Ao Nang & On

Last stop in Thailand – Ao Nang, a beach town – more touristy, but a good launching point for tours and nearby attractions.

Melissa, who I had met on my Phi Phi tour, was a day or so ahead of me on a similar route, and so when I got to Ao Nang, we met up and had a relaxing foot massage – by fish!

They seemed to prefer my feet for some odd reason – guess I don’t exfoliate my feet enough… Not so relaxing actually, but an experience! Read more on the fish here if you’re interested.

Just south of Ao Nang are two beaches only accessible via boat (because of tall limestone cliffs): Tonsai Beach and Railay beach. It took me forever to figure out, but Thais don’t pronounce the letter ‘R’ like we do – instead they use an ‘L’ sound (thanks Melissa!) So they say Railay like “Lai-lay.” These two beaches are becoming more touristy than they used to be (I say as I go to them… 🙂

Railay and the surrounding area, due to it’s massive limestone cliffs, is well known for its world-class rock climbing. People come all over the world to climb here, so I was excited to try some routes.  I hopped on a boat to Railay on my first day and scouted out a rock-climbing company that was just on its way out to do a half-day session, so I joined up.  The routes were much easier than I’d prefer, but fun none-the-less.

After getting my fill of climbing in, and one more route for good measure, I did some exploring around a cave, Phra Nang (Princess) Cave.  There was a shrine of penises just to the right of where we were climbing (sort of visible from the picture above):

Apparently fishermen think this cave is sacred and will give them good luck fishing, but also people come here to pray for fertility. Apparently becoming less of a thing, but still, quite a few penises here.

I grabbed lunch at one of the lunch-longtails parked on the beach:

I then went on to take numerous pictures of these sand crabs’ creations… which I was so into – it’s like miniature crop circles made of tiny sand balls!

 

Looking up close, you can see that what the crabs are doing, is going down into their hole (at the center usually), grabbing a “handful” of sand, sifting through it for any nutrients, and then balling it up, and dragging it to the outside of it’s maze of existing “waste.”

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The next day, Melissa and I decided to go on another boat tour together, around the surrounding islands. They said it would be 7 islands, but I think it was more like 7 beaches. Regardless, it was a great trip!

The first island we went to, Tup Island, we were right on the edge of a cold front, which was kind of cool to witness.  We got hit with a bit of rain but it passed quickly, as usual.

Tup island was connected to Chicken Island by a skinny beach, which apparently disappears at high tide:

We then went by Chicken Island, aptly named after it’s chicken shaped rock:

We then went on to my favorite part of the trip, free solo climbing from the water, then jumping off once you get to the top! I was eager to get up there but there were a lot of people waiting for the ladder. I was the only one on my boat that did it, so I couldn’t spend much more time there, but was happy I got to climb it!

We then went to Poda island and hopped off to “make a photography” – as the brochure put it:

I also got a picture of some Malaysians on vacation who became buddy-buddy with us, and somehow remembered our names extremely well. I was walking on the street the next day and they called my name out to get my attention – I was quite impressed:

 

Then we made our way back to Railay after sunset where they fed us and gave us a fire show with fire staffs. I was curious how much they weighed, so at the end I asked if I could hold one, and they proceeded to put lighter fluid on it and light it – so I was forced to spin for a while 🙂

We made our way back to the boat and putted out to the dark end of East Railay, where they turned off all the lights and told us to jump in with snorkels and masks. This is the main reason Melissa and I wanted to do the tour. There are bioluminescent plankton everywhere in the water, and, when you move your body, they all activate and glow green! No pictures of course, since it was so dark, but it was so cool to see! It looks a bit like pixie dust – you can stir them all up with your arms & legs and it looks like you’re some kind of superhero charging up… I’m sure this isn’t the only area you can do it, but it was fun and I could have played longer.

