Khao Lak, Mopeds and more Elephants

So it’s been a while since our last post and in that time we’ve moved over to the mainland, settled into our new place in Khao Lak and have been exploring the local area. We left the island of Koh Tao at 6am on Monday morning and got a 4hr ferry followed by a 4hr coach journey. It was the standard Thai travel standards where you add at least an hour or 2 on to your expected arrival time but all in all it was fairly comfortable.

Now Khao Lak is a long stretch of coast line on the Western side of the mainland. It’s dominated by huge 5 star resorts overlooking the beach. So after we checked into our £16 /night room at Fasai House (amazing by the way, air con, huge bed, really nice rooms) we decided to make the most of things we needed a moped. Debs has understandably been dreading this moment so as a compromise we hired this for 200 baht (£4 /day);

Feeling suitably emasculated we hit the road, first stop, Tsunami memorial. That’s the other thing about Khao Lak, along with the island of Koh Phi Phi it was one of the worst areas impacted by the Tsunami in 2004. Police Boat 813 was washed in shore over 1km and came to rest on what now acts as a memorial to those who lost their lives. Whilst there are still reminders of the tragedy from people missing limbs to signs for evacuation instructions, overall things appear to have recovered fairly well. At least better than when Debs and I were here about 6 years ago. There’s a lot of building work going on now as the Thai people look to turn the area into a full scale tourist attraction, and why not?

Further up the coast we went searching for deserted beaches and weren’t disappointed. We’ve both been to some stunning beaches in our time but Pak Weep has to be near the top of the list;

We pretty much had the place to ourselves;

We’ve also been to a couple of Elephant Trekking places (there is literally one every few miles around here!) where Debs was once again petrified thrusting the basket bananas in my hand before taking cover. Still, she took some good photos including this Mahout (Elephant trainer) casually texting:

We also popped into a Zoo where this playful chap was by far our favourite;

Finally, there was some more waterfall action which was pretty cool;

Apologies for the mammoth post. Next one will be more bite-size, cross my heart.
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