Sunbathing in Krabi

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So Jeremy and I would be the first to admit that we're beach snobs. Growing up in Florida unfortunately ruins a lot of other beaches you may eventually visit. Show us some mountains, and we're enthralled. The desert? We're entranced. Snow? We think we've died and gone to heaven. But a beach? Eh...we could take it or leave it.

And then we came to Krabi.

Going back to Tuesday and our departure from Malaysia, we knew it was going to be a long day when we boarded our "mini-bus" (translation: a mini-van redesigned to hold ten people) and saw a television screen blaring cheesy Thai music videos (arguably worse than Cambodian and Chinese music videos). Ten hours later, after a painless border crossing into Thailand (and two mini-bus changeovers) we arrived in the middle of a monsoon at the lovely Haleeva Sunshine Hotel. At $20 a night, this was a real splurge for us, but the room looked like heaven compared to the spartan rooms we'd been staying in in Malaysia.

Our first day in Krabi was somewhat of a let-down. We're at the tail end of the monsoon season, and although we snagged a couple hours of sunshine in the morning, the rain began pouring at noon and didn't stop for the next eighteen hours. To top it off, the entire town of Ao Nang was without power for most of the day. So, what does one do in Krabi while it's pouring down rain and there's no electricity? You get a massage. Yes, Thai massage establishments line the streets so closely bunched together, you can hardly tell them apart. No matter, though. Wherever you go, you're going to pay about $5US and get the beating of your life. After nearly a year without bodywork, it was heavenly - even if it was brutally hot without fans or air-conditioning.

The other thing you do here is eat. After a week of super-spicy Malaysian food, we're finding the Thai food to be pretty delicate by comparison. Jeremy had one curry - the red curry- that nearly defeated him with its intensity, but the others have been pretty mild. The fried rice is amazing though - I had the greatest fried rice ever from a little old lady with a wok in a wooden longboat on Phra Nang Beach. I watch in awe as she tossed eggs, rice, a variety of sauces and spices, pineapple, and chicken into the wok and seared it to perfection. Scoop it into a styrofoam container, and you've got lunch for a king for about $2. I love this place. Jeremy has been more adventurous with the food here than me (I still can't stomach curry), but I'm taking advantage of the fact that they have really good western food for really cheap. I know, I know...it's virtually sacrilegious to eat pizza or pasta in a place like this. But Queenstown had exactly (count 'em) ONE Italian restaurant, and its dishes started at $30 a plate. Bring on the penne arrabiatta, margherita pizzas, and zuppa de pesce for pennies. I'm all over it.

Anyway. Thursday we awoke to clear, sunny, spectacularly blue skies. Taking advantage of what we knew could be the only clear day we got, we hightailed it down to the beach and stepped aboard a longtail boat to Phra Nang, about a twenty-minute ride away. I won't even bother trying to describe the water or the spectacular cliffs. The photos shall speak for me. All I'll say is that we swam in water that was about 85 degrees, swam out to an offshore island and watched rock-climbers go up the sheer cliffs, chowed down on the aforementioned fried rice and grilled corn on the cob, got blisteringly sunburned, and, to top it all off, laughed hysterically as a monkey leapt out of a tree, ran right into our bag, and stole our tin of coconut-crusted peanuts. The little booger knew exactly what to go for. Sigh. Didn't want to eat them anyway.

That evening, after arriving back in town and cleaning up, we ventured down to one of the hundreds of spas to get aloe vera massages for our sunburns. Before you sigh enviously and say, "Gee, that sounds nice," I'll tel you right now...it wasn't. Picture for a moment that your skin has been sliced open with double-edged razors blades. Now imagine lying naked on a floor mat and having what feels ice-cold battery acid vigorously rubbed into your screaming skin. Couple that with the fact that you're lying directly beneath the A/C vent, and you swear you're going to be the only idiot on the planet who has ever died from hypothermia in Thailand. That was my experience, anyway. Jeremy swears his was slightly more pleasant, although a debate has been raging for days as to whether his therapist was a really masculine woman or a pretty feminine man-boy. You can never quite tell here. Ah, welcome to Thailand.

In all fairness, once I stopped shivering about four hours later, my skin actually did feel a lot better. Holy sunburn, though. I've never had a burn like this in my life. I guess this is what happens when you live in Queenstown for a year and then decide that your skin has retained its old Floridian resiliency to the sun. It's my own fault, really. Not that it makes my purple feet feel any better.

Yesterday was splurged on a two-hour horseback ride on the beach and through the countryside. Jeremy got the feisty horse for a change, a little chestnut named Star. My mount was a tall, lanky Thoroughbred named Diamond who had absolutely no idea he was a Thoroughbred. One of the guide's three English words was, "Diamond!" which he'd moan every time he looked back and saw him lumbering along a hundred feet behind the others. We rode along the beach for a while before cutting inland and meeting up with another guide and a young couple from Sweden. The ride got more interesting after that, as the girl was also an experienced rider and we were dying to go faster. Jeremy kept the inexperienced Swedish guy company while us girls took off flying down the trail ahead of them, dodging low palm branches and splashing through puddles. Great fun. We climbed a surprisingly steep hill through a grove of rubber trees for a pretty view over the area before descending back to sea level. The ride back to the barn along the beach was a near-disaster, as the guide took off galloping ahead of us. We had the makings of an all-out-stampede as we followed suit. Jeremy's horse began bucking and kicking, trying to get ahead of everyone else. The Swedish guy's horse wasn't much better, and neither of them were really prepared to handle it. In the end, no one fell, but the guide who'd taken off in the front was severely berated by the guide in the back (in Thai, of course, but it sounded like a berating). Ah, well, we all survived to tell the tale. I was super-proud of Jeremy. For not having much experience in the saddle, he always manages to do really well on these crazy international rides ("trail rides" in the states generally consist of walking in a single-file line and being bored to tears. "Rides" in foreign lands usually turn into a contest of who can go the fastest the longest over the most interesting terrain. Probably not the safest rides for the inexperienced, in retrospect).

So!! That has been our experience in Krabi. We nearly lost all of our laundry (it "vanished" mysteriously for two days) but luckily it turned up this morning before our departure. Now we are awaiting our ferry ride across the sea to the island of Phuket, where we'll try not to get sunburned as we check out the scenery there for three days. On Tuesday, we fly up to Bangkok and begin the journey north to Chaing Mai. My, how times flies by!! Love and miss you all - we'll be seeing you in just over a month!

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Comments

[Joe Smuin]

Ya look like a Kiwi, Amy! Hope you're using sun-screen!!!!

[Aerogers]

Haha!!
I didn't use enough. :-) Getting my tan back now though, finally...

[Tom W]

Amy, Love the blog and the pictures, what an amazing trip!! The palm tree with the red trunk is a Cyrtostachys renda “Lipstick Palm”.