The Walking Spondies: Jungle Trekking in Thailand

Team Captain’s Note from Carrie Kellenberger: I’d like to introduce my friends, Dean and Hedway. They recently vacationed in Thailand and were kind enough to think of contributing a massive hike in Thailand for The Walking Spondies.
Thank you both so much for even entertaining the thought of doing a hike for The Walking Spondies this month while you were vacationing in beautiful Thailand. We appreciate your support so much. I’ve done a number of jungle treks in Asia. This one looks terrifying, but what an incredible view!
Here is Dean’s recap:
I wanted to use some of my time on vacation effectively to help my Walk Your AS Off Team, The Walking Spondies! This is my second year walking in this event.
We were on a tiny location on Krabi, Thailand with not much but empty white sandy beaches, crystal clear blue waters and all of the coconuts we could drink.
But after doing some inquiring about what there is to do on the island I was told that there is a lagoon in the middle of the island that has a ‘death hike’ in order to reach it.
Death hike, you say? I think I found my challenge!
We walked the sandy path and followed the signs to the beginning of the lagoon. At first we couldn’t find it because there appeared to have been a mistake with the last sign, it was pointing directly at a cliff face.
Upon further inspection (basically, looking up) we realized that there was no mistake, this was the beginning, there were a few handholds and some ropes; this death hike wasn’t going to ease us into it slowly.
To get to the lagoon, it involves various ropes to climb up, sometime using only your upper body strength, lots of cliff faces to shimmy across and some pretty scary situations, all of this is done without supervision and without any kind of harness or safety equipment, because…..well….because it’s Thailand!
It took about 45 minutes to get to the peak, and then around another 45 minutes to get down to the lagoon. Getting down to the lagoon was even harder than going up, often there were tiny holes in the rock face you have to squeeze through to be met with a sheer drop and a rope. Down we went!
Ahh, but the lagoon! It was well worth it, the pictures can only tell so much, but it was pure beauty. Having a dip in the lagoon after such a long and scary hike was a very much appreciated reward.
And then there was going back! Another death defying hike but in reverse! All totally worth it! All to add we added a very worthwhile step count to the awesome Walking Spondies. In total, we managed to log 16,455 steps each, bringing us to a grand total of 32,910 steps for the day!