At last I reached a beach in Thailand! Stayed in a place called Ao Nang in the Krabi province. There's lots of islands surrounding Krabi, made up of limestone outcrops and caves. There's so much to do from here it's difficult to choose, but I decided to spend my first day on the beach, relaxing and unwinding after a pretty hectic first month or so on the road.

I did make some effort to explore before I found my place on the beach and I took the coastal walk around to the next bay Phai Plong beach. It was a bit of a steep climb up the path over the cliff and even early in the morning it was still pretty hot, but worth the effort, even if it was just to make me feel less lazy!

When I got back I was pretty thirsty so found a nice spot on the beach and laid out my towel. To be fair there was plenty of space, it's not exactly like a day on Bournemouth beach when the sun's out. Anyway, I then learnt a very valuable lesson - after taking a drink of water, remember to screw the lid back on VERY tight when you return it to your bag otherwise water spills out all over your things - you know the things you keep in a bag at the beach like clothes, suncream and cameras - arggggh! Yes I managed to wreck my camera and despite a trip to the hairdressers to ask them for a hairdryer in a vain attempt to dry it out, the camera was no more...although I think I provided the hair salon with some entertainment standing there blow drying a camera - tourist eh???!!!

So it was on with a disposable camera, hoping beyond all hope that after a few days my camera may recover (you may notice the difference in photo quality for the next few entries).

From Ao Nang I also went out on a four island boat trip. We took a speed boat out to Tham Pra Nang, Koh Tub, Koh Kai, had lunch on Koh Poda and finished up on Soa beach. I've just realised that makes five islands, but it was definitely advertised as four - oh well, value for money! There was some great snorkelling off the islands. I saw hundreds of different fish, really brightly coloured and huge shoals of tiny fish that just surrounded you in the water. I also saw a massive moray eel and a couple of black and white sea snakes, which I later found out were poisonous after I'd been happily chasing them around - whoops!