We left our Kuala Lumpur apartment at noon for our 5pm AirAsia flight, as we knew we would have access to airport lounges, and not feeling motivation enough to venture out in the heat, only to come back to the suite to shower before heading out. We arrived around 1pm and immediately saw our flight had been delayed. With no boarding time we checked our bags and headed to our first landside lounge of the trip, there we ate curry puffs and enjoyed 3 rounds of massages in the complementary massage chairs. I opted for a lymphatic massage for one of the rounds and learned of some surprising locations targeted by such a massage! We then went through security and ate mee makan in a second lounge until our flight was ready to board. I was pretty restless at this point, what with all my lymphs properly drained, and could not wait to get to Thailand. The flight was quick, about an hour and a half, and we were entertained by a young Aussie begging his father for his burger king meal well into our ascent. We descended as quickly as we had ascended and we were ready to wait in immigration. Fortunately, the young Aussie had a brother and we were endlessly entertained by their parents quizzing them on the capitols of various countries, most impressively New Caledonia?? Turns out the rest of the world is well connected while we learn about Pierre and Lansing like they are well-populated cultural hot-spots. Anyway, after what felt like the fastest immigation line ever we ventured into the sweat to find our Grab. This was kind of an ordeal as we were propositioned by cab drivers and tour companies all the way through the airport and down the sidewalk until we got a text from the driver that said to meet him in the parking garage as the taxi drivers won't allow Grab to pickup at the door. We were a little nervous but figured the app has all our info as well as the driver's so it is probably fine. We probably wouldn't get murdered at L27, the last row of the bottom level of the parking garage, and we weren't! We enjoyed the air conditioning all the way to our hotel. There we checked in with the nicest guy Mikaeli (sp) placed our breakfast orders with him and headed out to grab dinner before heading to bed. We landed at the first place we walked by, a restaurant called Mr. Kai's which seemed like a fine spot until we saw a white guy holding court in the back and realized we had picked one of the only non-Thai owned places in the area, but the food was good, as were our first Thai beers in Thailand! (For the record, Kaia prefers Chang and Isaac prefers Singha) 

The morning after we travel is usually a lazy one for us, we figure that as we will be doing this for a year we should adopt sustainable habits that won't have us burning out in the first few months. We ate beautiful breakfasts outside in front of our bungalow and then retreated back to the air-conditioning for a few hours of lounging. By early afternoon one of us was restless and hungry (it was me, Kaia) and we headed out for a walk down to Noppharat Thara beach. The walk was hot but I have never felt better. The night prior while walking to dinner I noticed the air smelled the same as it had in Bali when I was there in 2011, smoky but fragrant like incense. In the hot sun the scent was the same but the scenery felt uniquely Thai (Disclosure: i have never actually been anywhere in South East Asia besides Malaysia and Indonesia so this is kind of a lie, it could look a lot like Laos or Cambodia or Vietnam, i'll let you know, lol). We got to the beach and could not believe the views, limestone hills jutting directly out of the water and tide so low you could walk for what looked like (a football field of yards here [LOL]). We noticed several tourist information stalls and, knowing we wanted to get to Phi Phi Islands while we were here booked with the first one who gave us a deal and were pleased, knowing we had finished our planning for the next day. Having waited slightly too long to depart our bungalow and being anxious to eat we picked one of the first spots on the water with a view for lunch, an obvious tourist trap but with views like this we couldn't really complain. We ate and drank another round of Thai beers looking over the view before we ducked out of the restaurant to enjoy the beach. While strolling the beach we noticed tiny balls of sand next to tiny holes in complex patterns all along the shore, we couldn't see what was inside the holes right by our feet but after refocusing our eyes on the larger beach we noticed hundreds of tiny crabs crawling all over. It was definitely enough to induce heebie jeebies if they hadn't been so wary of us that we could have gotten closer than a couple feet away. We watched the crabs scuttle around while strolling the beach before planning our return walk home before the sunset. Feeling a sense of accomplishment for having our plans for tomorrow done and dusted we stopped over at the Beer Garden Soi 8 restaurant next to our lodging and ate dinner and drank Singha branded soda water (budget-core!) Before getting our stuff ready and hitting the hay a little early.  

