Kayaking around

After a week of swimming, relaxing on the beach, running, eating lots of Pad Thai washed down with watermelon juice and cramming in the occasional afternoon chocolate and banana sundae, we decided Koh Lanta was very hard work indeed so we left yesterday. We are now in Krabi, which is a two hour drive North of the island.

It's a chilled little town (loads of backpackers and holiday makers around), and this morning we were up early to go kayaking on a river which connects to the sea. It was great being on the kayak (got the arms working), everything was very still and quiet around us. The banks of the river were lined up with mangrove trees, and every now and then our guide would point to a muddy bit of bank where a fish was crawling out of the water. They were "walking fish", which reminded us a bit of the Guiness advert where you see a fish turning into a lizard, then a monkey etc. until it becomes a man. Who knows what they might look like next year?

We canooed through a couple of caves whose ceilings were covered in stalactites, and one of them opened up to a beautiful lagoon full of palm trees. Apparently monkeys live up in them, but weren't fortunate enough to see one.

Finally, our last stop on the boat was a cave which was discovered in 2497 B.E. (seeing how it's now 2552 B.E. in Thailand, that's actually only 55 years ago). They used to be inhabited by gypsies, and, quite recently, a crocodile (which the locals quickly got the Goverment to catch and send out to the zoo - as our guide pointed out "Our job here is fishing and tourists, and tourists no like crocodiles!"). The caves were also full of paintings, which they say date back to 3,000 years ago! Was I being a bit too cynical when I asked Gary "Do you think they were drawn in 1995?". After that we struggled to keep a straight face, because we were looking at the paintings pointed out by our guide but couldn't stop thinking of this drawing from Banksy:



Well, either way it was a nice thing to see and we had a lovely day. A Canadian couple from Ontario, called Cheryl and Dale, were on the tour with us. They were travelling around Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia for a couple of months - which I thought was a pretty cool thing for a retired couple to do. They reminded me of Gary's parents, jetsetting around the world :)

Tomorrow we are taking a bus out to Khao Sok National Park, where we are planning on doing some trekking.

By the way, I finally found a computer which has USB ports and a decent Internet connection, so all our pics from Malaysia and Thailand so far are now there. The link is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33726682@N03/

I hope that everyone is well, not sure who is reading this if anyone is (let me know!) but we hope that the snow storms have now calmed down and that you feel sorry for us who are so, so hot right now! :)

C.