Elephant Trek

Slept like crap last night. My sinuses were draining, kept swalling, then got a nasty headache, took a couple of Advil in the middle of the night, which took forever to kick in, and because of my cold, I was hot and sweaty all night.

Woke up at 8:30 to alarm. Got ready and caught the minivan to Nosey Parker Elephant Trek at 10:00am. We got the elephant trek and Erin was quite excited.

Spent about 45 minutes or so on the elephant, as we meandered through the jungle. At one point, the elephant wasn't going where it was supposed to, and the trainer grabbed a bamboo stick and smacked the elephant on the face/forehead, the elephant squealed in pain. That soured Erins mood, and she was quite upset after that. After that, Erin continually stroked the elephants neck with her foot, hoping to sooth it. Fortunately, that was the only incident.

After the ride, we fed some elephants and watched our elephant bath in the river nearby, squirting water over itself with her trunk. Erin bought some elephant souvenirs at the gift shop, then we went for a small walk into the forest and I swam in the jungle stream. We then saw a water snake, perhaps 18 inches long.

The day was mostly cloudy but a few rays of sun poked through periodically.

About 1:00, they took us to Ao Nang, a very touristy area and beach along the ocean. It's quite nice, not touristy like Koh San Road, but more like Banff would be touristy. Lots of shops to browse, and lots of tourists mulling up and down the streets. Erin bought an alarm. She's been relying on me to wake her up all along, but we'll soon be parting ways. She's a very heavy sleeper, her new alarm may not be enough!

We shopped and hung out at Ao Nang, I went to the Burger King and had a double cheeseburger meal (yum!) and I bought a Vii game (Elebits) for $10. I hope it works on my Wii. :-)

In Ao Nang, it rained lightly for most of the day. Later in the afternoon, 4:00-ish, we caught a bus back to Krabi town (40 baht). He dropped us off somewhere that looked kinda familiar, so we had to walk around for a while to finally figure out how to get back to our hotel.

I used the internet, searched for liveaboards for the Similan Islands. There are tons of places to liveaboards, and they are always leaving, it think my best bet would be book something on the internet if/when the times comes that I can do it. We shopped for a bit, the night food market wasn't running, presumably because of the rain, and the night shopping market wasn't there either, once again, presumably because of the rain. I bought a Chang t-shirt at a shop on the street. He gave me a price of 180 baht ($6), which I was willing to pay, then he voluntarily gave me a discount to 150 baht, which I didn't even ask for. Erin also bought a dress for her niece, and he did the same discount for her, without her even asking.

Back at the guest house, Erin made friends with Pee, a child of one of the women who works at the guest house. She game him one of her elephants to play with, and he ended up wrecking it, throwing it all over and smashing it on the ground.

We also booked a boat to Koh Jum (pronounced Jam) for tomorrow, it's supposed to be very laid back, not yet really developed, kind of like what Koh Lanta was 5 or more years ago. The island is between Krabi and Koh Lanta.

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at the Old West Bar (looks like a saloon) for a number of beers. They played Bram Bam 3000, "Drinking in L.A." in the bar. I simply can't keep up to Erin in the alcohol consumption category. A few guys from the Power Beach Resort on Koh Phangan came in later too. About midnight, I called it a night, Erin hung out with the Power Beach guys and made it back to the hotel about 5:30am. After the Old West Bar, they went with a few locals to a dance club that was filled with all locals, they were the only tourists there. Erin thought she was going to die, the driver was screaming through the streets of Krabi at high speeds.