Thailand - kayaking

Flooding is still affecting the provinces north of Bangkok and the Foreign Office is advising against all but essential travel to Bangkok, although transit through Bangkok International airport is OK.  My plan is to fly from Hong Kong to Bangkok and get an additional flight straight out again to the south west of Thailand and stay there for a week, while the flooding situation improves (hopefully).

As my plane circles Bangkok airport I can see large rectangular areas of land under water, with roads and houses looking dry on the straight lines between the water. Perhaps they are flooded fields.

I fly from Bangkok to the small provincial airport of Krabi and stay in Krabi town for 2 nights. It is a pleasant-enough working town along the side of a river, with good access to tourist places and islands nearby.

I arrange to join a group for a day’s kayaking to get a feel for the nature and landscape in the local area. A minibus picks me up from my guest house and then we tour other hotels picking up the rest of the group. In all we are 11 people; all tourists; mainly western and 2 guys from Malaysia. We arrive at the water’s edge where our sit-on-top kayaks are waiting for us. Chai is our local guide and he explains that although it looks like a river, it is actually a salt water inlet from the sea. Mangroves line both banks with limestone skart cliffs and caves along the way.

Chai, our guide

We set off paddling gently to take in the scenary.

We pass a floating house and Chai explains that part of the Thai population is made up of an ethnic  group called Sea Gypsies, who traditionally live a nomadic life on the water and make a living from fishing. In these waters they can catch crabs, oysters and snails.

Sea Gypsy dwelling

The tide is low so we stop for a while by the muddy bank under the mangroves, to look at the wildlife there. The mud is covered in small crabs. The males have one large yellow claw and the females have iridescent blue on their backs. There are also many small lung fish, which drag themselves out of the water and across the mud with two small fins. Chai says that sometimes they come aboard the boats. Unfortunately they are too small and mud-coloured to photograph, but I think you can see some in the aquarium in Plymouth, where they have a mangrove display.

Mangroves

We come to what seems to be the end of the creek up against an enormous limestone cliff, but there is a cave entrance underneath it and we kayak through the cave and out the other side. There are interesting rock formations and stalagmites hanging from the ceiling.

Cave entrance

Rock formations in the cave ceiling

Coming out the other side

We paddle further long and moor up at the waterside where there is a cave nearby. It is called Ghost Cave, because human remains were found here.

The cave is protected as part of a national park, but we are able to clamber all around it and explore.

Cave

There are also cave paintings here. The most famous one thought to be 2000 years old is of a stripy indeterminate man/animal creature. It is only about 18’’ long and painted quite high on the cave ceiling.

Cave painting

We then paddle back to where we started and have a pleasant lunch of fish curry, vegetables, omelette and rice.

Lunch

In the afternoon we paddle off again, this time in the other direction along the creek. We go through the mangroves on small waterways and through more cave tunnels.

Another cave

After the kayaking we travel back in the minibus, but we stop on the way for a refreshing swim in the pool of a river. The water is incredibly warm for a river and clear and deep.

Swimming in the river

As we are finishing our swim it starts to rain and we shelter in a gazebo watching the enormous raindrops crashing into the river and listen to the thunder.

Rainstorm

As we drive back towards our hotels the sky is almost dark, although it is only the middle of the afternoon and the road has turned into a stream of orange muddy water.