Krabi by name, Krabi people by nature!

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View from our balcony

Rain, rain go away come back another day!

Relieved to be leaving Phi Phi, we caught the morning boat to Krabi Town which again only took 90 minutes or so. Arriving into Krabi, quite a few travellers were puzzled as we arrived into a different port to what we expected. Apparently the local transport cartel had lobbied (sorry bribed) the local government to change the entry point to Krabi as they weren't making enough money from the people arriving by boat. The new ferry port did not have any public buses running from it like the old one did and travellers were reliant on the lying, scheming and cheating taxi drivers congregating at the entrance of the port. One of these cartel men started talking to Neil and Donna's parents while Donna went to investigate transport options. He was adamant that we wouldn't get a taxi for less than 500B to Ao Nang, he didn't even have the grace to look sheepish when Donna came back announcing she had found a taxi outside the ferry compound for 300B. Grrrrr, transport cartels in Asia, we won't get started on this subject again!

So we arrived into Ao Nang and found a nice guesthouse for 500B, called Seaworld guesthouse, although we did try to haggle with the owner - a miserable old hag we nicknamed Mavis - to get the rooms slightly cheaper but she was having none of it and informed us that she could sell the room 10 times over. She demanded we pay for our 5 nights all up front, which of course we didn't and she was incredibly rude to Neil when Donna and her parents were taking the bags up to the rooms. Needless to say that because of Mavis' nasty approach to her guests and the fact that there was a hole in our ceiling which let the rain in and the sink in the bathroom didn't flow away, we moved to the guesthouse next door the following morning!

After grappling with Mavis we headed to the beach, after our Phi Phi experience we were excited to see water you could swim in! The beach was nice but quite narrow, again it had the same problem in that when the tide was in there was hardly any space to lie on the beach and the water quality again was rather poor with brownish looking water and some jellyfish.

Ao Nang was quite quiet but the people (Thais and tourists) that were there were very, very miserable, maybe this was due to the fact that most bars and restaurants closed at 10pm or even closed at random times along with some shops with no explanation. If it rained then the majority of places would just close, which made us worry that we may not be able to find anywhere to eat! A couple of nights we walked out to have drinks and saw maybe 5 other tourists, this seemed to be affecting the vendors in Ao Nang for the worse as they (again, like Phuket) refused to haggle for things and wanted 1000B (£15) for a denim skirt that should only have been 350B at most. The worst vendor was a watch seller who picked a fight with Neil for asking the price of an Omega watch. This particular vendor was a nasty piece of work, saying he could 'take' us all and he didn't care if we bought from him, he had enough money, he also called us a few nasty things in Thai too, which he didn't think we could understand. At one point he even tried to take a swing at Neil...all for asking the price of a watch, unbelievable! Such Krabi people!

The weather in Krabi was also awful, it rained nearly every day we were there, with maybe a respite of a day of sunshine in between. Donna's parents were loving the massages (sorry mass-ass) on the beach and the free fruit the mass-ass ladies gave to entice us into their little mass-ass huts...of course being the cheapo's that Neil and Donna are, we took the free fruit offered but never went for the mass-ass!

Nightlife and activities were somewhat lacking in Ao Nang. We had planned to take a longtail boat to Railey beach, but when we looked into the cost it was 80B per person for a 15 minute trip (according to that piece of rubbish guidebook LP it should have been 30B) but as the weather was that bad we had to give up on the idea of a day trip to Railey as we heard a few people were getting stranded there when the waves got too high for the longtail boats to travel! Yet another asian transportation cartel. An interesting observation is the Thai traffic police who seem to like pulling all the sunny pics were taken on one day! It rained the rest of the time we were there!
over westerners on motorbikes for things like 'not wearing a helmet or not strapping it on correctly'. The westerners get a ticket and a 1500 baht fine payable by means of a bribe or by going down to the local police station. However, on several occasions we saw whole Thai families going past on their bikes not only without wearing helmets but also having everything from tv's to babies shoved in their shopping baskets on the front and yet they didn't get a ticket.

We found the prices in Krabi to be just as high as Patong and Phi Phi, although some bars did have special offers to try and pull in the customers, but it still wasn't as cheap as we were expecting it to be. We noticed that a lot of the package tourists with big budgets were eating at the plastic chair roadside vendors, this was due to the fact that the other restaurants in Ao Nang were quite expensive with poor quality food and small portions.

We left Thailand to head to Malaysia...a place which we hadn't planned to go to but because of Thailand's restrictive entry policy for tourists we decided to give it a go. Surely things could only get better?, however it was another one of those minibus, bus, boat, bike combo journeys that can really give you a headache and take forever!

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Photos

view from our balcony
...not bad eh?

Donna in the rain eating Thai food
...not all of it is for her though! See that look of concentration!?

rain from our balcony
all the sunny pics were taken on one day! It rained the rest of the time we were there!

CHOO -- CHOO!
what a strange place to see this steam engine, it was made in Stockton!

Donna on a swing
which when she sat on it, her bum touched the floor...obviously not made for us big farang beasts!

Paul with those lil' monkeys...
...not Donna and Neil, but real monkeys!

Comments

[Ben Day]

Thai food
Oh man, sitting here in London, seeing that pic of Donna chowing down on delicious Thai food is making me jealous and hungry!!!