Last of Thailand - Ao Nang & Tub Kaek Beaches, Krabi

On our last full day in Thailand, we took a taxi into Ao Nang, which is a little beach town with restaurants, shops, hostels, and tour operators vying to take people out on the water for the day.  We walked around for a bit, looking into shops for souvenirs but not seeing anything we hadn't already seen.  But the girls were antsy to go across the street to the beach so we ended up spending most of our morning on the sand in the shade of palm trees nursing our sunburns while watching the girls splash in the shallow water with their waterwings.  Since Ao Nang is a really popular area with lots of people, there were locals walking up and down the beach with coolers full of cold drinks or little grills full of coals and buckets of fresh corn that they would grill for you right there while you watched.  We got some orange Fantas and corn for a snack and then grabbed a tuk-tuk back to our resort around naptime. 

While the girls napped, I did another cooking class, this time through the resort where we were staying.  It was actually just me and the head sous chef for the hotel's restaurant, which was kind of cool.  He actually didn't speak a ton of English but we managed to get by pretty well and I got to learn to make some amazing spring rolls, another soup called Tom Yam Goong (soooo yummy), and a red curry.  

Once the girls woke up, we went down to Tub Kaek beach to hunt for hermit crabs and seashells, which is what we did every night we were in Krabi.  The beach had the most spectacular sunset views of the islands and the tide was low each night so we had plenty of beach to stroll on.  We found living sand dollars at the end of cool trails that they made through the wet sand and Clara filled her pockets and our hands with seashells that she gathered.  The rest of these photos are from three different evenings but since they are all the same thing I just grouped my favorites together.  

Those little pearls of sand on top of the smooth sand that you can see in the photos below were made by crabs digging themselves up out of the sand once the tide went out.  They made these cool patterns and we thought they were fascinating.  You can see tiny holes at the center of each pattern from where the crab burrowed itself out.

There was also a rocky outcrop sort of area that was fun to explore and each evening we were there a local fishermen was out checking his nets.

That's the fisherman that Rose is watching in the photo below.

Clara has been obsessed with practicing her cartwheels lately (and is improving quite a bit because of it) and she did cartwheel after cartwheel on the soft white sand.

On our very last night, we ended up sitting at the outdoor tables right next to the sand, ordering tropical drinks to sip long after the sun went down.  The girls went absolutely wild for the pina coladas and tropical mango punch mocktails and we wished we had done it every night instead of just the last one.  Instead of blending the pina colada, like we have had other times, it was more like a juice poured over ice and wow, it was scrumptious.  I finally had the thought to take a picture of the resort.  It was built on a side of the hill and kind of stepped down toward the beach with pools on each level.  

This picture was taken with the camera just sitting on the table where we were sipping our drinks and watching the girls run around between sips.

Ah, it was such a wonderful trip.  Clara keeps asking when we are going to go back.  I certainly hope we make it there again someday.