Island Fever & Thailand Part I

Southeast Asia has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.  We saw amazing islands of Indonesia, but we wanted more!  On the west coast of Malaysia, the Perhentian Islands (Pulau Perhentian) were stunning.   The white sand and turquise waters were incredible, but our favorite thing was the seafood barbecues for dinner.  They had the day's catch laid out to choose, and we feasted on whole snappers, stingray filets, and marlin filets that week...and then we had southern Thailand's beaches to look forward to! 

When we started to plan our trip to Southeast Asia, the political riots in Thailand were making us wonder if we would even be able to visit the country, but as it turned out, things had settled down quite a bit by the time we were on our way to Thailand. We entered the contry from Penang, Malaysia, overland. The visa-on-arrival we received was only for 15 days, so we had to get moving. Krabi (gra-BEE) is a small town on the southwest coast (the Andaman coast), which was our first stop. We spent time in the town and met a friend, Pang, who gave us our own private cooking lesson on her famous Pad Thai! She has a restaurant called Sweet 'n' Sour with the best coffee around, so that is where we could be found every morning. Rai Ley Beach was a day trip from there, and looked like a postcard version of paradise. Turquise water, sugary white sand, surrounded by huge limestone cliffs. We had great weather and it was smiles all around.


From there, we ferried to Ko Phi Phi (go p. p., yes, have a laugh), where we took a day trip to see where The Beach was filmed. The weather was not great that day, the seas treacherous, but we made a fun day out of it anyway, between the prayers while crossing through swells twice and big as our tiny longtail boat.

Then it was a bus to the east coast (the Gulf of Thailand) where we visited Ko Samui (go sa-MOO-ee) and Ko Phangan (go pan-yan). Samui has amazing beaches as well, so no need to explain how we spent our days. Phangan is famous for its wild Full Moon Parties, but fortunately or unfortunately, we were not in the full moon, so we had the place to ourselves. By this time, our 15-day visa was almost expired, and at the risk of being fined, we had to get our butts out of the country.

Here came the epic journey: overland from Ko Phangan to Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was 2 ferries to get to the mainland of Thailand, then an eight hour bus ride to Bangkok. Taxi to the bus stop at 1am, catch the 3am bus to the Thailand/Cambodia border...the border was an adventure in itself. We obtained our visas and had a final two hour taxi ride to Siem Reap, where the taxi driver made us take a tuk tuk the last few kilometers to our hotel. It took 24 hours in all, with almost no sleep. We took a day to recover, but then it was time to explore Cambodia!