Krabi

---

Although our next destination of choice was Koh Phi Phi, we would not make the last ferry of the day in time and so decided to stay in Krabi for a night.

The boat back to Kuala Besut was almost as slow as the trip there. We then caught a taxi to Kota Barhu, just south of the Thai border where we walked across a bridge and into Thailand. There was no real security at the thai border, anyone could have walked from one end to the other, and we had to locate the office to obtain our visas. After fighting off the mob of moped/taxi/tuk-tuk drivers we walked to the train station and bought a 1st class ticket for a few quid to Hat Yai, a 3 1/2 hour trip. This was the strangest train ride of my life. About every 5 minutes and at every stop, a different Thai person would wander up and down the train trying to sell something. On the journey, amongst other things, we were offered full meals, beers, some kind of dirty Thai snack, face towels and the strangest one of all, a blind man wandering up and down begging for money, shaking a tin with a few coins and chanting. Needless to say, my dream of getting 40 winks was shattered. Either the aisle was very small or the Thais don't see it as impolite to bosh into people whilst walking the aisles, but I was nudged by just about everyone who walked by, which was very irritating to myself and Larry, who had bagged the aisle seats.

We finally arrived in Hat Yai, again greeted by a crowd of transport operators offering every way under then sun to travel to Krabi. We eventually struck a deal with one of the shop owners and bagged ourselves a minivan with air con for little over the price suggested by Lonely Planet, which is a couple of years out of date. This journey took about 4 hours again, and we were kept entertained by Thai pop music, earplugs time.

Central Krabi is in my opinion a bit pants, and we had one beer in one of the many dead bars and got an early night, and although the place we were staying in did seem quite upmarket, a big old cockroach ran out of my pillow as I climbed into bed, lovely. Having decided to catch the afternoon boat across to Koh Phi Phi we ordered a cab to take us to the Tiger Cave Temple, or Wat Tham Seua. This is a Buddhist temple that is overrun by monkeys, some of which decided to have a fight whilst we were there which sent the rest of them mental. At this point I was trying to get a picture of one of them munching on some watermelon when it all kicked off. Since I'd negelected to invest in a rabies jab, I left them to it.

Some idiot suggested that we climb the 1237 steps up to the giant Buddha 600 metres above, so we did. It was probably the most knackering experience of my life and thank god they had drinking water up there when we finally made it to the top. We did it in less than 1/2 an hour, which was pretty quick, and the Buddha and the views from the top were definitely worth it.

We then headed back to the hotel where we picked up our bags and headed to the pier to catch the boat to Koh Phi Phi.

---