Woke up today with a plan to head along the coast to Railay beach and
then onto Ao Nang to find accommodation. As with all good plans it
fell at the first hurdle as the longtail boat prices from Krabi to
Railay have gone through the roof and the drivers are running a real
monoply. So we told them to get lost and got a very cheap bus to Ao
Nang. Unfortunately the prices there have also gone up a huge amount
(a theme of this region) and so we walked to the next beach, Nopparat
Thara. What greeted us was a much nicer quieter beach (below) with
much more palatable prices and lovely people. We found a bungalow at
Andaman Resort and made friends with their puppy called CoffeeMate!

With that done we were able to relax and launched ourselves into the
bathwater like sea which really helped us get over the annoyances of
the morning.

It’s looking like we will skip on the Phi Phi islands as they are
simply waaaay out of our budget and will head on to Koh Lanta next. I
think all the backpackers here are struggling as we’ve seen loads
desperately seeking accommodation and cheap food.

Our posts for the next week may be few and far between as wifi was non
existent when we checked in our next location, although we can pay a
tiny amount to use their computers if the threatened thunderstorms
emerge!