Island Hopping in Krabi, Thailand

The group had grown – Melissa Amber joined the fun. We flew from Hanoi, Vietnam into Bangkok, Thailand to meet up with Melissa and then all of us flew from Bangkok to Krabi in Southern Thailand. We chose Krabi over Phuket simply because we didn’t want to be stuck in an overwhelming tourist area. Krabi is touristy, but has less people during low-season. Plus, we wanted to get to Koh Lanta after our stay there and Krabi was the closest mainland location that we liked.

To say we scored on a great tour and perfect weather to match would be an understatement. My mom, the price negotiator, found us a tour where we would have a private long tail boat take us island hopping, lunch included. We set out early in the morning lathered in sunscreen and with our cameras charged.

The first island we stopped at was Hong Island. We were the third boat to arrive and we honestly thought we had a private beach all to ourselves. Flash forward about an hour and the beach was packed! It was like being in a mall on Christmas Eve. NO THANKS! Thankfully we were able to enjoy the privacy for a while. We swam in the crystal clear water and walked along the beach to watch people rock climbing. It felt like we were on the set of a postcard photo shoot.

Next was the National Park for swimming and lunch. While my mom and I were swimming, Auntie Barb and Melissa were walking the beach. They came up on a few monkeys who were rummaging through garbage and climbing the trees. As Melissa walked closer to them, one started chasing my Auntie Barb down the beach and into the water. I’ve never seen someone turn around and run on sand so fast! She was on a mission to escape the monkey! We all got a pretty good laugh out of that one.

While this was happening, my mom and I found a school of pretty blue and yellow fish close to shore. Immediately we called over Auntie Barb and Melissa to see them. We were so excited, until they nibbled on our legs! We grabbed the snorkel gear out of the boat and made our way back into the water to check them out better. Seemed like a great idea until I felt a horrible pain on my forearm. The stinging and burning made no sense! I looked at my arm and there wasn’t a mark or a bite – pure confusion. As I turned around to tell my mom my forearm had an incredible pain, I saw 3 clear jelly fish smaller than my palm floating right in front of my moms face. I yelled for her to go back to the shore…she probably thought there was a shark. We all got out of the water and came to the conclusion I had been stung by a damn jellyfish! If you know the immediate cure to take away the stinging from a jellyfish, you will know we took those measures on the public beach as people walked by. NO SHAME! I was hurting!

After the fiasco on one side of this island, we decided to eat lunch on the other side before heading to the next island… Chicken Island.

Chicken Island is shaped like a chicken head (as shown below).  The snorkeling around Chicken Island was fantastic! We saw so many fish, sea urchin, coral, etc. We probably spent over an hour floating around and checking everything out.

We saved the sandbar for last as it’s only open during low tide.

When we went back to Krabi the rain started coming down hard. We lucked out with awesome weather the entire time we were swimming and snorkeling. A long day well spent! I couldn’t have asked for a better way to be welcomed back to Thailand.

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