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Continuing my previous post on krabi, after phrah nang beach on day one, we took a boat short ride to Railay beach just next door as it was separated by a series of limestone walls! We weren’t that amazed at Railay as Phrah Nang was so much prettier! However, the sunset view was gorgeous so we chilled on the beach and then entertained ourselves with jumping shots, before finally returning back to Ao nang. We chanced upon a huge seafood restaurant right at the beach where we alighted from the boat, and it was a score! The food were so delicious! Pricier than other restaurants but still very affordable! With an awesome sunset view right in front of us, what more could we ask for? :)
They say Phrah Nang Beach is the nicest beach on Krabi itself, and I’ve to agree! With limestone cliffs surrounding the entire beach, it feels so secluded like a beach paradise on its own. Also, I think not a lot of tourists know about this beach which made it even more awesome! We spent about 10-15 minutes walking from one end of the beach to the other in which we chanced upon this small cave with loads of wooden penises. It’s like a mini shrine, how freaking gross is that?! Plus it stinks, urgh!
OOTD: Top & shorts both from H&M!
After reaching our hotel, we were so exhausted from the lack of sleep that we decided to take a 1 hour nap which ended up being 3 hours! It always happens but we never seem to learn our lesson! So anyway, we hurriedly got ready and went to have lunch at the roadside stalls near our hotel!
This was simply divine! You’re supposed to pour sugar in between the coconut filled kueh kueh.
After lunch, we booked our Phi Phi island snorkeling tour for the next day at 800 baht (S$32) each and then off to catch a long tail ride to the neighboring beaches! Was given a complimentary 5 minutes tuk tuk ride to the long tail depot area!
The boat was meant for 8 people! But because we overslept, coupled with the fact that it was off peak season, we were the only two lonely souls that wanted a ride! :( We could either wait until there were others who wanted to share the ride, or charter the whole boat to ourselves. As it was the only mode of transportation to the neighboring beaches, we decided to just go for it! Instead of paying a mere 200 baht (S$8) each, we had to pay 1200 baht ($48) for the entire boat. It was worth it having a personal “chauffeur” though! We could camwhore all we want, beach hop and laze around till we decide its time to leave and he will bring us back! So yes, we’re off to Phrah Nang beach, supposedly the nicest beach on Krabi island itself. Till next post!
Oh how I love birthdays. Its a convenient excuse to jet off on a holiday yet again, splurge on unnecessary luxury and yet not feel a tinge of remorse! Enjoyed my birthday week thoroughly with a getaway to Krabi & the Phi Phi islands as well as a stay-cation at the luxurious Marina Bay Sands with my favorite people! So here’s some snippets of Krabi, I swear the whole place is so beautiful I didn’t even have to photoshop! Will post again after I’ve sift through the 1200 photos we took! :)
Friday, 18 March, we started our epic Zhu Hai -> Macau -> Hong Kong trip. I swear, it always seems as if my bf & I are destined for the most EPIC experience whenever we travel. Cue last europe trip where we missed our train from Barcelona to Nice, and had to endure a whole day of countless other train transits just to realize the very last train tt will take us straight to Nice had technical difficulties & we were STUCK on it for 6 hrs. -_- Well we eventually reached Nice at 6am, a whole 23 hours later. Awesome much? This time round.. Expect our little tale of getting stuck in Macau for a night, w/o a hotel room! As well as… Getting stuck in Zhu Hai bcos it started getting too FOGGY for travel just when we were about to board the ferry!! WTF. More on that another post! So here’s this little xiao long bao shop that we chanced upon reaching Zhu Hai! It was the very first shop we visited that morning, and we made sure to stop by every morning because it was SO GOOD and SO CHEAP. 1 SGD for like 10? The wanton mee was awesome too! Other than that, Zhuhai was pretty blah. There’s this huge underground shopping mall, but the fashion was so-so but was so expensive! Like you’re supposed to bargain like crazy everytime you wanna buy sth? So annoying and tiresome. Ended up only buying 3 pairs of shoes and an uber cheap Cath Kidston iphone cover.
Cairns day 3, we woke up at an unearthly hour of 4am to catch the ride up to the Tablelands mountains where we chased after the first batch of hot air balloons. Then it was our turn to get into the basket and enjoy Queensland from a bird eyes’ view. It was remarkable! On board, we camwhored like crazy, not only because the view was magnificent, but because it was the 1st time we actually rode one! It was a great experience. Our “pilot” even whistled to wake those cute little wild kangaroos from their sleep to greet us :)
Cairns Day 2, we went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef! The reef was magnificent and a little overwhelming! We rented an underwater camera and took like 200+ pics. Pity I could only post 10 here. Anw, we met the star of the trip, Wally, this super HUGE blue-green fish with a really ugly forehead. It was so big, it was kinda scary, but he was really friendly. :)
BKK was awesome, but really really tiring (which explains my hiatus yet again)! We spent our last baht way too early on the last day and had to go to the airport earlier because we were broke LOL. Thankfully we did, the SIA crew allowed us check in 60kg worth of luggage w/o any persuasion or fees needed! :) Ok, way off topic. So day 2 of Cairns saw us cruising for an hour to the outer great barrier reef for us to snorkel the whole day away. It was an awesome scenic ride! Snorkeling pics up next post!
