From one island to another and another

The standard Hong Island tour in Krabi brings you to four stops: Hong Island; a lagoon near Hong Island (or Hong lagoon); Pakbia Island; and Lading Island. While Hong Island has a nice, calm, and clean bay with plenty of shade to settle down for a spot of lunch, the Pakbia beach was filled with rocks and corals. Not great for little bare feet to walk on and certainly not great for sand play as there is very little shade.

However, we spent about half an hour on Pakbia Island feeding fishes and exploring the island. Kai found a long branch which he was playing pretend fishing with when I decided to walk round a tree stump in the water.

Lo and behold, I spied crabs with shells the color of the tree bark coupled with bright green spots mimicking the mould growing on the tree stump. You would have missed them -- yes "them", the stump was crawling with life -- if you didn't look too carefully. So Kai and I spent a good few minutes trying to spot crabs, both big and small, and sneaking up to them for a close look without scaring them away. But they were all too quick for us.

Our last stop, Lading Island was a huge disappointment and not even worth a visit as the small stretch of beach was filled with tourists, vendors, and boats. Kai absolutely refused to get out of our boat; this beach connoisseur knows when a beach is not worth his effort.

The motion of the boat combined with all the excitement in the morning put Kit quickly and easily down for his nap. Lucky for us. We didn't have to deal with a cranky, over-stimulated toddler on this trip!

Kai was a happy camper again after we left Lading Island for Sheraton. We'll never forget this adventure on our long tail boat! (Oh by the way, the boat on the left is our replacement boat which picked us up at Hong Island.)

I mentioned earlier that we thought the beaches on other islands in Krabi would be better than the beach outside Sheroton and that it wasn't so. That impression was based purely on this first island hopping tour -- the Hong Island tour. Only Hong Island got our thumbs up. But, but, but... I changed my mind after our second island hopping tour on Day #4 of our Krabi holiday.