs looking over the beach) for the bargain basement price of $100 a day.

The kids quickly discovered the wonders of banana pancakes and the freshest fruit salad covered in yogurt and muesli for breakfast, while Paul & I were loving the best green chicken curry I’d definately ever had.

The lack of hot water and electricty turned out to be completely inconsequential by the way.

We spent the week relaxing, did actually pick up the school books and wandering the beach.  We had trouble justifying going anywhere, but we did go on a boat trip out to the islands.  Pan Beach have their own long tail boat, which deposited us at various islands in the Andaman Sea.  Our favourite part of the day was snorkelling at Chicken Island.  The kids had never snorkelled before so had a bit of trouble adjusting to breathing etc but still it was really exciting for them as the boat driver through bread crumbs into the water and suddenly we were completely surrounded by thousands of green striped fish.

We could see lots of coral as well but unfortunately it all appeared dead and white.

Poda Island was our second stop and we quickly realised that this wasn’t going to be our cup of tea.  The boat dropped us off and the driver said he would pick us up in 3 hours!  The island is basically a whole lot of sand complete with a whole lot of tourists sun bathing!  We struggled to find a patch of sand big enough for the 6 of us in amongst the baking beauties.  The family next to us were extremely brown, slender and blonde and looked more like entrants in Miss Universe.

Caitlin and I agreed that we definately looked the odd ones on the beach because we had hats on!  (The rashies,boardies and sunscreen were standing out as being rare as well!)  We’ve decided that it must only be Australia who worries about skin cancer!!

Needless to say we couldn’t wait to get away from there (complete with our own sunburns!) reinforcing our policy to not sit on a beach all day.

Our other excitement for this Krabi trip was our first sighting of elephants.  On the trip from the main road to Pan Beach we saw at least three – the first looked as if it was tied up in somebody’s back yard, just like a dog. 

We were sad to leave Pan Beach behind but now onto the Jungle at Khao Sok.