Life at the beach is great so we spent about a month at different beaches in Thailand pretty much just hanging out doing nothing but eating, sleeping and watching the sun set over the ocean.
We were tired of long bus rides and booked a flight from Bangkok to Phuket, stayed one night on Phuket island at the beach and left for beautiful Kho Phi Phi island the next day. Kho Phi Phi is a bit touristy in the main town part. There are tons of restaurants, guest houses, tattoo places and bars & booths offering "Buckets" of liquor, soda and red bull. Luckily we came here during low season.
The beaches and surrounding islands of Kho Phi Phi are really beautiful. We took a day trip on a long tail boat visiting different white, sandy beaches and went snorkeling as well. Fun fun, if there are no jelly fish around... We had a great group of people on our boat which made the day even more fun and perfect - thanks guys!!
Below you'll see the view of the sun set look out spot & Tsunami rescue place on Kho Phi Phi. To get up there you gotta climb over a 1000 stairs.
Following our friends recommendation, we went back to the mainland to Krabi, and because Krabi is not at the beach we continued our journey right away to Railay Beach. Railay is the perfect place to be if you like remote and rustic places at the ocean.
After two weeks we had to leave Thailand because our 15 day visa ran out, so we went to the closest island in Malaysia for a few days. The island Palau Langkawi is all tax free and the beer there is super cheap. Perfect for a hot day at the beach. We weren't all lazy though and rented a scooter to check out the island and a waterfall.
Back in Thailand we went right back to Railay & Tonsai beach and stayed there for the rest of our time in South East Asia. It's a climbers paradise, the area is full of beautiful, perfect lime stone formations and some routs for rock climbing start right at the beach. Sweet! We went climbing for one day....oh boy was I out of shape....great fun though. The next day we recovered our sore muscles with a real Thai massage. They stretch and twist your whole body any way possible, and it actually felt very good.
We had a few different "pets" at the hotel, like packs of monkeys jumping on the roof, a rooster and it's hens waking us up every morning, a frog poking it's head out of our shower drainage, ...
The place above has the best Pad Thai, "Thai Spicy" Tom Yum Vegetable Soup and Banana Bread in Tonsai, mmm! There are super nice people working there, too : ) "Kap kum kaaa!"
It seems like we built up our tolerance for spicy food pretty well thanks to all the delicious "Thai spicy" curries with extra lots of curry past we ate. Oh yeah, we're still loving Thai food!!!
Our friends David, Naoko, and their 2 year old daughter Riana took us to Hakone for the weekend. Hakone is about 2 hours from Tokyo and the area is known for it's volcanic hot springs. We stayed at a traditional Japanese Ryokan with it's own hot Onsen baths. The baths are built of rocks placed in a great setting overlooking green mountains and a river. To take a bath we got to wear Yukatas to walk to the bath. When putting the Yukata on make sure the left side is folded over the right side!
