Ao Nang

Leaving Koh Yao Noi was a bit confusing as it depended on your destination which determined which pier you left from. As there was a pier only half a mile down the road from the bungalow we decided this would be our best bet to get to the mainland and connect up with a bus to Ao Nang which is next door to a place called Railay which can only reached by boat as there are no roads and the limited accommodation there is well above our budget of a shilling and half a crown a night.

Boat trip to Railay - famed for it's rock climbing. We stayed on the ground.

 Getting on a speedboat was no issue but we were confused what to do about our Disney scooter that we had hired as no one had asked for it back and we had no idea who had actually rented it to us. I texted the owner of the bungalow who told us to leave it on the pier with the key in it and the helmets! So we did. I guess it would have to be a very dumb thief to steal such a conspicuous scooter on such a small island. Half an hour later we were at the pier on the mainland and disembarked to find it was in the middle of nowhere and there seemed to be no public transport to our destination. There were rumours of a bus to Krabi town where we could change and re-route but that would take forever. Also no one spoke English so we could not confirm there was going to be a bus or not and what time it would be arriving. So we sat there like a couple of lemons stewing in the afternoon heat wondering what we were going to do. This is surely the glamour of travelling which we had been searching for since leaving England? Half an hour later a pick up truck was dropping some cargo at the pier who also took passengers so I asked him to take us to Ao Nang and he said yes for a very reasonable price. This is the sort of luck you need when travelling and makes for a good adventure.

The sea came with its own traffic bollards.

   An hour later we were at the hotel after getting lost for a bit and were surprised the room was a lot better than we expected which don't happen much when booking ahead online. We quickly hired a bike as we were a little way out of town in a quieter part of Ao Nang which is a package tour haven being that the airport is only a few miles down the road. Downtown was a disaster with sun burnt chav's stumbling around after their mid-day bottles of Chang beer in the road, Burger king and maccy d's were full of course and every shop was a restaurant, massage parlour (happy ending sir?) or tour agent.

The entertainment was a special Black & White Minstrels performance by the local monkeys.

There was no soul or character to the place but they did have cheap and plentiful beer and spirits so that was its saving grace. We did the usual beach visits, most were dirty and unappealing from being overdeveloped but we found one just out of town which was an island at high tide but at low tide there was a sand bar that you could walk over to it and it had amazing views out to sea. After a while chilling on the beach all the town heathens started pouring over the sand bar from town and making the beach busy so we went back to the bike hoping the tide would turn quickly and the beach get cut off thus increasing the quality of the gene pool on the mainland.

This heathens liked the penis shaped rock.

 After a bit of evening shopping in Tesco's (I know! You just can't take the girl out of Ware and expect old habits to die off so quickly) stocking our fridge up on goodies we went back to watch our final instalment of the Soprano's series that Glen and Shell lent us on hard drive to find because of jumbling of the downloads we had already watched the last one previously. Anti-climax!!!
 Well with that done (it did take us six months to watch it all) we will be re-visiting Walter Wight and all his shenanigans again.

It's all about the beach said DiCaprio.

   Next day we took a boat to Railay and spent the day there admiring the awesome scenery and superb beaches. The backdrop to the beaches were breath taking as you can see from the photos. It was quite busy in patches as it is a very common day trip but there are multiple beaches to hang out on with boats pulling up on the beach to sell you anything from pizza to beer so you don't go without. If  there's a gap in the market you can be certain someone in Thailand will fill it when it comes to tourism. On one of the beaches it had a cave temple to some god of fertility or along those lines and from a casual glace looked a bit boring and we by passed it without much thought as there are temples everywhere so only the exceptional can grab your attention, but on the way back there seemed to be a lot of interest in it from non-Buddhist types so we went over to have a nose about and found the cave was jammed full of phallic pieces in all shapes and sizes, designs and colours it made your eyes bulge and your cheeks flush. The kids seemed to enjoy it though asking their respective parents what all the wooden shapes were! After a couple of days we were done with Ao Nang so next we are catching another expensive boat to Koh Lanta our next Island hop destination.

"Mummy what is that big wooden thing with the red top?"