Island Times!

Wow, we've done so much over the last couple of days where do I start? Firstly on one action packed day I headed over to the Tiger Cave to climb a ridiculous amount of stairs. Stacy wasnt feeling too awesome, so he took the morning off. This temple is a bit out of Ao Nang and we booked a driver to mooch around while we hiked up the stairs and had a poke around the temple grounds. Its a strange mish-mash of cultures and temples, almost like the Thai people are hedging their bets. They've got about a million Buddha statues around the place, and then also a Ganesh statue and a giant Kwan-Yin (sorry if I spelled that completely wrong) statue in a pagoda.




We (that is, me, Nadine, Laura, and Simon from the Intrepid tour) climbed the 1,237 steps up to the top of the mountain. Whoever made these stairs thought it would be fun to make every step a different size, some as tall as my knee. By the time we made it to step 200 we were sweating bullets. We got up to the top and it was well worth it:







After climbing all the way to the top and recovering, we had to climb all the way down. I had this little dog pop up out of nowhere around the top and it decided to be my companion the whole way down, stopping to wait for me when i needed a rest and everything. At the bottom there were a horde of monkeys loitering around, trying to get food off the tourists. I stood there to take a photo and a couple of monkeys snuck up behind me and started tugging on my shirt.






Simon and I ended up going around in circles through a forest trying to find the actual "Tiger Cave" as there were signs all over the forest like this:



The signs led you around in a circle. However, I did get to see the "Big Tree" and sit in it



In the forest we got to see where the monks live and do their laundry (lots of it hanging outside), and saw some amazing wall paintings. We were running out of time when we finally found the Tiger Cave (not actually anywhere near the forest).







In the afternoon Me, Stace, Nadine and Laura went to a cooking class (Ya's cooking class in Ao Nang if anyone ends up here - highly recommended!). We got to choose 6 dishes to make - i ended up making banana spring rolls, banana in coconut milk, coconut chicken soup, Laap Gai, cashew chicken, phanang curry and something else (sorry, cant remember!). We only ate breakfast before going to the class, and good thing we did because everything you made, you ate! It was great! We were all packing food babies by the end of the class! We had a couple of Aussies in our class as well, they were pretty cool.





we got recipe books to take home, so stace can cook me dinner once we get to canada :D

The next day.......

We headed off for our sea safari. The island we stayed at was Bamboo Island (forget about the bamboo!! LOL) which is about a 1 hour longtail boat ride. e stopped at a few islands on the way and swam and snorkeled. We set up camp on the island, and I ended up sleeping outside, becaue the tent was way too hot! It was great, and I watched the sun rise each morning! On our second day there we went to the Phi Phi Islands, we roamed around Phi Phi and then headed to Monkey Bay to have lunch and a swim. This sneaky monkey was hanging around us, so we fed it a couple of bananas, and then while we werent looking he ninja'd into our picnic site and grabbed our bunch of bananas and ran off with them. He then somehow managed to eat about 15 bananas in about 10 seconds! He shoved them whole into his mouth... no chewing!














Argh! Ok, I'm tired of all this uploading - so I'm hanging up my typing fingers. Also, I know there will be indignant gasps at this, but.. Maya Beach = Not that awesome. Just because some of "The Beach" was filmed there, this teeny weeny little beach is jam packed with a zillion tourists and their boats. I hate to sound like a smarmy NZer, but we're pretty lucky to have awesome, untouched beaches all to ourselves!!!

Till next time!
xx Laura