At last we woke up to some sunshine. After a very filling breakfast in the hotel we decided to walk along the seafront.
First we have to take a ten minute walk down the hill, past the shops, restaurants and massage parlours?
The beach is a large bay with sand and plenty of activity. You can catch a longboat from there whether on a tour of some of the nearby islands or as a taxi to the nearby beaches.
The walk along the beach was very pleasant but it wasn’t long until we had reached the end. We went up onto the road and walked some more. A young lady at a local travel agent caught our attention and showed us some Kayaking trips we could do. This is something we have been looking to do and after much deliberation we chose an afternoon tour that was purely kayaking (no elephant rides added onto the trip!!!). We were offered a good discount if we booked for that afternoon so we did just that. We would be picked up from the hotel reception at 1pm. Being nearly 12o’clock it was a brisk walk back to the hotel and change ready to go. Another Thai time…. a car arrived for us at 1.35pm. It stopped at the bottom of the drive to pick up another customer. This turned out to be a police detective from Denmark who was on holiday for the Christmas break. Whilst chatting with us he told us that he part owned a Kayak company in Denmark in which he was the silent partner just helping out on some of his days off. His friend managed to day to day running of the Centre.
The journey took approximately one hour. We were greeted with the offer to make ourselves a tea or coffee. Lots of other people arrived but were were told we were waiting for the pick up vehicle with the rest of our group.
At last we were ready to go. A very brief description on how to hold the paddle and the choice of wear a buoyancy aid or not. The boats were double or triple sit on tops so Paul and I had a boat together.
The first place the guide took us was round the corner to a pier where there were a troop of monkeys playing.
We then headed into the mangrove jungle where yet again we saw monkeys playing in the trees. We were told that none of the kayak groups fed the monkeys because the locals want them to remain wild.
During the two hour paddle we went into a limestone cave, saw stalagmites and stalactites, we passed through a deep ravine with high cliffs on either side of us.
Eventually we passed through a small gap in the cliffs and opened out onto the sea with lots of other islands dotted around.
Around an island and we were taken to a very small sandy beach.
We stopped there for 20 minutes or so and were able to swim in the warm sea. Back on the boat and a short journey back to our starting point.
There were large platters of sliced water melon and pineapple to be eaten while we waited for our car to take us back to the hotel.