Lily's Travels

After three (or was it four nights? I left my planner in Chiang Mai...) on Siboya, our new friend, Ash, still had not return from his visa run to Malaysia. Therefore we never met the family of monkeys while kayaking through the mangroves. We never actually kayaked period.

We did a minimal amount of exploring on the Muslim island of Siboya where the English language was as rare as toilet paper in a bathroom in Thailand. I'd like to believe if I was feeling better I would have been exploring every day... but the hammocks were addicting. I am sure in the years to come, Siboya will be in the travel books as several resorts were being built on the beach. Until tourism takes over their economy seemed to be based on rubber trees. Siboya was one big rubber tree forest after the next - with coconut halves attached to the tree trunks to collect the latex dripping down the bark.

We hitched a ride to Krabi via pick-up truck, long tail boat and private car where we left Lucy at a bus station en route to Phuket for her flight back to Chiang Mai. Ashley and I headed to a local pier to negotiate a boat ride to the next destination of Ton Sai; a beach near the hot climbing town of Railay. While we waited for transportation logistics to be sorted out, Nurse Ashley went to the pharmacy to get me some medicine for my still painful stomach. She returned with antibiotics, re-hydration powder, two different kinds of digestion problem pills and a month's supply of malaria pills all for about $6 US.... did I mention that the malaria pills double as acne pills?

To make a long story short, a few hours later we waded through the water to our new beach home in the hot pouring rain to be greeted on the shore by our English friend we met in Pai a few weeks earlier. Darren helped us carry our belongings up the beach, up the muddy road to some new bungalows called the Andaman Nature Resort. A familiar face and a predetermined place to stay - my sick belly was almost happy again.

Let me just clarify the term "resort" in Thailand. So far, my belief is that any accommodations having private rooms with bathrooms are likely hotels (Ping Buri), the others with shared rooms and shared toilets are hostels and anything else is well, a resort of course!

This resort came with a fancy pink mosquito net - like the princess bed I never had. The monkeys run around the internet cafe that is attached to the open air restaurant and the rain each evening is enough of a flood to keep you trapped in your bungalow a good couple hours. The place is swimming with backpackers from all over the world leaving me feeling like I never left orientation week at Evergreen.