Thailand's Legendary Beaches

Although it was hard to leave the beauty of the National Park behind, I was really excited to see what Thailand's beaches had to offer.  A few hours south of the park, we arrived in Krabi on the coast of Southern Thailand.

One of my personal highlights in Krabi was the Chang Bar.  A reggae bar by day and dancing on tables and pogoing to house music by night.  We burned that place down that night.  Good times.

The next day we woke up early to catch a speedboat to some islands off of Krabi.  These islands were the real deal and looked like they were out of movies.  And a few of them actually were; we went to Maya beach which although crowded with tourists and speedboats is probably one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen and was the location where "The Beach" was filmed and the James Bond movie "The man with the Golden Gun".  Truly paradise.  The nicest thing about that island was that no one is allowed to develop on or live on that island.

Maya Beach

After a couple more islands, the boat stopped at Koh Phi Phi.  Shout out to Steve and Linny for telling me how incredible the island was.  It totally lived up to my expectations.  Myself and a few others from the group actually strayed away from the tour itinerary to spend the night on Phi Phi.  Once the group left on the boat we found simple rooms in the center of the small town.  We tried to sleep in these gorgeous beach bungalows but they were all taken by that time.

Phi Phi itself is a smaller island with two public beaches that are connected to each other by a small town in the middle.  Parts of the island look like the jutting mountains of Khao Sok park although the water was crystal clear so incredibly warm (almost 85 degrees!)  Again pretty touristy and packed but there were a lot of really cool beach bars located literally on the sand and lively restaurants that served up spicy curries and beer.  It is definitely a backpacker's Mecca and the perfect place to party.

After a great Panang curry for dinner at the Papaya restaurant we headed to the beach.  Many of the bars have fire dancers so we sat down to enjoy the show with buckets for drinks.  Buckets are usually Red Bull, whiskey, and coke or sprite and hold maybe about 5 drinks.  They definitely did the job.  The fire show was awesome and then the bar played some games that involved people losing articles of clothing.  Pretty entertaining but the buckets hadn't gotten me to that point yet!  From there we headed to a beach party where pogoing is a requirement seeing as all of the music was house and trance.  Again a very surreal experience with all of the neon lights and people dancing on the beach.  These parties are the site of the famed full moon parties in Thailand.  Hope to catch one next time.

Dinner @ Papaya

Phi Phi

Phi Phi was a bit spring breakish but in a great way and one night was just a tease.  Definitely planning on coming back.

It's sad to say goodbye to Thailand after having such a great time but tomorrow we head to Penang in Malaysia and I'm really looking forward to seeing what it has to offer.  Maybe buckets and beach parties if I'm lucky ha.