Thailand - it's been only a few days, yet I have seen a lot and much more to think about.

We arrived at Krabi airport early afternoon on Saturday. The airport there is very small and serves almost entirely the tourist crowds of the area.

The first interesting this to see was our bus to Ao Nang and Krabi.

The area around the driver was used for storing luggage as the bus did not have luggage storage space underneath. Interesting way of doing this.

The annoying thing about the journey though were the tourists on the bus, predominantly Europeans. How embarrassing some of them represent us. Some of them seem to have forgotten their manners on the long flight half way across the world. It is probably the only contact most Thais will ever have with us and those tourists do not put us in a good light to say the least.

The Thais were super friendly and helpful yet some of the people on the bus were down right disrespectful and rude to them. They gave the drivers and support staff order rather than asking in a kind manner to solve misunderstandings.

One of the French guys even used the F word to one of the Thai's. Luckily the Thai complained and demanded an apology.

Another one complained that the driver did not stop right in front of his car. As if it would hurt him to walk for 200m.

I am glad those were the only times I saw tourists here behave like that.

During the journey we passed several buildings that were still in construction. Having been involved in a little bit of building myself lately with Habitat for Humanity I took special interest in the sight of that. Every construction builder in Europe would most like shake his head to that. Here in Thailand high buildings do have scuffolding but the wooden beams to walk on are missing so everyone is simply standing on the metal railings of it. Now I know we have done that at Habitat sometimes too but it still looked rather risky at the buidlings we passed on the bus. At least with Habitat we did not do it at the height that people do it in Thailand.

I am very highly assuming that Thailand does not know what health and safety regulations are.

Our hotel, the Royal Nakara, is located in Ao Nang a little further from the beach and up the hill. Thinking about Monsoons or Tsunamis that is the best place to be. Up here it feels much more rural and less crowded compared to the main strip.

Ao Nang is a little beach resort town that foremost lives from the tourist industry.

Krabi, where the airport is also, can be found a little further inland and is the province capital. Tourist wise it caters for the budget tourists as there are no hostels in Ao Nang.

The advantage of being in Thailand is that, unless you are travelling on your own, it is still relatively affordable to stay in one of the hotels in Ao Nang. For example our room was only £35 ($45) per room/per night.

Staying in Krabi would very likely give you a much more authentic Thai experience whereas Ao Nang is perfect for the beaches and getting to the islands.

Krabi/Ao Nang are located along the Andaman Coast in South West Thailand. Northwest of it is Phuket, probably the biggest Tourist location next to Ko Samui on the south east coast.

Many will also have heard of Phuket when talking about the Tsunami that hit the area on Boxing Day in 2004. Then Phuket was one of the main places mentioned in regards to the Tsunami because of its high rate of foreign casualties, especially Europeans, in this area.

The Tsunami was caused by one of the biggest undersea earthquakes ever recorded. It happened in the Indian Ocean with the epicentre just of the coast of northern Indonesia.

The Andaman Coast was hit by three Tsunami waves all about 10 meters high.

The death toll for Thailand as of UN official numbers stands at 5,395 dead and 2,993 missing, over 1,000 of them foreigners.

Sitting at one of the beaches here it makes you wonder how scary yet fascinating it must have felt to see this wall of water coming rapidly towards. Even more so because it takes a while to reach the higher areas from the beach.

One of the first things I have seen during visits to the beach was that signs have been put up everywhere directing you to the nearest tsunami evacuation zone. It gives you a reassuring feeling that despite not being able to predict an earthquake you know which way to run if it comes down to it.

Yet it remains questionable how high your chances of survival are considering the waves are up to 50mph fast. Even for the fittest people I would say your chances are pretty low.

Like with my visit to New Orleans I was interested to see how it has changed or influenced the area and its people. But it would also be interesting to see how much has been rebuilt.

Unfortunately with the language barrier it was much harder to hear more about it from the locals than it had been in New Orleans.

One of the tour guides though told me that most of Krabi had been saved by the rocks that surround the bay and therefore blocked the waves. Only a few hundred death were counted here whereas at Phang Nga which is near Railay Beach on the Krabi Bay had nearly 2,000 Thai death and over 2,000 Foreign Death (Stats from early January 2005, therefore not the final ones).

My tour guide also told me that Bamboo Island and Ko Phi Phi had been completely destroyed and flooded. Both island are very small and very much on sea level.

Driving around the Krabi area I saw a few patches of land that looked like houses used to stand there but it was far less than what I had seen in New Orleans.

In general you could not tell at all what had happened here 8 years ago.

I find it somewhat bizarre that an area in Thailand manages to recover much faster than a city in the richest country in the world.

Having said that I should emphasize that I am only referring to southern Thailand as I cannot judge the rest.

It was at least to some extent I think the fact that so many foreign nationalities were involved in the tragedy as well as the third world effect that so many NGO's and governments gave financial and practical support to all the countries hit by the tsunami.

Whereas the USA never asked for help and without the invitation foreign help is not allowed into the country.

Yet what both, Thailand and New Orleans have in common is that the tourist areas were rebuilt first after both places have been destroyed by water. If the only thing you visit in New Orleans is the French Quarter than you would not be able to tell what happened to the city 6 years ago either.

