What an incredible province Krabbi is, we've seen some amazing sights during our stay here and a great way to start the last section of our time in Thailand. We departed Koh Samui by bus and took a ferry back across to the mainland before quite an arduous bus journey through Surat Thani to Krabbi. We met a couple of English girls doing the same trip as us so we at least had a bit of company on the way. They were doing a similar trip to us so it was good to swap stories etc. When we arrived in Krabbi itself we took a quick tuk-tuk to Ao Nang, which is on the coast of the province and a good base location to see the great islands of Krabbi. We were amazed to be staying in a quite ridiculously luxurious hotel (we had pre-booked online as it seemed cheap but turned out to be probably 4-star standard!). Our first day in Ao Nang was spent looking around the small town which is famous in Thailand for its great quality seafood. Therefore we duly obliged and ate at a restaurant down a small backstreet dubbed 'Soi Seafood' (Seafood Street), As well as an amazing selection of crab we ended up choosing fish on its own and had Barracuda, King Mackerel and Squid. We could se the fisherman catching them on the shore and bringing them so they couldn't be much fresher! and of course they were thouroughly delicious!

The next day we decided to take a ride on a local longtail boat to one of the surrounding islands called Ao Phra Nang or Railay as the locals refer to them as. These islands are only accessable by boat and were like something out of a picture book, you could see the coral as we approached on the boats. We then spent the afternoon relaxing on the island and taking in its scenery. Krabbi is famous for its bizarre limestone outcrops or small cliffs called karst that jut out of the landscape like they were manmade and Railay displayed them at their finest surrounded by turquoise waters. In the evening when back on Ao Nang we ate at a restaurant called the Massaman restaurant which is quoted in all the travel books as doing the best Massaman curry in the country (pretty obvious from the name!) We ended up having one two of the five nights we stayed in Ao Nang it was that good!

After a few days taking in Ao Nang beach itself we had our must unexpected experience on our final day in the town. We walked up some steps at the side of a cliff expecting to find the next beach along but instead found a mass of wild monkeys coming out to play, quite literally! It was quite scary at first as one of them jumped on me and I had to push it off me but we soon learned that they were quite friendly with the locals. We did however keep our distance from then on. We spent the next hour watching on the beach as dozens and dozens of monkeys descended on the beach, bridge and small stream leading down to the sea. It was absolutely incredible watching them swimming and jumping off trees into the water, something we're not likely to see again in the wild in our lifetimes!

From Ao Nang we decided to move on to Krabbi town itself, probably the capital of the province if there was such a thing. This town is inland and not by the beaches but it does run along a river lined with mangroves. On our first day we were walking by the river when a boatman approached us offering a cheap tour around the mangroves and caves as he had no bookings. We accepted and had a fantastic time. He showed us a series of limestone caves where th Japanese had hidden during WW2 and then proceeded to take us through the mangroves which were very creepy at low tide. You could see all the roots of the trees sticking out of the water and we even spotted a few lizards lurking around as well as Kingfishers in the trees. He eneded the tour by taking us over to a fish farm on a little island with a village. The locals there showed us all the fish they keep for tourism purposes and not for selling. We held puffer fish in our hands which felt like basketballs, very bizarre! as well as seeing red and white snapper fish. It was a great trip and it finished with our guide (who we nicknamed Jumanji) whistling to the monkeys in the mangroves to feed them with fruits. He told us that he had been feeding them everyday for 7 years and you'd struggle to call him a liar! They almost treated him like one of their own and jumped aboard th boat to take the fruit, quite amazing to witness!

We spent a few more days in Krabbi-town mainly chilling out but we made sure we ate at the nightmarket every night as the food was literally to die for! We will miss the Thai food when we leave the country but Vietnam could well be even better!

We leave for Phuket next which is our final destination in Thailand before we move on to Vietnam for a month!