Goldilocks days

We went to Ao Nang because it has some of the most beautiful beaches in Thailand, if not SE Asia.  Like, Railay Beach, for example.  However, the weather wasn't very good and when the skies aren't blue and the waves are high, what is supposed to be turquoise water is instead brown, making the beaches still pretty but not magnificent.  We decided it wasn't much use hanging out at beautiful beaches in cruddy weather, especially in an overly touristy town, 

Beach near Ao Nang

Neat limestone cliff (karst) near Ao Nang.

so we left the next morning for Khao Sok National Park.



Khao Sok National Park was really beautiful.  We got there in the afternoon, grabbed a late lunch with monkey shaped rice and started planning for the next day.

You're really supposed to do one of the organized excursions there.  However, the excursions were expensive and none of them really appealed to us... well one did, but they weren't running it because it was low season.  So after experiencing intermittent electricity outages at our rainforest bungalow, during which we played cards on our back patio via flashlight, we decided to just hike for several hours the next day and leave in the early afternoon.

So we were the first people in the park the next morning (we knew this from the sign-in sheet).  And it was going great.  We saw some really neat giant bamboo, lots of pretty birds and butterflies and some monkeys.

But hiking in the rainforest solidified what we kinda already knew: we're not really rainforest people.  We prefer the dry forests in Colorado where there aren't weird, unexpected, creepy creatures.

Creepy creatures like somersaulting leaches (I tried to insert a video of them here but it was taking way too long to upload), for example.  Which were enough to make me want to leave after finding them on (but not attached to) my leg or ankle two times and enough to make Anson want to leave after finding one attached to his foot through his sock.  So we scurried the 2.5km we'd hiked into the rainforest out of the rainforest and caught an earlier than anticipated bus out of Khao Sok.

 Followed by an earlier than planned ferry to Koh Phangan.

There are three main islands in the Gulf of Thailand.  We went to two of them last year for our honeymoon, Koh Samui and Koh Tao.   We had previously decided that with the exception of our one day in Bangkok, we weren't going to revisit any of our honeymoon locations because we wanted those memories to remain as they were.  So here we are on Koh Phangan and after one night in a hotel here that we didn't really like,

 and Anson shuttling our bags via motorbike to a different hotel that we do really like,

here we are where it's just right.


We'll almost.  Koh Phangan is home of the full moon, half moon and black moon parties that attract herds of partying tourists (during the full moon one at least, the others are just copy-cat attempts to increase the money making).  This island is gorgeous and I can't totally speak yet because we haven't seen very much of it yet, but I would venture to say its Thai-ness has been nearly ruined by its extreme touristy-ness and huge ex-pat population.  We are still having a blast and have had at least some luck finding real Thai food amongst the larger spattering of Western food restaurants and restaurants claiming to be real Thai food (I'll tell you now, if the menu has more than a handful of dishes, none of them will be made well).

And there was a really fun walking market last night 

 were we got two rounds of yummy (and real) Thai street food.

Today it's onward to explore more beaches here - one you have to hike to and one that's actually a different island connected to Koh Phangan via a sand belt.