Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Krabi, Thailand (part 2)

After a good night rest, we started our next morning with some awesome breakfast in Aree Tara Resort! For your information, the breakfast starts from 7.30 am. Anyway, do head out for breakfast as early as possible because most of the full-day / half-day  tour starts as early as 8.00 (depends on the agents, some may pick you up around 9.00am)

Our favourite food >_<
As for the second day of the trip, we've chosen to go for the "4-in-1 Rainforest tour". The 4 in 1 consisted of
  1. Tiger Cave Temple
  2. Elephant trekking
  3. Emerald Pool 
  4. Hot spring
This package cost us 800baht per pax (There's 2 Australian that traveled with us in the same trip paid 900 baht per pax while another family paid 1200 baht per pax!) So make sure you do your survey! 

Our agent picked us up at 8.30am sharp and we headed straight to tiger cave temple. We actually visited the place during the first day through the "free" city tour courtesy by AirAsiaGo. 

Just a typical Buddhist Temple (with a lot of monkeys) 
How can you call this "tiger" cave temple where there ain't no tiger?!!
This was one of our least favourite spot since we're not those devotees, but anyway, it was a good experience when we were surrounded by monkey! There's another temple up above the mountain where the local monks go for meditations. To reach the top, you need to climb up the 1267 steps stairs! (we were not fit for this). The forest surrounding this mountain was actually a forest park, so feel free to take a look at the forest (if you'd like to take up the 1267 steps challenge) 

After the goddamn 1 hour stay in the temple, we headed to our much anticipated activity! The Elephant trekking! 
Say Hi! to Pai, the elephant! He loves bananas!
We were asked to wait for the elephant on a stair-like structure and seated on the elephant's back (with cushion and seat belts!) 
we wondered if the seat-belts were technically usable =_="
The ride was pretty shaky in the beginning but it was fun when we headed into the forest. You'll get the view the natural flora and fauna through a different angle. It was a good experience though (especially for Egg)
Yolk: =_=",    Egg: @_@"
After the gentle yet rough rides, we went to have our lunch (which is included in the package). Not to look down at the food included in the tour, they were pretty delicious!  Even though there were only 4 dishes per table shared by 4 person, but it was more than enough for four of us.  I wanted to high-light the tom yum goong which came with a generous amount of prawns! (not those typical sarawak laksa's little shrimps)
Thai style chicken, fried toufu, mix vege and Tom Yum Goong (our favourite)
Our tummy were all stuffed and we headed to the emerald pool! Why emerald? It's because the pool is GREEN in colour! 
Model wannabe??
We didn't get into the water since the lake was quite deep (the water level is almost as high as my cheek, around 1.6m maybe?) So we ended  up playing "kick water" at the pool side bench. The water was very cooling especially during such a hot afternoon.
After all the sightseeing and "water kicking", we went to our final destination (one of our favourite too), the Hot Spring! From the entrance, we need to walk through a short pathway to reach the natural hot spring. 

That's the end of our day trip! (super exhausted)  We reached hotel around 5.00 pm. As for that night, we took the local taxi to visit the supermarkets in Krabi to buy some local products. We book a taxi for 3 hours to 2 supermarkets in Krabi town and it cost us 900 baht. It was quite reasonable since the trip took almost 40 minutes from Ao Nang beach area to Krabi town. The Taxi driver waited for us at the supermarket for 3 hours before fetching us back.

First up, we went to Tesco Lotus (the locals called it LOTUD! I wonder why =_=") We had our dinner at the food court and ordered the local beef noodles. The soup was thick and it smells like a bowlful of aromatic herbs filled with mee hoon and beef innards + beef balls. The portion was kind of small though.
We bought some local snacks while we went loitering around the supermarket. After 1 hour, we went to another supermarket, BigC before ending out 2nd day in Krabi
Local Seafood snacks in spices
Thai Seaweeds, fish snacks, MOON CAKE!? 
This rounded up our 2nd trip in Krabi. Stay tune for our Krabi Part 3!