Thailand - The Beach

Happy New Year!  We're back in Singapore winding up the holiday break after our 12-day trip to Thailand with Michael's parents.  It was a trip with a lot of firsts for various members of the family:

• First trip to Asia for Pat & Dave
• First experience with Asian budget airlines
• First jellyfish sting
• First moped ride
• First moped crash
• First time eating miang kham
• First fire ant bite

We started the trip at a small resort (only 12 rooms!) on Koh Yao Yai  in Phang Nga Bay near Phuket.  We were looking for relaxation and not super into the party scene so tried to get a little off the beaten path.  Although the internet access was spotty at best, we did get a nice stretch of beach and close enough proximity to the nearby Ao Phang Nga national park that we could take a couple of excursions over to it.  Warning: lots of pictures in this post!

To get to Yao Yai we took a taxibus to the pier and then waited for one of the regularly scheduled motorboats that went to the island.  We had a more modern outboard motorboat for our ferry, but there were plenty of long-tailed boats at the pier.  They're basically the "Mad Max" version of a traditional South-East Asian sailboat.

Behind Middle-Child is a re-purposed truck engine on a swivel mount with some custom control extensions for the throttle, with the drive-shaft extended and welded to a propellor.  There were a lot of variations on this design, some with a transmission still attached, some with water cooling and others with exposed fans and radiators.  The thing they all had in common was that they were loud, smelly, and awesome.

The first full day was spent exploring our resort, the beach in either direction, and some of the villages nearby.  We did a fair amount of swimming, but there seemed to be a lot of something in the water that made it feel like you were getting teeny tiny stings by tiny invisible jellyfish.  At least, that was what my Google searches suggested.  They weren't bad at high tide so we were able to get in our quota of saltwater swimming.

Dangerous rope swings are the best rope swings

Posing in front of some long-tail boats in Baan Larm Yai - the village/pier at the end of the road

It's been said that an army marches on it's stomach.  Prawn-flavored dinosaur-shaped crackers and Fanta were probably what Napolean had in mind.

"Oompa" Dave teaching Danger Monkey how to skip stones as the tide comes in.

After we had settled in a little, we took a long-tail boat up to the north end of the bay, which is a national park with stunning scenery: an archipelago of towering islands of limestone cliffs covered in lush jungle.  One of the islands was used in the James Bond movie "The Man With The Golden Gun" and every tour operator was happy to show it to you, but all of the islands (and caves!) were amazing.  A totally alien, inspiring landscape that pushes all my buttons.

Safety briefing

As the rainwater dissolves the limestone it turns the outer edge of the island into these stalactite sculptures.  The ocean eats away at the base, and we're left with improbably shaped rock spires. 

Go home island - u r drunk

In some islands, the running rainwater carved enormous caves.

As part of our tour we also visited Ko Panyi, a famous "floating" village at the mouth of a river.  Most of the village is actually built on stilts and has even spread to the nearby island, but much of the way of life has not changed dramatically from the 18th century when the village was founded.  Although there's a lot of tourism now, the village economy is still primarily based around net fishing in the bay and rivers.

You can't tell from the pictures, but the water was absurdly choppy and we thought we were going to die.

Fish-farming rafts in the foreground

Panyi is all back streets.

We had to cross a big boat to get to our little boat.  Danger Monkey liked boats.

Back on land, we were also exploring the cuisine of Thailand.  I'm happy to report that the good Thai restaurants in Minneapolis are not too far off from the authentic places in the nearby little town that Elizabeth and I escaped to for a date-night dinner while Grandma and Grandpa babysat.  One Thai cuisine staple that I don't remember seeing in Minnesota is the "entire fish deep fried and then covered in various amazing sauces", which was of course delicious.  But by and large, mostly the same curries, noodle dishes, stir fry and spring rolls we knew and loved.  Way more random cats in the restaurants than in Minneapolis, for better or worse.

Every day in Thailand is "Bring Your Child To Work" day. Taxis drivers, ferry captains, restaurant owners, bar tenders, they all appeared to be training in the next generation on the job. They were all super friendly and our kids got on pretty well.  Most of the people we talked to knew enough English that we could compare kids ages and basic biological information.

The international language of "ring around the rosy"

In addition to the scenery and food, we also had a fire-dancing performance on the beach one night. He was pretty respectably good.

Can't go wrong with burning steel wool

Elizabeth and I also rented a scooter (well, it started out as two scooters but that turned out to be a mistake) and explored the island on our own. We found some hidden beaches (not pictured), almost ran over a baby goat, and just barely beat the sunset home. There was a pretty amazing array of homebrew scooter modifications, from sidecars to awnings to wagons and were the main mode of transportation on the main road that ran the length of the island. We saw plenty of 9-year-olds with their scooters loaded up with siblings zipping around, but callously refused to let our children drive one.

It's easy to spot the tourists, since they're the only ones with helmets.

That wraps our time near Phuket! It had been about two years since we'd had an actual relaxing vacation, so this was a great respite from both the day-to-day and also our hard-charging ambitious expeditions.

Coming up: a hard-charging ambitious expedition to Bangkok!