Phang-nga

I spent the past week visiting a certain lad in his new hometown of Phang-nga. To say that Phang-nga is located in lush scenery would be an understatement.

The structure on the right is Steve's house. The giant green blob behind it is a limestone cliff.

Approximately a two minute drive from the center of town is this...

And views like this.

The roads around Phang-nga are dotted with a multitude of different kinds of trees lined in perfect rows.

A cow on the side of the road literally had laurel branches around its horns...could it get anymore idyllic?

The outskirts of Phang-nga are pretty much natural perfection.

After wandering the hills of Phang-nga, our trusty motorbike took us to a park called the Heaven-Hell Park, which is essentially Thailand's version of Dante's Inferno. Enormous sculptures of bodies distorted in torture dot the "park" (not exactly a spot for relaxing) and each punishment apparently coincides with the specific sin. The dragon in the background of this picture is actually a long, covered (bats and all), winding walkway that is probably the most terrifying tunnel in the world.

Now, onto something more delightful: coffee. The coffee shop in which I decided to stake my claim for morning caffeine and reading was called Cafe Amazon. It is inconspicuously located in the back of a gas station's parking lot (a rather unassuming location for a cafe of note). I should preface my description of Cafe Amazon by explaining that most/all of the coffee places I've encountered in Southern Thailand serve pretty miserable black coffee with packets of powdered milk and something called "coffee sugar" (the packet reads "color of the taste"...some Thai literary synesthesia for you). 

I am accustomed to coffee beverages with skim milk and a Splenda or two so, needless to say, it's taking a while for me to love the concept of powdered dairy. The first plus of Cafe Amazon is that it serves a real cappuccino (steamed milk and all). The second plus is its location, or rather the location of its outdoor seating. "Outdoor seating" refers to this:

The tables are on the bank of a very small river across from which is a shrimp farm...

Just like Starbucks, right?

Aside from the limestone cliffs and the coffee shop next to a shrimp farm, the other incredible (as in, I-don't-believe-this-is-a-real-place) thing about Phang-nga is the Somdej Phra Srinakarin Park. 

The entrance to the park.

If sitting on a bench by the lake doesn't satiate you, then how about wandering over the walkways that go through the limestone cliffs?

The vines are usually covered in monkeys.

Speaking of monkeys...there I was, enjoying my book lakeside and trying not to be scorched by the Thai sun when a pack of about 30 monkeys decided it was high time to make a trek across the park and directly by me.

The monkey is shielding a baby monkey, hidden between her legs.

Absolutely adorable.

Monkeys on the run!

Look closely, how many monkeys do you see?

Along with monkeys, the park offers a plethora of other absolutely gorgeous sights.

After spending my afternoon in the monkey/cave/butterfly park, I explored one of the Buddhist monuments in the town of Phang-nga.

The monument also offers some pretty fantastic views of the town of Phang-nga.

Later that afternoon, we hopped back on the motorbike in an attempt to find an ashram in the mountains. We ended up getting lost and not finding the ashram but we found this instead...

A floating fishing village right off the road.

Another afternoon trek was to a nearby waterfall park, but "park" should be taken lightly here as it was more of a jungle than a park.

One of the many awesome bridges in the park.

The best way to walk across a body of water containing a water snake (as this river did) is definitely to cross on two wobbly tree trunks.

Initial Musings/Adventures

I left New York City on the night of Wednesday, August 18th, had a layover in Qatar on Thursday night, a connecting flight to Bangkok arriving on Friday morning around 7 AM, and finally a much-delayed flight to Phuket that arrived at 3:00 PM. Total travel time to the other side of the world: approximately 48 hours.

View from the plane of the sunset over Qatar.

While waiting in the Qatar airport, I feasted on the turkey and avocado sandwich I brought in my LL Bean lunchbox, savoring what would be my last taste of sliced deli meat and whole wheat bread for many months. Eating my sandwich on a platter of tinfoil, I noticed that someone had come to sit down next to me (all the seats in the terminal were empty). My neighbor was a man of about sixty with red, patchy facial hair donning high off-white socks, tartan shorts and holding zero bags. I had opened my book and started to read while also trying to balance the aforementioned tinfoil platter on my knee (not easy), when he said, "I'm just a passenger of the airport really." After the ensuing moments of silence that followed, he got up and left me to my sandwich and book without saying another word. And a passenger of the airport is how I felt until Friday afternoon.

