Krabi, Thailand

Southern Thailand
Page Two

Ao Nang Beach is a nice place for a vacation, but since the snorkeling off the beach was nonexistent, I couldn't be satisfied with just hanging out there for two weeks. So, we hired a longtail boat for a ride out to Poda and Chicken islands. These two islands are right next to each other and look like one long, continuous island from Ao Nang Beach, as you saw on the preceding page. It takes 20 minutes or so to get out there, and I can truly say that if you visit Krabi and never go out to these islands, you're really missing something.

We liked these two islands so much that we went out there three times, once to Poda and twice to Chicken. The first pictures are from those trips.

	You might very well wonder why they would call it "Chicken Island," so here's a picture I took of it from the mainland one evening before sunset. Any more questions?
On the way out there we had the boatman swing over along the shore a little to get a good view of the beautiful rock formations of the area.
	The beach at Poda is particularly interesting because it has this great limestone karst formation jutting straight out of the water. There were plenty of fish, and the coral was OK. Poda Island has a restaurant on it, so that was really nice not to have to carry our lunch.
Chicken Island was the one we preferred, though. You can see the main beach in the center of the picture, which is actually a sand bar with the longtail boats parked on the other side, which isn't visible. There's a little drink stand at the end, barely visible at the base of the little hill sticking up. We walked to this area so that we could be under a tree, out of the sun. There are just so many umbrellas, and they go quickly!
	It was lucky for us, though, that there were no umbrellas, because it forced us to walk down the toward the "chicken." There we found the snorkeling to be nothing short of fantastic! Just gorgeous corals and fish, some of which you can see here. The amazing thing is that the corals begin just off the beach. I can't think of anywhere else I'd seen nice staghorn coral growing in 6 inches of water.
If you need a break from the beach, you can rent a car rather inexpensively. We drove up to a beautiful series of five waterfalls in the jungle mountains an hour from Ao Nang. My pictures looking up at the waterfalls didn't turn out so good, but here's one looking back at the pool of a waterfall visible at the lower right. It was nice and cool up there, a nice break from the steamy beaches.
	The city of Krabi is often called a town, but it was much bigger than I had imagined. Although most of it is uninteresting and not a place I could recommend staying in, it does have these two karst formations in the river, and they afford a nice view. The Krabi Maritime Resort is next to these formations in downtown Krabi.
Between the city of Krabi and Ao Nang Beach you'll pass by this reclining Buddha, which is under an overhang of a great limestone mountain. Sorry, I can't tell you much more about it, but it does make you feel like you're in Thailand.