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Published: April 28th 2009
Krabi Town is a jumping off point for the beautiful islands dotted around the Andaman Coast, it’s a medium sized town that has an airport a couple of jetty’s a Tesco Lotus a KFC and a good selection of cheap guest houses and back packer hostels. It doesn’t have much in the way of nightlife but the main reason that we choose to stay there (this is our 2nd time in Krabi) is because it’s really cheap (probably the cheapest place we’ve ever been to in Thailand) and the scenery in the area is absolutely amazing.
We chose a place called “P Guesthouse” but when we arrived we weren’t happy with the room that they tried to palm us off with, it was the usual scenario of ’give the couple that pre-booked a crap room and save the best rooms for walk in customers’………needless to say we left as quickly as we’d arrived and booked into Chau Fa Guest House a hundred metres down the road where we got a room with en-suite and free Wifi for 250 Baht per night (£5), this was an extremely good deal because Thailand was celebrating ’Songkran’ (New Year) and everywhere else across the
Happy Songkran
....you just know you're gonna get wetcountry had inflated their room rates. The girl that runs the place ’Bow’ speaks excellent English and made us feel really welcome, we booked in for 2 nights initially but stayed for 5.
Our favourite place to eat in Krabi is at the local food stalls at Chau Fa Pier where you can eat anything from crabmeat omelettes (delicious) to yellow curry with rice, you can also get the cheapest beers in town down at the pier and some very tasty pancakes. While we were in town they had some special events on to celebrate Songkran, amongst some of the events was a massive Karaoke stage, a night market and a fairground, all good fun, we spent a couple of nights just walking around eating bits and pieces from the various food stalls that had appeared at the night market and watching local residents trying to win prizes by popping balloons with darts.
On Songkran day itself we decided that we wanted to get out and about so hired a bike despite the guide books advising against it at this time of year due to the fact that Songkran involves the throwing of water…..lots and lots of water!!!!
We put ourselves out there and became prime targets for the kids and adults roaming the streets in search of victims. The origins of Songkran go back a long way to a time when it was regarded as good luck to sprinkle the heads of family and friends with a few drops of water…..kind of like what the priest does to us at a Christening ceremony; over the years Songkran has grown in popularity and boisterousness, today gangs roam around in pick-up trucks with ten gallon drums of water and chuck it at everyone in sight……..great fun for the first hour but it gets tiresome after a couple of hours. Barry had a hell of time trying to keep the bike under control whilst being soaked to the skin with iced water chucked over us by the bucket full…..hazardous to say the least!!! After a couple of hours of going nowhere fast we admitted defeat and returned to the guest house to dry off, thank god we weren’t in Chiang Mai where they celebrate Songkran for a full week……nightmare!!!
Krabi Province has some of the most stunning scenery in Thailand and on our second day out on the bike
Songkran Soakiing
Nobody is safe !!! we discovered some gorgeous beaches and coves that didn’t appear to be populated by tourists. During the 2004 Tsunami Krabi Province and the Andaman Coast was hit quite badly and there is evidence of this everywhere you go. They now have an early warning system in place and in the event of a second Tsunami there are signposted evacuation points, it must have been terrifying the day the big wave rolled in but despite this they all seem to be getting on with life and enjoying the beaches once again. We headed for one of the Kings Residences up in the hills overlooking a gorgeous aqua bay; it’s listed on the map as a point of interest so we thought we’d have a quick peek whilst we were in the area. As we drove up the long straight road towards the palace we were stopped by a couple of Marines on guard duty at the entrance, the sergeant a guy called James came running over to us and apologised that he couldn’t let us go any further, he was a really nice guy and asked if he could have a photo taken with us, he said to Barry, “I am
sorry, I want to hug your husband for photo” and then stood with his arm around Bev, he also apologised for his countries politics and what was happening in Bangkok with “The Red Shirts”. One hundred Marines live in barracks on site at the palace, there’s a helipad onsite and from the sea the place looks beautiful, the King doesn’t visit very often, he spends most of his time at one of the other four residences in Hua Hin.
