Ao Nang
After a restful but slightly isolated stop in Koh Lanta, I felt like I needed some company. Luke and Nanna, who I’d met in Koh Lipe and then Koh Mook invited me to join them on the West coast of Thailand in Ao Nang, so I made that my next stop. It was great to see them again - considering how many people you say hello and goodbye to each week while travelling, it felt comparatively like meeting up with old friends.
For the first few days in Ao Nang, we hung out in various combinations. Beers watching a sunset on the nearby beach with Luke; a day on Koh Poda with Nanna; a trip to Koh Hong, a different island, and its surrounding swimming and snorkelling spots with them both. It was exactly what I needed after a few days alone, and I could feel my usual social self returning. The highlight was Koh Poda - a small island just off the coast of Ao Nang with a beautiful (and by the afternoon, surprisingly quiet) beach and crystal clear water. With the sea up to my neck I could see my feet on the sandy bottom perfectly. We chatted, swam, floated, lay around and got slightly sunburned. The perfect beach day.
We also spent some time trying different foods at Ao Nang night market - a huge collection of food stalls selling a big variety of foods. The most unusual thing I found was grilled jellyfish. An odd, tough, jelly-like texture that didn’t really taste of anything, it wasn’t disgusting but I have no need to eat it again. Probably the highlight food wise was the Khao Soi - a coconut noodle soup from the north of Thailand that I found to be extremely similar to Malaysian/Singaporean laksa, and honestly better than any f the laksa I found in those countries.
After a few days together, Luke and Nanna had to return home. To meet some new friends I headed out of the hostel organised pub crawl that night, and after getting to bed at 2am, got up at 8am to do what I thought was a short trail to the top of Dragon Crest mountain nearby. I had actually tried to do this hike on the day I arrived with Luke and Nanna, but the trail was closed when we arrived. Thinking it would be satisfying to complete the trail before I left Ao Nang, I headed up with Pierre, who I’d met on the Hostelworld chat, and Tim, who we met on the trail. Had I have known the level of challenge though, I probably wouldn’t have attempted it hangover. It was unrelentingly steep for the first 2km, and although it evened out a little for the second half, we were drenched in sweat by the time we made it to the top. The views were absolutely stunning though, and thoroughly worth the climb. Out of a flat plane of fields and forest, huge, steep, rocky limestone mounds jutted up randomly as far as the eye could see.
After a rest at the top, a much quicker descent and a lot of liquid intake at the bottom, I jumped in to the pool at my hostel, which for the last few days had provided some much needed refreshment after intensely hot days out. Ao Nang, a touristy seaside town, isn’t my usual kind of place to visit, but because of Luke, Nanna, and a few others, it served as an important social refresher, and floating in beautiful sea and climbing through shady forest I found some moments of real happiness here.