Shedding Some Tears

After Kendrah left we headed over to the West coast of Thailand to the Andaman waters. Our thoughts? To quote the LP "You'll shed a tear at the shear beauty of this place, and then shed another when you realize that you'll have to share it with every speedo on the planet." And this in a nutshell is the problem. Not that we have anything against speedos. My own brother has a fantastic photograph of himself in a speedo on this very coast. (Josh - send us photo to put here).

The issue is that 15 million tourists come to Thailand each year, the majority of which come only to a few pieces of this coast. So what you end up with is absolutley stunning scenery combined with staggering overdevelopment. Lots and lots of concrete looking out over sparkling white sand (covered in 100s of people), limestone cliffs (covered with climbers), and crystal clear blue green water(covered with boats transporting the aforementioned people). Almost makes you want to cry.

We tackled problem by choosing to stay off the beach in a regular town where there was great cheap accomodation and night markets for equally great local food. We then took day trips out from there by hopping on a longtail boat at the dock. Here are a few highlights.

Night Market Feasting:

Cave Exploring:

Kayaking:

Taking a Boat Trip to 4 Islands for Some Snorkelling:

I jumped into the water with my snorkel gear and was just about to get down to the business of watching pretty fish, when Scott began wildly gesturing with his hands towards my mouthpiece. Underwater communication not being a strong trait of mine, I thought he was telling me that there was something wrong with my snorkle (which there wasn't). So I put my head up out of the water to adjust, and in the process lowered my foot right into a sea urchin. Sea urchins have a rather nasty sting and so, 2 min into snorkelling, I found myself back on the boat to spend the remainder of the time soaking my foot in a pan of vinegar and having the boat crew whack at it with a knife blade to break up the stingers. Good times. Turns out Scott was just showing me the neat way he discovered to blow water out of the mouth piece. Lucky for me the water was crystal clear, so I had a decent view of some fish anyhow. (My skills in underwater communication are incredible. actually. - scott)

Best part of the trip was swimming in beautiful green blue water especially when the clouds rolled in and rained.

Strangest part of this trip was being dropped off on a little stretch of sand for an hour with hundreds of other people to pay a visit to a little cave full of wooden phalluses. Paying our respects to the fertility gods?