Finally! My collection is complete. :)
Our half day outing to Ao Thalane was somewhat of a blessing in disguise. We all woke up late; and thus missed the morning kayaking tours; also couldn't really go to the kayaking site further away. Ended up going to this place some 1/2 hr lorry ride away... and according to our guide (featured below) the tide was so low in the morning that it wasn't really possible for tourists to kayak anyways (the mangrove area can be really shallow at certain spots). And turns out that... cos almost no one goes kayaking at like 2pm in the afternoon, we had the entire area to ourselves! So it felt really peaceful and exclusive :)
I went in the same kayak as the guide... and hehe I get to tou1 lan3 from time to time!
Shu and Joyce in the other kayak....
Ah, one of my many cosying-up-to-monkeys experience. Well, when we first rowed out, there weren't any monkeys though our guide kept making noises to attract their attention. Then it all started when he found his 'pet' monkey. She swam across (enticed by the basket of pineapples) from the mangrove plants and then sat quite tamely just beside me/ on the basket/ all over our kayak. I've never had a monkey sit so close to me so it was kinda cool. Imagine its tail thumping on your leg :P Well, I don't have much affinity for monkeys to be honest, but when it was so close-up, I somehow couldn't help feeling a little awww.... Shu and Joyce too got their fare share of cosying-up-to-monkey experiences, though sometimes it came in the form of monkey scrambling-over-your-limbs to pick up pieces of pineapples thrown onto the kayak from the adjacent kayak (by our guide) :P
Our guide knows this wild monkey so well that they could even get 'intimate'... haha. Well, the picture is a little misleading, but our dear lil monkey here is actually more hungry than over-affectionate (trying to eat a piece of fruit that our guide has put in btwn his lips...) One of the things that keeps our guide in this area is the ability to remain close to nature. I think I can see why, even though I can't really imagine doing this for a job. It was an enjoyable back-to-nature kinda outing :)
After the first monkey leaped onto our kayak, another one followed suit as we kayaked on... and what shocked me was the lil monkey clinging on to the mother.... its hair was all wet. And mother and baby monkey sat right next to my thigh and stole my water bottle...! Our guide says monkeys dun like saltwater very much either; and thus he fed it bottled water ;)
The next pic was taken by my friends when we were kayaking through the limestone cliffs.... it was awesome kayaking through the towering structures.
2 comments:
The limestone cliffs were simply amazing... and the monkeys looked like fun! :-)
Yeah they were, though we only kayaked through these towards the end of the trip. You could kayak into sea caves too, though the one our guide brought us into was a "fake" dead-end one, with only pitch-black darkness and lotsa mosquitoes. Monkeys were fun... but at times 'scary' too.. as in... cos they were wild, you dunno if they'll attack you ;)
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