Saturday 18th March 2006. Penang to Tha Lane Bay, Near Krabi, Thailand

As usual when we've got a long way to go, we were up and out pretty early- which was a good job as the roads through George Town were already fairly heavy with traffic. We found our way back onto the bridge and soon were chugging North on the Express-way. We made good time and by 10am we were at the Malaysian border. Here you simply drive up to a little booth and hand your passport over to be stamped out of the country. The lady in the booth did look puzzled when she couldn't find our entry-stamps, but when I explained that we had come in by train from Singapore and showed her the ticket all became clear and she stamped us out with no further questions. We then parked up and walked over to the Customs office where the head honcho led us into his office, stamped our carnet without even glancing at Hector and that was it - out of Malaysia in 10 minutes!

The Thai border is much the same set up as the Malay one. However here you don't need to drive up to the booths, you simply turn left before them and park in the car-park behind the customs compound and do everything on foot - we didn't know this and drove through everything before being directed to the car-park. First you visit the "Visa on Arrival" office where you get given an arrival card which you fill in and take to the "Visa on Arrival" booth just outside the office where the chap behind the desk will give you a 30 day Visa for free. You then walk over to the customs booth where the details of your vehicle are taken and you are issued with a temporary import bond as the Thais don't use the Carnet system (however, take your carnet with you as they like to use it for getting all of the vehicle information for their own form). This form is valid for the same length of time as your Visa and you must present your copy to Customs when you leave. The final step is to buy some compulsory insurance - handily there is an insurance booth right outside the border area on the left hand side - 6 months insurance was ours for less than £10. If you walk a little further down this road there are also money changers and an ATM, so it's easy to get everything sorted out. The whole process of getting into Thailand took us about 30 minutes and it was one of the easiest crossings that we've ever had.

From the border we headed North West to the Andaman coast as we planned to stay at a place called "Coconut Home" which is near Tha Lane bay, West of Krabi. We'd read about the place on another overlanders website and it sounded lovely so off we went in search of it. We had the GPS co-ordinates of the place which was handy as it's not the easiest place in the world to get to, but it is lovely and secluded with total peace and quiet as you swing in a hammock in front of your bamboo hut...bliss after a 600km drive!

As it says...                                  Paradise!                                          Amy on the beach

When we arrived we had just unpacked when it started to rain, but it didn't last long and soon the sky had cleared and were able to walk the 10 meters onto the beach and admire the staggeringly beautiful landscape around us. In front of us is the clear green sea, in which are hundreds of little islands covered with jungle. Behind us is the beach leading up to a fringe of coconut trees through which you can see our hut, and beyond this are jagged jungle covered hills rising into a sky where huge thunder-heads are forming for the evening rains...at the moment we're the only people here and the only sounds are the lapping of the waves on the shore, the singing of the birds in the trees and the occasional puttering of a long-tail boat as a fisherman heads out to tend his nets - we might be here for a while....

Sunday, 19th March 2006, Tha Lane Bay

As the "Coconut Home" is so out of the way it's a blessing having our own wheels as we can tour round the area and get to all the good bits! Today we drove to "Krabi Sea Kayaks" which is just down the road and booked a days kayaking around the islands for tomorrow. We then headed for the town of Ao Nang which is very pleasant in a touristy kind of way and had a walk about and a coffee before heading of to a beach where a lot of Thai families go for their Sunday outings. We took some of our food and the stove down to the beach, found a spot under a coconut tree and joined the families pick-nicking on the beach. Soon we were giving a demonstration to a sizeable crowd of how to use a petrol stove and how to make fried bread, scrambled eggs and baked beans - delicious! The sea here is also worth a mention as it is truthfully like stepping into a warm bath, which is a bit of a disappointment when you want to go and have a swim to cool off after baking in the sunshine. After waiting for the tide to go out so we could walk to one of the islands, we headed back into Ao Nang for some dinner and then drove the half hour home to our hut - again absolutely no trouble driving at night here (especially with a great big pair of spotlights!)

Outdoor cuisine....

Monday, 20th March 2006. Tha Lane Bay

0930 and we were at "Krabi Sea Kayaks" getting into our Kayak built for 2 and heading off with our guide Anand. First we had a little paddle into the sea to make sure that we knew what we were doing (of course we did...we're both veterans of the Ardeche!) and then we were heading towards a cave in the face of one of the islands where a man was supposed to have died as he was sleeping there when the tide came up and drowned him...our guide pointed out some bits of bone, but they looked more like chicken bones to us! Next we headed for another of the islands, where a narrow gap led us into a huge gorge where the limestone cliffs towered above us and the tendrils of the jungle hung down to the sea - very beautiful and peaceful. When we emerged from the gorge we headed down a channel cut between the mangrove trees to a fishermans pontoon. Here we clambered aboard and watched as the guy fed the fish that he was rearing in keep-nets in the river. We knew things could get interesting when we saw that he was feeding them other fish...and when he threw a plate-full into one of the nets and the water erupted into a foaming frenzy we thought that he must have piranha or barracuda in there, but our guide explained that they were Tiger fish and that they sold for 300 baht a kilo (about £5). It was great fun watching feeding time, and we were very careful not to put our hands in the water!

