The Indie Explorer - Travel Tips and Tales for the sole traveller

09.08.2010 - 15.08.2010 34 °C

The boat stops and we have to jump into a long boat to take us to the shore.

This Railay place looks horrible. The beach is essentially a muddy mangrove swamp.

Oh well, my plan is to chill out and do nothing for a few days. A lot has gone on in the past few weeks and I cannot be bothered in drinking anymore so this is going to be my hide out.

Wander around the place and realise there is another beach on the other side which is much nicer. I find an amazing place to stay, which is in the jungle. It’s cheap and the hut I am given is bigger than some of the rooms I had in London. Really nice and exactly what I am looking for to get some good R and R.

Go get some food and then hit the hay pretty early.

My next few days here are spent getting up late, having some good food and hanging around the beach. Then resting on my veranda sorting my CV and show reel out (for Oz) before having some more nice food and going to bed pretty early. With the odd exception, I meet exactly zero people and I only drink fruit shakes and water. If I had of been told that I would be doing this a few months ago I would have put each of my hands either side of their face, pulled them in close so as our noses were touching and laughed so hard in their face that spittle would fly out of my mouth and land on their eyebrows, lips and cheeks, as if I had kissed them all over.

However, this is exactly what I am after. A lot has happened in these 7 months and I need a break from the fray and people and friggin’ buckets!

The place is a climber’s paradise and I would have been really keen on doing some. However, as I have no trainers, my right foot is so buggered from Scooter crashes and coral going into it and my money is in dire straits I decide the quiet life is the way forward for the time being.

I decide to stay another two days.

Then I head to another beach. To be honest reader I am kind of just wasting time now. Thailand has done nothing for me in the slightest. I have met some amazing friends and I’ve had some good times but it’s sooooo uneventful.

If you’re sitting there now saying:

“Oh Mark hasn’t had a good time in Thailand”

…then you’d be wrong. The thing is, it offers nothing that the standard European beach vacation offers, other than some lose health and safety laws.

I want to do some diving in Malaysia and see their rain forest as well as Kula Lumpa and then spend as little time in Singapore (for financial reasons) as possible, before my flight to Oz. So, I’m just now literally waiting around.

It of course could be worse so don’t get the little violin out just yet.

Get a Long tail boat to Ao Nang beach. It’s the beach that is a little down from Krabie town and the one in which I couldn’t get a lift back to that one night. Figure I’ll spend a couple of days here and maybe have a little drink or two.

I have quite a few drinks and an extremely hilarious and eventful evening opens up in front of me.

Wake up the following day and decide that enough is enough. I can’t be bothered with anymore of Thailand. I want to see Malaysia.

I book a bus.

Early the next morning I am on that bus and I am on my way to Penang.

Well, they do say a change is as good as a rest.