For our last stop in the south we decided to go back to Phuket and spend some time at Kata Beach. Kata is the next beach farther down the coast from Karon where we stayed last time, and has a very nice beach. The town is a little bigger and more ‘active’ than Karon, but not the zoo that is Patong, so a nice balance between the two.

We have spent a few days here just hanging about the hotel and the pool, going down to the beach and walking along the sand, and getting in some much needed shopping.  One of the nice things about Kata is that the shopping is close enough that the ladies can go out and get their fix in, and I can stay back and get a bit of work done, and some time relaxing by the pool 🙂

We don’t have any grand adventures planned here, just relaxing and enjoying the last of our Phuket time before heading north to Chiang Mai.  I shall try and upload some photos in the next day or so.

Our time in Khao Lak is almost done, and the last few days have been very laid back. We have spent the last few days here just hanging about the resort. We did go on a small hike up into the hills behind our hotel to see a waterfall and a few sights around here. We also wandered by an animal safari that is closed for the low season, but the animals and everything were still there and we got to see a bunch of elephants and some monkeys fairly close up.

We have also spent some time in the pool and down at the beach, and then the weather shifted and it has been raining for the last day or so.  It is still nice and warm out, and we are able to sit on the balcony and do some reading or a bit of work and listen to the rain and the surf, so not all that bad.  We have been here for 30 days now, and I figure if we have only had a couple of real rainy days then we are doing real well for the ‘monsoon’ season.

We are moving back down to Phuket tomorrow to spend a few days at Kata Beach, where there is a little more to do if the weather is off and a lot more shopping and stuff for the buyers in the group 🙂

Way back in the day, before Mrs. Columbus and I were married, she owned a futon.  I believed at the time that this was the most uncomfortable ‘bed’ man had ever invented, and was likely created by a father who gave them to his daughters so that gentlemen callers would be un-inclined to stay over.

I have however discovered that the futon is actually a much more comfortable variant of the asian bed.  The majority of the beds we have slept on here are of the similar futon style of a dense ‘mattress’ on top of a more western style bed frame or riser.  The net result looks similar to a western bed and is about the same height off the floor, but the similarities end there.

The asian bed I think has not evolved since Medieval times when they were more commonly used as torture items.  The bed itself is very firm, rating on a softness scale of somewhere between sleeping directly on a concrete slab and sleeping on a concrete slab covered by a towel.

Clearly the Asian people have adapted to this and find them rather comfortable, as they are a step up from the many people we see having a nap on the floor in the back of a shop or on the bamboo floor of the small salas (like a small gazebo) we sometimes see on the roadsides.  I however have not been able to adapt myself to this form of comfort, and look forward to my comfy bed back home.

Some of the places we have stayed have reasonably soft beds, but others not so much.  After spending a night in one of these beds you often feel like an elephant has been dancing on your back while you sleep.  Perhaps that is why the housekeeping ladies left us these creations to show us the firmness rating of the bed…

In this case the rating is 2 elephants – meaning that in the course of the night 2 elephants will gleefully do the cha-cha on my back.  We have had beds that were I believe rated as high as 5 elephants, but after about 3 it all seems the same to me.

Khao Lak is a much much more laid back part of the tourists zones that we have been to.  The area is really a zone of about a half-dozen long beaches spread out along a 20 mile stretch of coastline.   Different than most of the other beach areas we have been to, the main road (and therefore the town) does not go right along the beach – and in some places is about a kilometer away from the coast.   This means that most of the hotels are more ‘resort’ style and away from the bustle of the town, and creates a much more relaxing atmosphere.

We spend our first couple of days here doing just that – relaxing.  The hotel we are staying at is right on the beach and there are lounge chairs set out right on the sand where you can sit back under the shade of a palm tree and listen to the surf roll in and out.  There is also a nice large pool in the center of a large courtyard, and between the beach and the pool we are able to just lounge about and enjoy the tranquility of this place.

Because this is the low season, and it seems to be even slower here than other places we have been, there are very few other tourists around, and at times it feels like you have miles of beach all to yourself.  We discover a nice spot at one end of the beach we are on, and the kids spend a few hours just playing in the sand, writing messages, and splashing about.

For our third day here we decide to venture out past our hotel and go into the town area and check out some of the shops, another beach area, and one of the local markets.

Our first stop is at the Tsunami Museum and the patrol boat.  Thailand was hit by a large tsunami on Dec 26, 2004 at about 10:30 in the morning.  Khao Lak was one of the hardest hit areas of the country with about 80% of the casualties in Thailand coming from this area, and more than any of the other places we have been there are reminders all around of the events of that day.

One of the largest remnants is a large patrol boat that was washed ashore by the wave.  The boat was on patrol about 1/2 kilometer offshore when the wave hit, and it’s final resting place is about 1.5 kilometers inland from the beach.  The boat itself has a 6 foot displacement, so at the place where it now rests the wave had to be at least 6 feet high!!

All around this area are blue posts set into the ground warning of the tsunami zone, and also marking the estimated height of the wave at any given point.  The one pictured here is several hundred feet from the beach (you can see the water in the distance) and the height is marked at 5 meters (about 17 feet) – and at this point the drop down to the beach is also about another 3-4 meters.  It is staggering to think about a wall of water 3 stories tall moving directly at you, and it is hard to not look around you and think of the tragedy of that day.

After all that it is off for some shopping.  We do the usual browsing in the various vendor shops, and then take some time to go into the big street market that is here.  The market runs 3 days a week and Mrs. Columbus and the girls are rubbing their hands together with visions of bargains to be found….  We get to the market and discover that rather than a tourist market full of trinkets for sale it is actually more of a local market where the locals in the area would come to buy their goods, fresh meats and vegetables, or perhaps an afternoon meal.  We did try out a couple of items from one of the stalls, but after walking down the fresh meat aisle, it was hard to convince anyone to try some of the roasted treats 🙂

Back to the hotel for a refreshing dip in the pool, and then off to Jo Seafood Restaurant just down the beach for another great dinner.

Could someone over there please call up Mr. Ted Stevens or Mr. Al Gore and let them know that the series of tubes the make us this new-fangled interweb thingy do not seem to be all that reliable over here…

Between the power outages and the irregular internet connections we have had since we got to Krabi, we have been offline for about 3-4 days.

As with most of the other issues we see over here, very few people seem to care, and just go on about their days.  Yesterday when the power was out, all the stores still opened – places that sold drinks brought in chests of ice and food was cooked over gas burners, and the souvenir vendors carried on in the dark, just without the fans that kept their stores cool.

I can’t imagine what would happen back home if the internet went away for a few days, but it is likely one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Anyway we get some online time this afternoon and get a bunch of updates up so that you all know we are still alive, and so that the Sandvig’s have something to read with their morning coffee 😉

We are moving on fron Ao Nang/Krabi tomorrow, and have decided to spend a few days in Khao Lak.  We were originally going to go to Chumphon on the gulf coast, but I think there must be a local holiday or something here as the place we were going to stay is all booked up now.  But no worries, with the day-at-a-time approach we have been using, it was a quick last-minute decision to go elsewhere, and a short van ride tomorrow and another new location awaits us.

That’s all I have for now, time to get my stuff packed up and off to bed 🙂