After our fun day seeing all the Hong Islands we decided to stay in the rest of the day and just take things easy. We all took long naps, read books, played on tablets, watched movies, edited pictures, and just enjoyed some down time. It was so nice just being able to relax. And we of course enjoyed another beautiful sunset! Or at least the beginning of one, as we headed out just as these pictures were taken to go and get some dinner.
Since our beach house was fairly remote there was only one little restaurant nearby to eat at – but man oh ma was it a good one. And the best part? They had American pancakes! We were all so excited! We loved ordering breakfast for dinner and were very impressed when the pancakes came out looking just like American ones! The only catch? No maple syrup. đ However, the owners offered us honey instead which I’d never thought to try before. Can I just say “match made in heaven?” Wow! The combination was amazing! We liked the pancakes so much we ended up ordering several more as “dessert.” ha ha.
The next day was moving day so that morning we had to pack up all our stuff and arrange transportation to our next location of Krabi Town. That meant finding a tuk tuk to take us and all our luggage to the pier, getting a long tail boat to take us across the ocean to the mainland, and then getting a taxi to take us on the 45 minute drive to Krabi. We loved waking up to such beautiful views from our bedroom windows!
Here Harry is showing off a bottle he found in the ocean (that he wanted to take home but settled for us taking a picture of) as well as some of his cool shells he found.
On our long tail boat ride we ended up meeting a family of 4 from France who actually took a year off work to travel around the world with their two kids. They had been to every continent and were almost at the end of their trip. I loved picking their brains about new fun places to visit and made sure to get their top 3 must see places. And not surprisingly Tahitti and the French Polynesian area was at the top of their list. Its been on the top of mine since High School and still a dream Adam and I waiting to realize. They also really liked Vietnam and New Zealand. I’ve also heard Cambodia is pretty cool. Lots more fun places to put on my bucket list! đ Oh how I love to travel!
After our long tail boat ride, we were able to get a mini van taxi to haul all of us and all our luggage to our final destination. A 3 bedroom house I had found online with a private pool. Although the house was a splurge for us ($130 a night verses the $40-$60 we’d been paying), it was perfect for our party of 7 and had oodles of space for everyone AND air conditioning, AND a washer to do all our many many loads of laundry. We all felt pretty spoiled to be staying there!
Master bedroom with extra bed (that we didn’t use)
View from the master bedroom balcony
Kids bedroom
And Jess and Ady’s room where they had fun sleepovers every night!
Kitchen (dining room was to the left, study and bathroom were on the right with washer out that open door in the backyard).
Outdoor seating area. We loved having some of our meals out here.
Our private pool!
One of the awesome things about the house is that it also came with free tuk tuk rides to the city. So after resting that afternoon we headed down to the city to check into excursion deals and to see the beach!
We instantly came to realize though that this beach was pretty special. Not because of the beautiful water but because of the amazing terrain. You see, the beach was made up completely of SEASHELLS! And as far as your eye could see in both directions. It was really mind boggling to realize how many shells went into making this incredible beach. Just look at all of them!
This is what the beach looked like – EVERYWHERE. You COULD find sand but you had to dig down for about 1-2 feet before you got to any. It truly was miraculous to think about. Gods creations are so amazing! The shells further from the sea were a little bigger, and then the closer you got to the water the smaller the shells got.
Here are some of the shells down near the water. See the difference? More tiny shell pieces than actual full shells. So so cool! Isn’t Thailand incredible?
See how far this beach stretched? Now think of how many shells it must have taken to make up this beach. MIND BLOWING!!!
We all had a great time looking for cool shells (wasn’t very hard) to take home with us.
Then after some beach time we walked down to the market part of the city to find some booths selling excursions. Thats one thing we have found in Thailand is that you can get much better deals getting your excursions through local vendors than online. So we searched for tourist booths to price out how much it would be to do some elephant trekking, kayaking, and maybe get a car rental for a day.
Man grove trees! Love their root systems!
We saw these cute Thai girls playing jump rope.
Luckily we were able to find some good deals on excursions, but in the end we decided just to rent a car and go and do our own thing the following day. That ended up being a GREAT decision as it gave us lots of freedom to do some exploring and to see some awesome sights. More on that in the next post. Stay tuned. đ