It was now time for a little break so we paddled to a hidden beach on one of the islands where there was the skeleton of a fishermans house and pontoon. Here we had some fruit and a bit of a swim before the next part of our trip, when we paddled through another gorge and into the Mangrove, looking out for the wildlife. A sea Kayak is a fantastic way to see nature as you can drift along in silence looking at the bird and animal life without disturbing anything. We both had a fantastic time on the trip and we paddled a total of 18km which wasn't too bad. Mark now says that he wants to buy a Kayak and put it on the top of Hector....

Fishermans pontoon                           On the beach                               Mark paddling in the Mangrove

Tuesday, 21st March 2006. Tha Lane bay

We drove to Krabi today for a bit of a look around - to be honest there isn't that much to the place as it is mainly a place to get boats to the islands from. It also poured it down all day today (it's supposed to be the hot dry season at the moment, not the wet season!) so we hung around in various cafes, internet places, book shops etc and began to plan our route up to Bangkok and into Cambodia - hopefully we can take the new dirt road from Koh Kong in the south west to Shinoukville and from there go up to Pnom Penh...we shall see....

Wednesday, 22nd March 2006.Tha Lane bay

Yep, still here! A bit of an admin day today as we get up to date with the laundry, write up the web-site, do some route planning etc etc. We plan to leave tomorrow to head for a place called Chiaya where we're going to try and convince some monks to let us stay in their monastery.

Thursday 23rd March 2006. Tha Lane bay to Chom Phon

OK, we would have tried to convince the monks at Chaiya to let us stay if we had actually found the place. We found the nearest town with no bother, and our instructions from here were that the monastry was 7km outside...but which way? We tried pretty much every way we could find but didn't come across any monastry so in the end we called it a day and carried on North to the little town of Chom Phon where we found a bargain place to stay for the evening.

Friday 24th March 2006. Chom Phon to Koi Soi Yam Rot National Park

Not too far to drive today, but we did get to motor 10km from the border with Myanmar - shame that we couldn't have driven through there...No problems finding the National Park and we were looking forwards to being back in the roof tent tonight! The National Park has some areas where camping is permitted so we drove to one of these amidst the trees by the white beach and set up camp. Apart from a Thai family camped further down the beach we are the only people here and it's lovely and peaceful just listening to the waves gently lapping the shore. We cooked a lovely meal for ourselves and the then had a couple of bottles of beer sitting in the dark on the beach and watching the shooting stars overhead.

Beach camping...

Saturday 25th March 2006. National Park to Hua Hin

We had a great nights sleep last night, and when we eventually woke up we were totally alone on the beach until the Park Staff arrived as we were having our breakfast. We coughed up our 60 Baht camping fee then made our plans for exploring the park. First on the list was a little walk up to a viewpoint, so off we drove until we saw the turn off which led down a hugely potholed and rough dirt track - great fun! Once at the foot of the hill we got out to walk up through the jungle  to the viewpoint. Phew! Hot work even at 09:30am as we clambered over the roots of the trees, avoiding the huge cactus plants and the vicious thorn covered creepers. Dripping with sweat we arrived at the top of the hill and basked in the little breeze until it was time to head back down again, where we had a "saucepan shower"  to get rid of all the grime.

Mark on the path to the viewpoint

Next on the list was a cave complex at the other side of the park. Again this was down a dirt track and half way up a mountain, and again we were sweating when we got there. "At least it should be cool down there" we thought...wrong again...if anything it was even warmer underground as we turned on our torches and climbed the first ladder down into the entrance to the cave system, where there was a little Buddhist shrine with offerings of incense, water bottles and oranges. The cave complex is a series of large caverns connected by passageways of various height and width - some we could walk through, others we had to crawl through. In some places the light from our torches was reflected a million times by the crystals in the walls, creating a fantastical effect. We were underground for about 1 hour before we managed to find our way back out and make our way back down the hill. On our way down Amy pointed out a snake on the trial in front of us, but it was more worried about us than we were of it.

Mark and Amy in the cave                    View from the cave mouth

After a pic-nik lunch we headed out of the National Park and North to a town called Hua Hin where we managed to find a place to park. We then walked around for a while until we found a nice cheap gueasthouse. 

Sunday, 26th March 2006. Hua Hin to Pattaya

We drove around Bangkok today - we plan to stay for a few days on our way back down. We weren't too sure whether the ring-road had been completed yet but we gave it a go only to find that the bridge across the river isn't finished yet...rats. Still, everything's really well signposted and soon we were trundling along the expressway towards Pattaya - a resort town South East of Bangkok - where we found a place to stay with parking. Went for a walk in the evening to find somewhere to eat and wandered past all of the girly bars full of bored looking Thai girls and sun-burnt westerners, most of whom were not in the first flush of youth.

Monday, 27th March 2006. Pattaya.

We hit the beach today which was great fun - there's a little cove 15 mins walk from our place where you can sit in a deck-chair under the trees. Rather fantastically people were constantly walking past selling all kinds of food so lunch consisted of 10 fresh prawns with sweet chilli sauce, followed by 6 fish rolls, 6 battered prawns, 5 chicken drumsticks and pineapple for dessert - all for £2.50 - and the vendors even came along when we had finished and took away the rubbish! We're off to Cambodia tomorrow.