I just realised that around this time last year, the bf & I were frantically getting ready for our 1 mth long Eurotrip! Oh how time flies, I haven’t even blogged about the trip nor upload finish the photos on fb, how shameful! Not to mention the Taiwan trip in June, and now that I’ll be leaving for BKK tomorrow, I thought I better get this Cairns trip going before I never get around to it! So this was our day one, as you can see from our horrid eye bags, we were absolutely exhausted after our flight and so we took things real slow. We had breakfast, checked out Rusty’s Market & bought some fruits, explored the city & the pier before going grocery shopping & preparing dinner! Then again, there was only this much we could fit in when all the shops close at 5pm :(
Went Cairns, Australia with the girlfriends last week in a bid to break the monotony of working life & it was awesome! :) We had so much fun taking the boat far out into the vast ocean where we snorkeled at the outer great barrier reef & saw this humongous fish called Wally amongst the really beautiful corals & other fish. We also went on board a hot air balloon marveled at the gorgeous landscape from a bird’s eye view! The adventurous us screamed our lungs out while white water rafting down Barron River where I fell into the water at one point, how shameful :( We spent a bomb on all these activities but they were worth it! More details on the next post (I hope).
Continuing where I left off, we strolled down the world famous Avenue des Champs Elysees. Where we had our lunch in parisian style, almost bought macaroons that looked absolutely yummy but at an exorbitant price and shopped in the two story Louis Vuitton boutique like a queen with the money heaven sent me. Except, it wasn’t really God that gave me the $$ to splurge, it was a chinese lady that had burst her LV goodies cap. She entrusted us with 1.5k Euros (3k sgd) together with a crumpled paper with the designs, and sent us off to the boutique while she waited across the street. We entertained the thought of running away but we didn’t want bad karma for the rest of the trip when it’s only the 2nd stop! So off we went, having a personal store assistant, we picked out the designs as if money didn’t matter. It’s such an experience, really. Unfortunately we had to part with the leather babies once we stepped out of the store. But she was such a dear, she even gave us her receipt so that we could claim tax refund. We continued our stroll down the boulevard happily despite being an hour behind schedule. To our surprise, there was a christmas market at the end of the boulevard and it was so colorful and bustling with energy. It’s only in the market where you find churros, so we couldn’t resist buying some! We passed the petit and grand palais, crossing the siene river to reach our next stop, musee de orsay, next!
The Arc de Triomphe and the 300+ steps we climbed to reach the top just to take in what Paris had to offer. The Arc was delicately carved so beautifully and the 360 degree view on top was just breath taking. But also because it was freezing cold, we took a number of landscape shots coupled with frozen smiles before we beckoned down reluctantly. Spot the famous Champ Elysees Boulevard in the 2nd landscape photo. Imagine strolling all the way down to the end and beyond, we did it. :)
I just realised I left London Day 3 out! So, day 3 we still had so much enthusiasm and energy which saw us walking all over London again. Starting from our hostel, we could reach London’s famous Tower Bridge by foot. It was okay, half of it was still under construction. :/ We then followed the Thames river, and found ourselves at the infamous London Bride of every child’s childhood song. No surprises here, it was just another normal bridge. We then explored the neighborhood by foot, having our lunch at the Borough Market, taking a peek in the Shakespeare’s Globe, faking appreciation for abstract art at the Tate Modern museum (former power house) and said our goodbyes to london while crossing the Millennium Bridge and camwhoring with the huge St Paul’s Cathedral. :( We then embarked on our journey to Paris on the high speed eurotar train. Lucky for us, if we had been a few days late, we would have met the eurostar strike and be stuck in london!
Wow, I’ve really neglected this space. Am going to try to update more regularly! In continuation to the Eurotrip, we sat this extremely expensive hyper speed train from London to Paris! Reached Paris at night, and made our way to our dodgy hostel. Little did we know, it was going to be the most memorable night out of our whole trip! We felt something was amiss when we had to check in at the bar counter. We were really tired after the whole day in London and the train ride, so I wanted to rest even though our room mates invited us to the bar to party. So I concussed, oblivious to the surroundings around me. The next day, the bf said he couldn’t sleep at all, ‘cos there was this “couple” doing it really loudly in the connecting room, in front 5 other people!! OMG! I was so annoyed that he didn’t wake me up, I’ll definitely sneak a peek or two. So besides the whole making out drama, apparently there was this drunk french guy going room to room trying to find a bed, and he almost reached my bed when he was chased out of the room. We even heard he would randomly just sleep with a girl on the same bed. wtf? What a shitty hostel, really. But it was definitely a once in a life time experience! Above are pictures of the roommates from all over the world who were pretty awesome, and we would meet in the bar every night to chat and even travel tgt! :)
Day 2 in London was super hectic! We practically walked everywhere! From the London’s Eye, Big Ben, Westminister Abbey all the way to watching the guard change, then having a picnic at the Talfagar Square and roaming the british museums. We ended the day resting our legs to Phantom of the Opera musical which was DAMN GOOD!!!