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Published: July 24th 2009
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Phuket
The Big Pink Bus ...but for the blasted monsoons! It's Sod's Law (or Murphy's Law depending on where you're from) that the weather is great when your in a city but then miserable when you try to make it to a beach!
We set of from Phuket Town just after midday on a very pink bus to Krabi. The plan was to connect to a longtail boat to Railay Beach, about 14km from Krabi on a secluded peninsular on the mainland only accessible by boat. The bus journey was touch and go as to who might win out of our Big Pink Bus and at one point another Big Pink Bus coming the other way, round a blind bend, on a wet road! We haven't quite yet figured who might have come off worse! Somehow the driver's this side of the world seem to be pretty good considering!! This was all happening with full-volumed-cheesey-Thai-pop-karaoke-TV playing!!
We arrived at Krabi Bus Terminal 3 hours later and the rain was worse than ever! We were told that only one pier was still servicing Railay and that it was 25km's away and a 500baht taxi ride or an hour and a half bus journey! We decided
Phuket
Even the interior was over-pink! to sit down for a while and plan out what to do and where to go as Railay was looking increasingly unlikely at that point in time. It didn't help that we had an annoying taxi driver who kept pressurizing us to take his taxi to the pier even though we were so obviously not in a rush!
We'll take a moment in time to mention that this is one of the biggest frustrations in Thailand: you step of a bus, train, plane, boat and all you want to do is find the nearest toilet, or ATM, or 7/11. Taxi touts don't understand this concept and think you want to get straight into a taxi onto the next place. The weird thing is that everything is relaxed in Thailand... the trains are cleaned before they leave, the bus driver has a cigarette before he gets behind the wheel...no one is ever in a rush. Then why do we have to rush everytime we get somewhere! Sometimes we believe we're more Thai than a Thai!!
Anyway, rambling over with, we decided to stay in Krabi for the night, and assess things the next day depending on the weather and
Krabi
Mist on the limestone karsts how itchy we are to get to Malaysia! We checked into the A. Mansion Hotel in Krabi and found the best valued place to stay we have found so far! Aircon, cable TV, hot water...all for 400baht!!!!
23/07/09
We woke up with thoughts of Malaysia and so we decided to head down to Satun near the border where we would catch the ferry to Langkawi. We ambled around Krabi for an hour or so in no real rush but figured that there wasn't much around so headed for the Bus Terminal again to find a bus. After an hour and a half wait we hopped on the bus for the 5 hour trip to Satun, complete with once again a bus driver who wished he was in F1!!
We arrived in Satun but instead of getting dropped at the Bus Terminal the driver figured he couldn't be bothered and dropped us off on the side of Satun's main strip which means we had to jump on a couple of motorbike taxi's to our hotel.
The hotel was pretty much the only one in town and the first proper hotel we've stayed at complete with Aircon (that leaked all night
Krabi
View from our hotel and made noises like a strangled cat!), TV and a bath!! Oh and a shower curtain!! No more wet toilets for us!! We decided to spend 2 nights in Satun to get a good nights sleep and to repack our backpacks which have been getting pretty disorganised these past few weeks! Satun's an interesting place, far off the tourist trail where hardly anyone speaks English and absolutely nothing to see or do, but this town made up for it with it's friendliness. It's the first time we've been mobbed by school kids wanting to practice their English and everyone seems to be alot more friendly...tourists really do make the locals a whole lot different!!
So this is the last stop before Malaysia.
Stay tuned for our summary of Thailand in the next blog where we'll give you some stats (Dan is a bit of a geek like that!) and write down our best bits and worst bits.
So Laa Kawn to Thailand, Selamat Datang Malaysia!!
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