Partying on Ko Phangan was amazing but it was time to recover and move on. We made it to the mainland then caught a minibus to Khao Sok National Park. We arrived late at night and an owner of a hotel insisted we stay with him. We got a good price (one of the cheapest places in southern Thailand) for two rooms up in a tree. The 'hotel' was surrounded by jungle and the sketchily built rooms had a constant swaying motion to them. The next morning I woke up and found a giant green bug clinging onto my toilet. It looked dangerous at first but it was actually quite friendly and we became good friends. We spent the day walking several kilometers through the park on a marked road. There were supposed to be a bunch of waterfalls, but they turned out to be nothing more than rapids...
The next day we made our way down to Phuket with the intention of surfing. We arrived at Kata beach and found that the whole place was extremely developed, overpriced and meant for old single guys looking for Thai girls. We searched around for a good hour for 'Lucky Guesthouse' which was in our guidebook and a lot of people knew about. We followed people's directions but we ended up walking in circles. We did find it but decided to stay at another place that was a lot nicer for slightly more money. We got an A/C'd room with high ceilings, Wifi and lots of floorspace for a decent price. We made it down to the beach and found that the waves weren't very good for surfing, but they were better than nothing. We swam out, bodysurfed and tumbled around in the waves. We came back later that night and went swimming again. We could see a dark island in the distance and used it to determine if a big wave was coming (if it ducked out of site, we knew there was one incoming). We were conscious of the riptides and didn't have any problems staying in chest deep water.
Our next destination was Ko Phi Phi, a cool little island off the west coast of Thailand. We got off the boat and were guided through narrow, disorganized streets to our guesthouse. We got a nice patio with a good view of a man made lake. We spent most of our time here wandering the streets checking out souvenir stalls, eating crepes (sugar and lime is my favourite), buying beer from 7-11 and partying on the beach. The scene was good and we had tons of fun wandering through the beachfront bars. One day we joined a snorkelling tour that took us to the smaller Phi Phi island (there is two, we stayed on the bigger one). The smaller one is much nicer and was the main shooting location for the movie 'The Beach'. Huge limestone cliffs line the shores of the island and gorgeous, secluded white sand beaches occupy hidden coves. We got dumped at one side of the island and swam over to a staircase, made our way over some rocks, ran through the jungle and popped out at an amazing beach (The Beach). It was raining and slightly cold so we ran into the water where it was much warmer. After some time we made our way back to the drop off point and snorkelled with aggressive fish and bright coral. We stopped off at a few more places on the way back and saw a wide range of creatures including Lion Fish and a weird squid-like/cow thing that grazed the ocean floor.
We left for Krabi, our last destination in Thailand and realized that there is nothing to do in Krabi. We day tripped to Ao Nang, a touristy beach town nearby where we should have been staying and then left for Malaysia!
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