· Owwwww ... nuuunnngggg!Ao Nang, Thailand · 20th Dec 2007 · Posted by Chris
So, we arrived in Ao Nang on Tuesday to stay for what we thought was going to be 1 night before making our way up the coast and towards Ko Tao. We figured out that the bus timetables for getting north didn't really fit in with our plan to do a full-day tour from Ao Nang so we decided to stay for 2 nights. Ao Nang is actually pretty cool so that was just fine by us.
We checked into a place called J Hotel which turned out to be really nice. As with everywhere in Thailand the staff were very cool and helped with everything we needed, including booking the canoeing tour we wanted to take - score!
After a well-deserved night's rest we got up bright and early to begin the day's activities. First, though, Annie managed to break the hotel. Yes, that's right. BROKE THE HOTEL. In deciding to have a shower before leaving she exercised her massive arm strength to totally remove the shower tap from the wall! Only problem with that is it's a pretty old setup so the result was something that would fit into one of the National Lampoon movies - a total geyser! She had to run out to reception in a towel yelling "Help!" while I stood there plugging the hole in the wall. Doh! Thanks to the hotel dude and his spanner the geyser was shut off pretty quick. We didn't see the master tap in the wall until it was all over ... shaaame! :)
ANYWAY, 1 hour in a minivan brought us to the canoes - uncovered double sea canoes that suited us just fine. It was just us and 5 Singaporeans who all turned out to be really friendly and chatty. 4 teacher girls and 1 guy who didn't say what he did. Cool bunch. :) The day was spent visiting some amazing Thai caves along a big stretch of mangrove tide-lands. The tide was out so some of it was pretty interesting canoeing. 2 of the Singaporean girls couldn't get the hang of paddling through the shallow bits. It was pretty funny! One of the caves, Bor Tor, is a massive vaulted cavern with amazing stalactite formations hanging from the roof. We were also shown some 3000 year-old cave paintings that were done by the local people. It was quite surreal seeing evidence of people existing that long ago. We'll upload pics as soon as we can. After a HUGE lunch we hit the canoes for some more cave adventures before heading to a very very cool swimming hole complete with rope swing. We've got some cool pics of us (ok, mostly me) looking like idiots while acting like Tarzan. Me Tarzan! You Annie! hehehe ... and now, thanks to the wonders of The Internets and The Google (thanks to GW Bush for those names), here are some videos for y'all. :)
All we could do after a long but relaxing day was have a really nice dinner ... Thai again of course. The place we picked is basically a shack on the side of the road but the food was excellent and the whole meal cost us around NZD$8. We love Thailand. :)
Next stop for us is Phang-Nga, a little place we've decided to stay on the way up to Ko Tao. We hear it has some cool caves too, plus some good half-day trips we can take while waiting for our transportation.
Until next time!
We checked into a place called J Hotel which turned out to be really nice. As with everywhere in Thailand the staff were very cool and helped with everything we needed, including booking the canoeing tour we wanted to take - score!
After a well-deserved night's rest we got up bright and early to begin the day's activities. First, though, Annie managed to break the hotel. Yes, that's right. BROKE THE HOTEL. In deciding to have a shower before leaving she exercised her massive arm strength to totally remove the shower tap from the wall! Only problem with that is it's a pretty old setup so the result was something that would fit into one of the National Lampoon movies - a total geyser! She had to run out to reception in a towel yelling "Help!" while I stood there plugging the hole in the wall. Doh! Thanks to the hotel dude and his spanner the geyser was shut off pretty quick. We didn't see the master tap in the wall until it was all over ... shaaame! :)
ANYWAY, 1 hour in a minivan brought us to the canoes - uncovered double sea canoes that suited us just fine. It was just us and 5 Singaporeans who all turned out to be really friendly and chatty. 4 teacher girls and 1 guy who didn't say what he did. Cool bunch. :) The day was spent visiting some amazing Thai caves along a big stretch of mangrove tide-lands. The tide was out so some of it was pretty interesting canoeing. 2 of the Singaporean girls couldn't get the hang of paddling through the shallow bits. It was pretty funny! One of the caves, Bor Tor, is a massive vaulted cavern with amazing stalactite formations hanging from the roof. We were also shown some 3000 year-old cave paintings that were done by the local people. It was quite surreal seeing evidence of people existing that long ago. We'll upload pics as soon as we can. After a HUGE lunch we hit the canoes for some more cave adventures before heading to a very very cool swimming hole complete with rope swing. We've got some cool pics of us (ok, mostly me) looking like idiots while acting like Tarzan. Me Tarzan! You Annie! hehehe ... and now, thanks to the wonders of The Internets and The Google (thanks to GW Bush for those names), here are some videos for y'all. :)
All we could do after a long but relaxing day was have a really nice dinner ... Thai again of course. The place we picked is basically a shack on the side of the road but the food was excellent and the whole meal cost us around NZD$8. We love Thailand. :)
Next stop for us is Phang-Nga, a little place we've decided to stay on the way up to Ko Tao. We hear it has some cool caves too, plus some good half-day trips we can take while waiting for our transportation.
Until next time!
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