It's not the destination, it's the journey

I desperately needed to thaw from sleeping on a cold miserable floor in Hong Kong so I decided to get away to warm sunny Thailand.  I was so excited to revisit Railay

Bay, a place I loved and been to several times. I hadn’t been there since 2000. In the early morning light, our flight took off past rainbows and elephant-shaped clouds. As we descended into Krabi airport, I spied the familiar karst formations jutting majestically out of crystalline waters. The rivers and tributaries below looked like silver snakes shimmering in the sun.

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Naturally the place has changed. What was once a young bohemian backpacker’s haven is now starting to become clogged with seniors from

Scandinavia and families toting baby strollers. The places where I stayed for 30usd a night have all upgraded and now charge 120 and up a night. The beaches are much more crowded both with tourists and with the longtail boats that brought hem there.

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One of the first things I wanted to do was go to Phranang beach- one of the most beautiful beaches in Thailand- in my opinion. On the walk to the beach, you pass several caverns and rock-climbing spots and- man- I have never seen so many lean mean climbing machines with 8 pack abs. It’s not surprising as Railay is one of the most legendary rock climbing spots in the world.

Phranang is a pristine white sand beach which is framed by caves and rocks. Too bad it now has at least twice as many people as 7 years ago. I swam out to this grotto with hundreds of microfish and I took these pics with my Olympus underwater camera.

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This is kind of weird photo, but I love it. Here I’m gazing at the blue sky framed by mighty stalactites. I just felt so calm, so one with the moment. I lied down and just let the sun turn my face a darker shade of brown.](/batch.download.php?aid=216476)

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At sunset, I wandered along the beach amongst people playing, volleyball, soccer and Frisbee. Back when I first visited in ’98, there were all these pseudo-hippies wearing kaftans, watching the sky turn color and smoking spliffs to the sounds of Café

Del Mar. The crowd has changed these days. There are more American accents being heard and there are more families. The beach has a great spot to watch the sun go down called Real Coffee (I think that's what it's called.)  where people go to lie on rattan mats by candlelight.

The following day, a friend and I decided to hire a private speedboat to jet out to Phi Phi island for some lunch and snorkeling. On the way, we stopped for an hour at a secret island where the water is bathtub clear and is an amazing shade of light blue. It looks like a perfect castaway beach. We did some snorkeling and saw corals, angelfish, parrotfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. We moved onto Phi-Phi and did some snorkeling at this point only reachable by boat and saw 2 small black tip sharks followed by one monster one that was about 3 meters long! The visibility was so good there. I'm kind of pissed off that the battery on my Olympus waterproof camera was dead.

Anyway, island life has agreed with me. My major activities have been- sea shell collecting, singha drinking, working on my tan, swimming, snorkeling and watching the sunset. It's truly heaven and I'm really enjoying just being in the moment and not having to think about any of the bad stuff that has happened to me recently. Click on the photo album above to see the rest of the pics from Thailand.

The Thais think I'm so ugly now because I'm so dark!