And so when walking down Ko Phi Phi village at the island's coast you were in the right midst of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shop like nothing ever happened.

For the locals who survived, it seems like nothing has changed, not financially anyway. For better or worse they are still living in basic little houses next to the fancy modern resort hotels serving the tourists.

It made me wonder where all the money goes that the tourists bring with them if it clearly doesn't go to the locals as they are still living such a simple life.

How can we really justify to stay in resort hotels and eat in restaurants for dumping prices when clearly the locals who work there only get a few dollars a day and could not afford to stay at or eat in the places they serve in.

Of course the tourism revenue is important to the area and essential for the locals to survive but at the same time I would like to see more of the money go to the locals and see an increase in the living standards for them. They are the ones who should profit from it and not the CEO's of some big international company.

When we spent a day at Railay Beach we walked a little further inland away from the tourist strip and encountered a small alley of houses where the locals lived.

Around here the nice beach restaurants, massage places and souvenir shops seemed far away and it looked more like jungle out. From all the beach happenings on the beach there is a little path leading towards the Resort Hotel passing a couple of restaurants and bars that look more basic than the once at the beach or within the resort. The Resort as such is completely fenced in; more precisely it is surrounded by a stone wall of at least 6'6 in height.

Just on the outside of it is a collection of small, simple stone houses with roofs made of corrugated metal sheets. The kitchen and bathroom were joint outhouses, used by roughly 50 people that lived there.

Seeing this right next to the fancy Resort Hotel was an uneasy view and took away the good feeling of the holiday. Yet the way it was laid out it was possible to easily ignore the less picturesque part and sadly most tourists properly do. We for sure would not have gone there if I hadn't dragged Jonathan off the beaten track.

I do not believe that the locals want to live in these kinds of conditions but simply cannot afford anything better. The modern world has clearly arrived in their lives with satellite dishes on quite a few of the houses - showing the contrast of third world mixing with modern western world.

On my last night in Ao Nang I had a similar encounter. This time I was on my own as Jonathan was already worn out from our day at the beach and the short walk we did.

I first walked along the beach in Ao Nang taking in the great views and scenery until I reached the end of the bay. There the rocks were climbing up steep and high with trees growing in all kinds of directions. At the bottom was a little Buddhist shrine that was surrounded by a large colony of monkeys.

The monkeys appeared relatively chilled out and enjoyed their dinner, eating everything the tourists left behind after a day on the beach.

I still did not completely trust them as they stared at me wondering what they could steal from me or worse if it is worth having a bit of me, so I turned and walked the other way.

I ended up walking through a forest that gave a little bit of a rainforest feeling. I love those palm trees, they are definitely one of the coolest trees around.

To my left I could see what was the back of the tourist mile - a small street, lined with shops, resorts hotels and restaurants. Along the little muddy path I followed there were motorcycles lined up one after the other all belonging to the locals who worked there.

The roads out there had no tarmac at all and are probably a real muddy nightmare during monsoon season.

And yet again the people who lived behind the shops they worked in lived in small and basic houses and resort hotels were generally fenced in which gave the whole thing a feel of segregation.

Whilst on tours, the tourist strips or in hotels you can easily forget that you are in Thailand because all you can see is white Europeans and the language mostly spoken is Swedish followed by Dutch and German. Many will find this comforting and a good thing but I think it takes away the Thai experience.

Southern Thailand is the right thing for you if you want to see the tropical islands and paradise like beaches but don't want to get involved in the Thai culture.

For me who usually stays away as far as possible from the tourist traps this is a strange concept. Though the islands are beautiful, so I simply have to get on with the rest.

Our first full day in Krabi we booked a tour to see a few islands and beaches around Krabi. From a beach near Krabi a speed boat first took as to Bamboo Island. The beach there was amazing. I have never experienced such fluffy and soft sand. It was much whiter than the beaches on the Atlantic and Pacific also. At the edge of the beach palm trees started to line up. It was pretty close to paradise.

From the beach it was hard to tell if anyone was permanently living here but I saw a few fisher men outside their cabins towards the far end of the beach.

Our next stop was the beach where the film "The Beach" was filmed. I cannot comment on that any further as I have not seen the film. The sand here though was just as amazing.

To reach the restrooms you had to walk a little further inland through palm trees and other tropical plants. It was gorgeous. The beach as such is quite narrow and short, surrounded like all beaches by tropical forest inland and rocky cliffs on the left and right of the beach.

The downside of the beach is that because of its Hollywood fame all tour operators stop here so the waterfront is hidden by boats lined up. The beach as such is quite crowded too.

We did not have much time to either relax at the beach or explore the hinterland because soon enough we had to continue to our next stop. This one was a simple drive by into a narrow rocky bay surrounded by rocks of all sorts of interesting shapes. A lot of them were thinner at the bottom due to the erosion work done by the water. Further up shades would wander between black, red and white. Interesting was that the rocks here had small pieces of rock hanging over like little ice crystals.

It must be the different type of rock that causes different rock erosion because I have not seen this type on any of the cliffs in Europe.