Next day I declared a beach day and walked along the beach until I saw some Thai ladies taking a picture of me – so I posed for them. Went to talk to them after a Thai guy wanted me to help him sell them the same trip I went on yesterday.  They were nice, masseuses on a break.  We talked for a while and they gave me one of their fliers and departed. I then thought, hey, I haven’t had a massage in a while, and this is the nicest/least intrusive “sales pitch” I’ve seen yet, so I’d may as well go with this company. Massage was okay, not the best, but towards the end she asks me what else I have planned today, and I say, “getting a bite to eat, know of any good places?” She recommended a spot, and afterwards, as I’m walking on, she hops on her motorbike and asks me if I want a ride. Sure, why not – I’m in for an adventure 🙂

We went to an excellent Thai restaurant that was 1/3 the price of every other restaurant, and we chatted a little over what little English vocabulary we shared. I bought her lunch for the ride and she asked if I wanted to go somewhere, I wasn’t sure what she said, but she seemed trustworthy enough, and I had no agenda.  (I know what you’re thinking Mom… red flags, red flags – it works out though!) She took me to a local market outside of town where they had all sorts of food & treats. I was stuffed from lunch, but she ended up buying me all sorts of treats, which I can’t really describe:

She drove me back to my hotel afterwards via a scenic route, but told me I should go out dancing that night.  I decided I didn’t want to lead her on too much, so I didn’t answer her calls that night, as I was out at the “half-moon party” at one of the bars with Melissa.

The next morning I had a scuba session booked for a 7am pickup, so I didn’t stay out too late.  There are local dives around Ao Nang, but the dive shop I went with (which was rated well online) didn’t recommend the local sites as the best.  They said the best was on Ko Phi Phi.  I had come from there two weeks ago, but I wanted to scuba there anyways!  We eventually made it to one of the nicest scuba boats I’ve seen, and were on our way to Phi Phi, which didn’t take long at all. I had my own personal dive master as a parter and she walked me through everything, telling me all the hand signals for when we saw certain fish. I had two dives scheduled & paid for, but ended up doing a third which just fit in the 18 hours of sea-level I needed before my flight the next day.

First dive was on Phi Phi Don, actually at the same location that the boat tour took us to snorkel, and Alec and I went kayaking to! But, snorkeling is much different than scuba diving in terms of what you see! Not 5 minutes into the dive, Claire, my dive instructor’s eyes go wide and she points over past me. Swimming by is a small leopard shark!

It swam away as quickly as it came, so I didn’t have a chance to get a better shot, but I was happy to have seen it!

We saw lots of things! I won’t put all the pictures here, because there are a ton, but I’ll describe the more interesting ones.  A lot of them are apparently poisonous/dangerous, but none of them really bother humans anyways.  We saw a cuttlefish on every dive. We saw lion fish, all kinds of shrimp, eel, barracuda, flounder, a Blue Dragon, two octopus, a ton of different coral & fish and a giant puffer fish:

The blue dragon, small but interesting and dangerous:

Here is a cleaner shrimp, which apparently just sits around waiting for fish to come by that want to be cleaned. Claire said that they will sometime try to clean you if you wait long enough!

Apparently this isn’t coral, it’s a creature that mimics it, and can actually get up and move to a new location. Claire said it looks like an alien when this is happening:

A tiger fish:

And of course, we found some Nemos:

I think my favorite dive was the second dive.  There was a bit of a current, and we were diving next to a cliff wall of coral (the extension of the limestone cliff on the island’s surface) The wall was so vertical and the current so steady that you literally just crossed your arms and watched things as you went by, kicking against the current if you wanted to stop and see something.  Sometimes the current picked up and you got whizzed to the next area, which was fun.  Very cool to just watch the underwater world go by as if you’re watching TV.

The last dive we went to there was an artificial reef put in to help replenish the sea life there after the 2004 tsunami. It was teeming with puffer fish, and I saw a hermit crab too.

 

It was a GREAT day of diving. You know it’s good when you and your dive master finish your safety stop, surface, and the first thing she says is, “that was amazing, thank YOU for giving me that!” I envy their jobs…

It makes me want to take up more diving – I realize there is so much more to learn. We were diving with another girl who had at least 150 dives under her belt and it showed. Keeping your breathing/buoyancy right is quite the challenge, but I was getting better with each dive.  Let’s just say there will be more diving on this trip, but not sure I can top that day!

I said farewell to Melissa as she went back to Bangkok to teach her second semester of English to her little kids, and hopped on an early flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So long Thailand, and thanks for all the fish!

All the photos are here