The other highlight of our trip to AoNang was a spot of island hopping. As it rained the day before, we were a bit dubious about booking the trip in advance, so we just showed up at 8am at the travel office. We headed off on the back of a truck to the long-tailed boat, each stop we accumulated more people and each stop Aaron and I looked at each other and wondered just how many more would fit. In the end, there were about 15-20 people on the tour, mostly Thai's.

Climbing into the long-tailed boat, we looked for our 'supplied life-jackets' but could only see 2, and they were both tied to the side of the boat (maybe to keep it afloat). The first leg of the trip was to visit Railay Beach and some caves. The caves were really just overhangs, but the beach was very pretty. Railay beach is one of the flashest ones down there, and is only accessible by boat. It is also home to a resort where guests pay 190,000B a night ($6,000NZ) and get 2 maids and their own personal barman.

Next it was off to another nice sandy island for lunch of chicken and rice. Then we went for a swim and endeavored to find some fishy's. The fishes at this island were far and few between and we thought we'd been had, but it was all resurrected later in the day.

After lunch we headed past Chicken Island (the only island I can remember the name of, you can see why in the pic) onto the snorkelling. The snorkelling was pretty good, we were in the water for about 45mins and saw all sorts of tropical fish and coral. Some of the coral was dead (probably from the boats, which is sad), but there was quite a bit of life down there including some anenomes which were home to Nemo fish.

On the way home, we went to 3 islands quite close together that you could walk between when the tide was low. By then we were starting to feel the sunburn on our backs and the backs of our legs from the snorkelling and were pretty ready to head home.

All and all, and awesome (and exhausting) day. Can't beat the value we got for 300B ($12) each - the boat trip, snorkelling gear, water, lunch, and fruit. We were out from 9am - 5pm.