World Wanderers: Life is an adventure. It’s not the destination that’s rewarding, it’s the journey.: Flooding In Krabi (And gorgeous Railay& Koh Lipe)

We arrived in the town of Krabi where it nearly lashed rain for the entire time, infact, the whole province has been flooding severly with many evacuations and even deaths. We were on a bus at one point and saw houses completely submerged by brown rain water with only the roofs visible and people making the most of it by fishing with nets on the road! On the news, people were canoing down the streets--it has caused huge problems for many. Some say it has somthing to do with the Tsunami in Japan and the pressure but honestly, the rain was relentless!

Fishing in the floods

Neverthlesss, we still had some amazing experiences. After days of the rain prohibiting us from what we wanted to do, we bit the bullet and rented a scooter where we made a massive journey out to amazing limestone caves. We rented kayaks and managed to get a few hours of sunshine kayaking through mongroves and other tropical plants and through gorgeous limestone caves. It was a completly surreal experience and actually one of the hightlights of Thailand. We also went through a cave that had pre-historic paintings from around 3,000 years ago that were amazing! It was very peaceful out on the water as we did the whole journey on our own rather than paying a fortune to go out with a group and guide. We had a spectacular day despite the unbelievably hard journey home where we were saturated with rain on the scooter but forced to keep going as the daylight hours were narrowing in on us. Des did brilliantly getting us back to our guest house safely--I still have no idea how he did it--I couldn't see a thing, infact I could hardly open my eyes as it was whipping down so hard for such a long period of time that it actually stung our skin and eyes! Both our hands were completely white from the constant cold of it and I have literally never been so saturated in my life! We had luke-warm showers when we got back and managed to warm up after a spicey red curry! Phew!

Mongroves

Kayaking through caves

Prehistoric paintings in cave

Another day, we took a longtail boat out to Railay island which is just off of Krabi surrounded by beautiful limestone cliffs. We explored caves and the lovely picturesque beaches and watched the monkeys.We met a lovely English couple that were in the London police force and went out for the night to a Raggae bar and had buckets galore!

"Diamond Cave"

Beach footie with a bamboo ball

Swinging Monkey

Longtail boat

Paul and Sian

Tractors that took people out to get into their boats

We were a little dubious of the weather at this stage but decided to give Ko Lipe a shot next which we heard was unbelievable from our friends we met at the full moon (had we had the weather). The island was gorgeous with white sand like flour and turquoise water and there was one main street that was a walking street filled with all sorts of charming shops and restaurants but there was little we could do in terms of activities as the weather was just that bad! We took a speed there from Pak Barra (where we stayed
one night and stumbled upon a festival where the Thai people were incredibly hospitable giving us free fish curry, rice and fresh fruit) which was a hilarious experience. The waves were rediculously high and people were screaming as the whole 80 seat boat would catch air and plummet down with great impact. There was torrential rain coming in through the windows and everyone was soaked or had their umbrellas up. The storm was so bad that we couldn't make it to the proper beach on Ko Lipe and had to back into a differnt beach on the island where we jumped out in water up to our knees, Des grabbed our rugsacks and we waited under a shelter for atleast an hour until the rain let up. We then made our way to our coco-hut and went for Thai massages. Definitely a gorgeous place that we'll go back to someday when the weather is right! : )