Ao Nang/Kho Phi Phi tour

Yesterday we departed Krabi Town via 20 min taxi ride into our next place of residence in Ao Nang. The quickest way to hail a taxi is walk around with giant backpacks on your front and backside, that paints a giant target labelled "potential sucker." The locals understand how much it sucks to lug around 70 pounds of dead weight so when they see it they come running or in this case driving. We have been booking our hostel/hotels online the night or two before and then rocking up to them the following day only going on reviews and photos so it's been a rainbow of truth depending on the establishment as far as what is promised. That extra 1 or 200 (4-8$ cad)baht can really go the extra mile. Once checking in we took the free shuttle down to the strip at Ao Nang Beach. A Mecca of tourist services. Vendors were standing outside their stores and hailing you to come for a Thai massage or eat at their restaurant, some quite aggressive as you walk down the street. The haphazard order entailed 7/11, Thai massage, restaurant, bank, restaurant, tour shop, bank, Thai massage.....you get the point. Banks truly do run the world is the point here. Part of me feels guilty when seeing such a disparity and inequality of wealth. I mean some of these locals are poor as shit but they are selling you a tour package for 100$ cad each. Most tourists here show up and make little effort to assimilate the language and culture. And because they have money and are "rich" they treat locals with an entitlement and can come across as quite ignorant. They leave a bad review online or sneer at them because they don't know English. Anyways, sorry I digress. As I was saying we walked into a Starbucks as we have been missing our soy milk lattes. So we order 2 of them, a cookie and a brownie. Somehow it cost more than the taxi ride(500 baht = 20$ cad) we had taken hours earlier! Well, it's those things we do for love that are priceless, I guess, right? We went for a nice stroll down the beach and just like every other day enjoyed a deep life talk fuelled by caffeine and sugar. We bought a couple of shirts each and found a cozy nature filled restaurant to eat. Literally the walls were alive in this place, open air concept with plants and ferns everywhere. 4 Chinese girls sitting beside us all had selfie sticks out and were taking turns photographing each other for a good 10 minutes. We had a chuckle with the server about it and carried on.
Today we endeavoured in the tourist trap know as Ko Phi Phi. Neck jerking, disc compressing, back snapping boat ride filled with 30 or so Hong Kongers all wearing elaborate funny weird outfits. I try to practice non judgement in life but I couldn't help but chuckle a little and shake my head. We went snorkelling and bonded with some monkeys along the way, then checked out a couple of beaches. Bethany did quite well snorkelling for her first time and quickly gained confidence as it is really just flopping around face down in water. My GoPro paid for itself already with the footage I got...see for yourself :).Read more