Enjoyed breakfast a little earlier today to be ready for our 8:30am pickup for our Phi Phi Islands day trip! The van pulled up and we noticed the distinct lack of walls, it was our first (of many) open air rides! We had been promised by Tip, our travel agent from yesterday, that we would be the last picked up and the first dropped off, but that proved to be wrong as a hungover group of 20 year old French kids climbed on after us. We arrived at the pier joining about 100 other tourists from all over the world (we marveled at being the only Americans) and were split up into our boats; our vessel was full with 47 people and our amazing guide Jame! Jame gave us a safety briefing and made sure we knew to recognize him because there was no way he'd learn all 47 of our faces. Our first stop was Bamboo Beach, it was so pretty, definitely the most beautiful beach we've been to so far, perfect blue water, white sand, and limestone cliffs jutting out of the sea in front of us and forming the island we were on. we strolled the beach and also hurridly finished our daily trivia game before its deadline. Staff from the boat walked up and down offering to take photos of us and we are so grateful! Our next stop was snorkeling off shore, the snorkeling was much better than our first trip on the islands in Borneo, but it mostly just excited Isaac even more for our upcoming diving course on Koh Lanta. While we were in the water we kept feeling tiny stings throughout our bodies, we finished our time in the water still not knowing what the culprit was but Jame walked through the boat sporting a fat lip from the plankton in the water that apparently sting! We still don't know the details but at least the schizophrenia diagnosis could be held off. Our third stop on our whirwind tour of the Phi Phi Islands was lunch on Phi Phi Don, this was quite the ordeal as it seemed all of the tour boats docked for lunch at the same time. We all filed through a buffet at a restaurant and grabbed seats wherever they were available. We sat next to a long distance couple who couldn't enjoy the last days of their vacation due to the anticipation of being separated. We felt very lucky to be able to fully enjoy the beauty of Koh Phi Phi, but I secretly revelled in the drama. After lunch we walked to the otherside of Phi Phi Don just to see dozens of other tour boats waiting for their groups to finish lunch, we were grateful our driver had dropped us on the other side of the island as it was much calmer and hid the other tourists from our view. 

Our next stop was the highly anticipated Maya Bay, 

Now, rather than being advertised as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world all of the Thai tourism agencies have used the same strategy as marketing it as the beach from the nearly 25 year old Leonardo Dicaprio film The Beach. Now, admittedly probably due to the increase in tourism after The Beach, Maya Bay has had to shut down access to swimming in Maya Bay completely. You are only allowed to enter to about shin-height, and boats arent allowed to let passengers off at the bay. We accessed the beach from the otherside of the island, where boats let their groups off one by one and tourists walk on raised platforms all the way to the beach. I think these are probably great strides in conservation efforts for this island while keeping tourists happy, but it is a very different experience from the rest of the stops on this Phi Phi Islands tour.

Phi Phi Leh was definitely the highlight of the trip, we pulled into a cove completely surrounded by limestone cliffs jutting straight out of the sea, Jame suggested we could go for a swim or just spend our time jumping off the boat into the deep, cool water. Having spent the whole day outside we were feeling tired and almost skipped the swimming opportunity. Fortunately we talked ourselves out of it and felt totally rejuvenated by our time floating in the salty water gazing up at the cliffs around us.

On our last two stops we didn't get out of the boat, we stopped by Monkey Bay, where boats used to dock but the monkeys have since become too aggressive for the boats to even get close to the limestone cliffs surrounding the bay. At one point some monkeys starting swimming in the water toward the boat but we escaped unscathed. Our final stop before our 45 minute ride back to Ao Nang was at Viking Cave, named for the cliff painting inside the cave and not because it had any relation to the Nordic people of the 8th-11th centuries. More recently the cave is known for its abundance of bird nests that are harvested for Birds Nest Soup. Apparently the cave is so lucrative the Thai governments grants contracts to companies who bid for the opportunity to harvest there. 

After returning to our bungalow we crashed pretty hard, Isaac, thoughtfully, offered to pick up dinner by himself, which I appreciated tremendously. Legend has it Isaac had a little trouble communicating and ended up copying the Thai for "to go, please" from google translate on a piece of paper, unsure of the success of his note he waited anxiously for 40 long minutes before he was handed two takeout containers, mission accomplished. 

was a very uneventful day, until it wasn't. We had realized the night before that, despite having months of lead time for our diving course, we hadn't actually started our e-learning portion, and realizing it would take between 8 and 10 hours we spent the day in the bungalow working our way through the course. We did venture out for lunch at a spot along a main drag, Chilli's (not to be confused with the American restaurant of baby back rib fame) and grabbed a treat across the street to enjoy on our walk home. We determined that the next time we left the house would be to get dinner from the Ao Nang night market. When we arrived Isaac wasn't very hungry so we just got some light snacks and walked through the stalls before heading home because he was feeling worse instead of better with some food. We got home and shortly after Isaac was showing some signs of food poisoning (dear reader, he was vomiting. He was vomiting all night.) And that brings us here, on December 18th, to a ferry crossing from Krabi to Koh Lanta and why I am writing this blog instead of your usual host who is napping below deck (spoilers for the next blog!)