Our journey begins! Up at 4am after about 2 and a half hours sleep we got a lift to Dublin airport from Su's brother Pete (fair play to him for getting up!) and we boarded our flight to Heathrow and then to Bangkok. I don't know if it was the boring 10 hour flight but after a while you start to people watch (well I do anyway) and we couldn't help but point out the dodgy looking characters that looked like they were on their way to Bangkok for only one thing (and we're not talking about the cheap tailoring). There was the guy beside us who only started talking to Su as soon as I got up to go to the loo (after about three hours on the flight), there was the guy in front of me who looked like he was hooped up on goofballs, and then there was the guy across the aisle from me who stank of booze (nothing wrong with that) but had the blanket over his head for most of the flight. I assume he was trying to sleep but the inflight movie was Ratatouille and Dad pointed out that maybe he was afraid of rats. Made sense. Anyway, we finally got to Bangkok airport (the new one - it's amazing!) and after a big wait at immigration we got our shuttle bus to the Novotel airport hotel (2 minutes away). My parents who joined us on the first leg of our journey were staying there and flying out to New Zealand the next day so we thought we'd join them and fly out to Krabi the next day. The hotel was pretty impressive but also pretty expensive for Thailand. Still, after 10 hours on a flight with little sleep on the flight or the night before, it was great to get to the room, open a bottle of wine, drink it and crash for a few hours. That night we met up with the folks and went to the Oriental hotel for the River Terrace barbecue. I'd highly recommend visiting the Oriental hotel just to see how plush and impressive it is - I'm sure it must cost a fortune to stay there and the Riverside Terrace barbecue isn't cheap either (I think it was about 40 euros per person) but it's a fantastic experience. Make sure you go hungry though as the amount to food you can eat is astounding. I did make a pig of myself, having a starter, sushi, a fish dish, a plate of meat including duck, lamb, steak, and chicken. And about three desserts. I could have had more but I didn't want to embarrass myself...
Next day we hung around the pool back at the airport hotel for a while before checking out and heading to the airport for the next part of our trip. We got my folks checked in to their flight to New Zealand and boarded our flight to Krabi.
As you can see from the photo, I still have the paunch from the night before - normally my belly doesn't look like that - I swear!!!
It was dark by the time we arrived in Krabi (only and hour and a half flight from Bangkok) and we had a driver pick us up from the airport - just as well we organised that as it seemed pretty remote. He took us to a port and we hopped into a longtail boat which took us directly to West Railay beach and our hotel. It was such a shame it was dark as it would have been a fantastic photo coming in on the boat, and seeing the beachfront directly ahead surrounded by cliffs. Here's a photo of the beach during the day with the longtail boats waiting to talk people to the surrounding resorts:
and here's one of the cliffs on the other side of the beach:
We were welcomed to our hotel, The Sand Sea resort with a nice chilled glass of apple juice and shown our hut which has a lovely fan and a loo with a hose to clean yourself with after using it.
Here are a few more photos - one of the path to our hut and one of the pool (it's shaped like a foot!).
Well, that's it so far - got nicely burnt today by the pool so the bluey white glow from my skin should be gone in no time. I'm drinking about 3 or 4 litres of water a day (on top of the beer) just to replace the sweat that has been bucketing out of me since getting to Thailand. Chang beer which is the cheapest is about 6.4% alcohol and very drinkable, especially after the 3rd one. Our plan for this evening is to eat. The pressure is killing us. More later!
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