South of Thailand

The marketing team of the Thai seaside vacations did a good job, just like their Bali colleagues. While the beaches are significantly cleaner than we experienced in Bali, the huge number of tourists cannot be ignored. Just as Bali is popular amongst Australians, the Phuket region in Thailand has surprisingly high number of Russian tourists, moreover in an organized boat trip we took, the majority of the passengers were actually Hungarian! Now I don’t say this is bad, actually, I endorse Hungarians travelling more, but if you expect a tranquil getaway, probably you should choose another destination.

There are also some “condense” areas of local tourism. For some reason EVERYONE wants to see the “James Bond” island, and the “The Beach” aka “Di Caprio” bay. Even if people didn’t see any of the movies above, even if there are cca. 2 million similar locations in Southeast Asia. Doesn’t matter. You just have to go there, take a photo with your cellphone and brag about it once you get home. Now the result is, that the photo you will take will probably result in something like this:

…or this:

Anyway, once you get past your agoraphobia, you can hop on one of the carbon-monoxide-emission-challenged boats and take a trip to Phi Phi island (also known as Ko Phi Phi). The island was razed down almost completely by the 2004 tsunami, but recovered amazingly. It is a favorite meeting spot of the westerners, who get wasted early on cheap rum while watching Thai kick-boxers beating the crap out of each other (strictly dramatized) and ending up on a beach full-moon party. If the name of the island wasn’t funny enough, in the middle of it you can also find an open-air wastewater treatment facility, which is simply referred to as the “poo garden”. And a word of notice: your hotel is never far enough from the poo garden!

 

You can take another boat to the Ko Lanta island. It is less frequented than Phi Phi, with its long beach line you can actually find a spot to relax. Also a lot of bars tend to mimic a Jamaican-style take it easy atmosphere. You can rent a cheap scooter to travel around the island, but don’t expect good quality roads everywhere.

Finally we ended up in Krabi. Couldn’t enjoy much the city as by this time it was raining almost constantly. On paper, it was the dry season. In reality, due to the excess flooding we could hardly reach our plane to get away from the region.