We’d been in Thailand for a few weeks now and hadn’t done any snorkelling so a day out at sea visiting a couple of islands with the chance to snorkel sounded like the ideal way to pass a few hours. It turned out to be a great day, we snorkelled off a couple of islands then moored on a lush beach for lunch with the opportunity for a swim, it was a glorious day, visibility was good but we didn’t see anything to write home about just the usual tropical fish and not much coral. In the afternoon we visited Hong Island and spent time relaxing on the gorgeous beach and swimming and snorkelling. Hong Island was hit by the
Tsunami warnings
Signs like this appear all over Krabi Province and it's islands Tsunami and if you take a walk around the island you stumble across smashed up boats that have been washed into the islands interior, they’ve been left as a reminder of what happened on that awful day in 2004.
It’s been well documented on previous blogs that Kayaking is not my thing, for a start I seem to be much stronger with the left arm than I am with the right which causes big problems for Barry because he has to keep correcting my mistakes, but the trip out kayaking in the Mangrove Forests sounded too good to pass up so we booked ourselves a place and set off to Ao Thalane, home of the Mangrove Forest and its cheeky monkeys. We were in a small group of five plus the guide ‘Rid’; he was an excellent guide and could navigate the waterways with his eyes closed. Barry had decided to do the rowing leaving me to be chief photographer which suited me fine. We came across a few monkeys and Rid gave us some pineapple to feed them, the monkeys were female so it was safe to let them take the fruit from our hands but Rid explained
Krabi Province beach
We stopped off for lunch after a couple of hours driving that if we came across any males we’d have to be on our guard as they can get really aggressive. It was a relaxing couple of hours on the water and the scenery was stunning, massive karsts springing up out of the water covered with thick vegetation and a backdrop of blue sky. Rid decided that to get through the final part of the forest on our tour we’d have to wait for 20 mins for the river to rise, we’d been scraping the bottom of the boat on tree roots and rocks so we sheltered out of the heat in a cave while Rid prepared fruit for us and passed around cool bottles of water. As soon as the fruit came out so did the monkeys, Rid told us that a couple of them were males and that if they came too close we’d have to shout at them and wave our paddles to warn them off. Obviously fruit hungry monkeys and camera toting tourists have minds of their own and we couldn’t resist throwing a few pieces of the fruit towards them at the edge of the cave, the monkeys got a little more daring despite our best
Stand by your beds
James the sergeant paddle waving efforts and one of them tried to jump onto the kayak at which point I nearly had kittens!!! We had a fantastic day out at Ao Thalane, and would rate it as one of our favourite days on this trip.
Ao Nang is a busy resort about 15 Kim’s from Krabi town, it caters to mass tourism and package holiday makers, the last time we went to Ao Nang it poured with rain and we almost got shipwrecked (seriously, this happened 6 years ago) when the long tail boat that we we’re in got caught out in a storm in Ao Nang Bay. This time we decided to just visit the bars and restaurants of Ao Nang and leave the boats and their storms for someone else to fret about. We watched a beautiful sunset over the bay had a nice meal and couple of drinks and then it happened again….not the shipwreck thing but the pouring rain. We missed the last ride home by sawngthaew so were forced to head in the direction of the taxi stand….they wanted ridiculous money to take us back to Krabi and even though it was chucking it down and we
View from the beach
We stopped off for lunch in our longtail boat but the beach was so small that this clipper couldn't come ashore were 15kms away from our guest house we refused and took the next best option…….a motorbike and sidecar…..“Oh Arfur“!!!! For the total of 250 Baht (£5) we got a ride home in this contraption that whizzes at speed along the unlit highways and soaks you every time the driver forgets to steer away from the puddles……what a riot we had, we’re thinking about having one shipped to Spain to use whenever we go out to visit Ruby and Brian.
We enjoyed seeing in the year 2052 in Krabi and look forward to going back again in a couple of years. Next we’re off to Phuket, Thailand’s largest island, to celebrate Barry’s birthday. We’ve booked ourselves into a plush(ish) hotel for 5 nights and are looking forward to seeing how things have changed since our last holiday there 10 years ago.
Hope you enjoy the pics......be sure to click the next button to view all 34 of them!!!
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