Rai Leh Bay, Krabi, Thailand

1733, originally uploaded by spacebat2003.

Ah, this place is so beautiful and peaceful. I spent 5-6 days there in 1999, after finishing my job in Taipei and before moving back to Texas. I spent those 5 weeks just floating around the beaches in Thailand. The water is so calm, and these massive cliffs just come shooting right out of the water--it is a dramatic, impressive landscape. There is no cruise ship, scooter, or car traffic here, just people on foot and these long boats. It is a rock-climbing haven and a good scuba spot, too, so there are quite a few interesting (quite healthy-looking) people passing through. The sunsets glowed remarkably and most of us staying on the island would gather at this one little spot at nightfall and watch the end of the day with such reverence that the evenings became these wonderfully serene moments at the end of the long, peaceful days on Rai Leh Bay.

This beach is fairly close--by long boat--to Monkey Beach, where our long boat captain took us for lunch one day. Bad idea--what made him think wild monkeys and people with big bags of food were a great combination? He must have wanted to amuse himself!

I had been around wild monkeys before and was not about to take my lunch ashore with me. I ate on the boat, as the monkeys on the beach (where the other 6 or 7 travelers were with their lunches) got angrier and angrier and started to claw at the food at snarl at each other. Finally, the poor people from my boat had to go and stand in the surf so they could eat their lunches. Then they got stuck coming back to the boat, because it got to be low tide, and there were huge rocks everywhere. I was pretty happy I stayed on the boat. Not that I always do or have done the clever thing traveling, but at least I did that day.

If you have the chance to go to Rai Leh Bay, take it! Just skip lunch with the monkeys, I'd suggest.