Thursday, January 28, 2010

Day 1 in Thailand

I flew into Phucket yesterday with Tom and Samira. We had nice meal and then headed straight for the bus station where we hitched a ride to Krabi. We woke up early this morning and went on an elephant trek. The elephants were great and I sat on the neck of one with my legs just behind her ears and road like that for a while. They were very gentle and used to the path. The path cut through a rubber plantation and then just through some jungle from there.

Once we finished the trek we headed for the Tiger temple. We carried some bags of sand up the steps to a cave and "the big tree." We climbed around the limestone caves a bit and then walked through the jungle. It was quiet and we saw a tortoise hiding in the leaves.

Once we had explored everything near the cave we began the steep journey up the mountain to a temple at the top. There were 1,237 steps! Some of them were nearly straight up. It took nearly 2 hours, as I am very much out of shape, but it was worth it. The view at the top was great! Plains on the one side and then great limestone cliffs on the other. The ceiling off the lower level was quite low and I was being careless and ran straight into one of the cross beams with me head! I was dumbfounded for a few beats and then the pain started to kick in. I was half laughing half crying and now I am sporting a nice bump just above my left eyebrow.

There is a giant statue of a crab here and I have decided to start a collection of photos of giant crustacean statues. Other than the most delicious penang curry I have ever tasted, there is nothing else to report for the moment.

We leave bright an early tomorrow, on our way to Ko Tarutao. Very exciting!

1 comment:

  1. I didn't want to hitch, I wanted to take the bus. But we got offered a lift by a man with crazy eyes and a gun on the seat next to him....and what looked like blood on his hands.
    But we got here alright and all for the price of the home addresses of all Madison's friends in the USA.

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