Just Like That!: Siamese Saga

The wife and I packed up our bags and left for Krabi via Bangkok on the 12th of December. I was only too happy to leave - there were too many people all over the place and she was also the centre of all attention, which is bearable only for about 5 minutes in real life.
Our flights ensued that we stayed awake for about 36 straight hours, so by the time we were on our last leg, she was nodding off constantly. Krabi airport reminded me instantly of Mohanbari airport (Dibrugarh) - the single runway and the greenery all around, but the airport itself was a miniature version of Mumbai airport - spanking clean and modern. Krabi is one of the lesser developed provinces in Thailand for this part of Thailand, but the roads were smooth and undulating. (I will rattle off facts thanks to the 900 page lonely planet which I bought). As a normal red-blooded north Indian, I was not very happy to note that even countries so close to home and so looked-down upon in India (development is supposed to have happened only in the US, UK, Western Europe, Australia) are better off than us.

(Mr and Mrs and our shiny black SUV in the corner)

Our itinerary for Thailand was as follows:

Ko Lanta (6 days), Ko Phi Phi Don (2 days) and then Bangkok (2 days).

Ko Lanta was exactly as isolated as I had wanted it to be - a private beach for the resort but not isolated enough to compromise on any of the comforts.

Phi Phi has been made famous by 'The Beach' - a movie which is about a secret beach. The beach in 'The Beach' is Maya beach on Ko Phi Phi Leh, a smaller island close to Phi Phi Don.

(approaching Maya Beach (above) in a long tail (see below))

The coolest parts of the trip:

3) View point #2, Ko Phi Phi Don - This was a 45 minute staircase trek to the topmost point of the island. The island, which is actually a paid of islands joined by an isthmus, with giant limestone rocks, was quite imposing. We timed it well so that we were there as the sun began to set. Also, we could not find the camera and used the mobile instead, only to realise later that we were in fact carrying in the camera.

2) Snorkeling aoff the island of Ko Rok - We snorkeled at 4-5 different places but the best by far was the first one which took us to Ko Rok. There were no jellyfish, the coral was colourful, the water was clean and most of all, there were plenty of fish of lots of different colours. The best by far, for sure. We had lunch and got to laze around on Ko Rok for a couple of hours - we took pics during that but not of the snorkeling as we did not have a waterproof camera.