So now onto the non-airplane related portion of this post: my two firsts in Thailand. My first breakfast consisted of thin yellow noodles cooked with broccoli and bits of scrambled eggs, a poached egg on "wheat" toast (ie. brown toast), and coffee with milk (this milk would prove to be the last real, non-powdered milk I've had to date). My first taxi in Thailand was actually a communal cab that drove foreigners to the Phuket Ferry terminal. The cab driver's dashboard contained approximately ten dogs with bobbing heads, a slew of red miniature toy cars, a decorative hanging fabric, and a cell phone (Nokia circa 1995) playing the driver's various ringtones on speakerphone. After a pretty hilarious ferry ride to the island of Ko Phi Phi (a lot of foreigners who didn't have the sea legs to withstand the two hour ride), we arrived at what can only be called paradise.

And now for my second taxi in Thailand...

These are the "long-tail" boats that are a staple of life on Ko Phi Phi. The boats are powered by a car motor attached to a wooden tiller (hence the name "long-tail") the effect of which is that the sound of a boat's arrival or departure resembles a gang of motorcycles. 

The ride to the hotel.

I definitely wouldn't want to spend the weekend here...

The view from the "dining room."

The next day we woke up to a cloudy sky but would not let it dissuade us from hopping on a long-tail boat to explore. After all, the trip claimed to include a trip to Monkey Beach and Maya Beach (where the movie "The Beach" was filmed)...who could resist even if the sky did look ominous? 

These pictures can never do justice to the absolutely unbelievable quality of the limestone cliffs that jut out of the water. The vegetation is sprinkled over the cliffs in an utterly confusing way and curves of rock simply pour out towards the water.

Monkey Beach

Feeding the monkeys bread is like feeding pigeons in Central Park only...much cooler.

The next stop was Maya Beach for snorkeling and generally awe-inspiring sight-seeing of the cliffs. Our boat driver threw bread into the water and said, "Now go in." So, in we went and found ourselves among a mass of about 100 fish fighting for the bread and unafraid of our flippers and snorkel masks. The rainbow fish were of colors whose intensities I have never before seen in natural form. 

After pretending I was in Finding Nemo for a good 15 minutes, we decided to make the trek to Maya Beach. And I say "trek" because the path to paradise is never easy. 

First, one must swim through pretty rough water to a cluster of ropes attached to one of the cliffs and tangled about one another in such a way that the whole things resembles a playground's climbing structure. These ropes lead the way to a set of very steep, very slippery metal stairs that one must traverse to reach the beach. To reach the stairs, one must propel oneself (snorkel mask, flippers and all) along these ropes, over barnacled rocks and through waves of increasingly shallow water. Upon arriving at the foot of the precipitous stairs, we were faced with a slew of Europeans in speedo mini-shorts (the men) and rhinestoned bellybuttons (the women) who stood directly in the middle of the very narrow stairs to take pictures of each other posing in/on/around the aforementioned rope confusion.  Having successfully navigated the stair situation, we then climbed down another set of equally precipitous stairs, walked through a shallow pool of coral essentially in the valley of two cliffs, and finally ambled through a jungle for ten minutes until we reached our destination. I couldn't bring a camera with me (obviously) since swimming was required to reach the beach, but I got a picture of one of the surrounding beaches once back on the boat.

It started to rain...but our trusty captain deftly steered us through the imminent downpour back to Long Beach, just as the sun was coming out.

Caught in the rain...

Long Beach

Just some hammocks in a tree.

$10 an hour Thai massages.

Traditional Thai hats sold in the town of Ko Phi Phi.

The rain came just as our taxi back to the Phi Phi ferry pier started to move (right after this picture) and it didn't stop until the ferry from Phi Phi to Phuket (2 hours) docked in Phuket...guess that's why they call this the wet season.