On from here we stop for a picture at a small beach where monkeys live, encouraged by the tourists who throw food at them. Unlike this place there are usually signs up not to feed the monkeys. That seems a lot more sensible to me. There are many of those monkeys around so feeding them seems unnecessary. It makes the monkeys only more lazy.

Then it was off to Ko Phi Phi for lunch. You could hardly see anything of the island because of the sheer mass of restaurants, hotels and tourist shops.

If Krabi, Ao Nang, Ko Phi Phi are less crowded as Phuket and Samui as people say, I really do not want to know what those two places are like.To me Ko Phi Phi and Ao Nang were already crowded enough.

To finish off the tour we stopped at 3 or 4 places for snorkelling but I am afraid of going under the water so I left it out.

Even if you did snorkelling I think the tour went on for too long, after a while you will all be snorkelled and beached out.

At the end of the day it is one beautiful part of the world and I would recommend for everyone to come and visit but I do not think it makes too much difference as to what island or what beach to go to in the end they are all just as pretty.

On our next day we joined a tour to the jungle. It was really nice to see something else than beaches and ocean. Moreover it was good to give our skin a rest after getting rather sun burnt the day before. Sun cream clearly goes off after a few years of usage and being stuck on a boat didn't help.

The day started off at a hot spring called Emerald Pool near Krabi. The pool was a little higher up next to a river into which the water from the hot spring flew. Surrounding the spring was a tropical forest with stones shaping a perfect natural hot tab. After the hot water it was off to the cold water at the Crystal Pool nearby. Again the pool had a natural stone tab and was enclosed in the tropical forest.

The water from the pool comes from a stream further up the hill. I followed it up a for a little while. The path of the stream was in shades from black to orange/yellow where the water was. During monsoon season it would fill up the whole of the riverbed but for now at the end of the dry season it was as expected pretty much dried up. I finished my stroll at a little Buddha shrine nestled in the forest.

After lunch it was first of to see elephants and go for an elephant ride before hitting the Tiger Temple up a mountain. I will say more about the elephants in my next entry as it goes together with my visit to a tiger temple near Bangkok that probably is as controversial as elephant riding.

The Tiger Temple we saw that day used to be a Buddhist temple but also shelter for tigers during the monsoon rain. Though these days there aren't any tigers at the temple anymore. The old temple is up the hill. It takes 1234 steps to reach the top and the temple. From the tour it was only me who climbed to the top. It was quite busy at the start but after step 400 it thinned out very quickly. Only a few made it to the top, like two Canadians we met on the boat tour the day before. It took me only 20 minutes to get to the top but I was soaked from sweat by then. It was roughly 30 degrees (90F) and a good 80% humidity. It was not as challenging as the 5000 stairs up the Pikes Peak at 2 miles high and same if not hotter temperatures but it was still a good work out.

Once at the top it was amazing. The views were across the whole bay and simply one of the best views I have ever had. The only downside was that like in Colorado it started to rain just as I reached the top. Only difference here was that it was a monsoon rain approaching. Together with a Russian fellow that I met on my way up we faced the rain and down walk having someone to share this wet pleasure was comforting. It only took a couple of minutes to be completely soaked to the bone yet I managed to keep my camera dry wrapped into my hat and top. I figured I have a better use for my top than wearing it considering it didn't keep me dry anyway. Don't worry I was wearing my bikini top. Most people had the same idea when they ran down the stairs in the rain.

It made me wonder what is it with me and climbing stairs? Whenever I do that I get soaked at the end - first Colorado and now Thailand.

It should not have rained at all while we were in Krabi as it is dry season still and everyone we asked said it is very unusual and most mentioned the climate change when asked about the rain. Coming from the western world I don't think we have much room to complain about it because it is our own fault. Yet it is mainly the third and developing world that has to live with the consequences of our excessive lifestyle that doesn't care much about the environment. Things are starting to change but I wonder if it is too little too late.

Another aspect of life in Thailand that I won't miss are the toilets. Here you only have toilet seats if you are lucky and even luckier if you get toilet paper. Assuming it is because of the sewage system over here you are not allowed to throw your used toilet paper down the flushing toilet but put it in the bin. Places to wash your hands afterwards are even rarer.

I do not want to complain about it but it does make me appreciate how we do this business in the West. Especially if you are a woman it is simply pretty disgusting and can't be very hygienic. I really do not understand how women here deal with the female issues.

I know you guys do not want to hear that but after all you do not have to deal with all of that so a little sympathy for our struggles is the least you can do.

Leaving Krabi it is somewhere I could see myself returning to. Though I would make sure to go somewhere where it is not too tourist dominated in the sense that it is eco travelling where at least some of the money you spend goes to the locals and not some CEO far away from Thailand's beaches.

It should not be necessary to see young kids, hardly 12 years old, do breakdance shows at 11pm to earn money for the family. They were really good but it bugged me that they were clearly only doing it for the money at that point because they have the cute factor.

From Krabi it was on to Bangkok via plane. I would have quite liked to do it by bus but Jonathan thought it was a waste of time to sit 12 hours on the bus to see the country if you can fly over it in 1 hour.