Blogs from Krabi, South-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 16

Jan 11th - arrive at Krabi What one must realise about Thai time is that is is very different from our time. I don't mean they are 7 hours ahead, I mean when they say '3 hours' it could be 5. Or 6. Where we may give or take 10 minutes, they'll give or take 5 hours. And so went our journey to Krabi. 800 bhat for a catamaran to the mainland and air con coach to Krabi, leave at 9.30, arrive at 5.30 - SWEET. Money paid. The journey went as palnned fr around... an hour! Got on the catamaran only to be thrown off in Koh Phangnan! Got on another Catamaran - which I am sure shouldn't still be in use, not unless it was in a museum - and got to Suratthani. Fine, ... read more

Lucky for me, because I'm tired, but unfortunately for you, because it's boring, day 4 was largely uneventful. It was Saturday and we needed to fly from Bangkok to Krabi. Krabi and Phuket are the two cities you can fly into to visit the southern islands. They are about 12-14 hours by bus and clearly we did not have extra time on our hands this trip. So we flew :) We took a taxi from Khaosan to the Bangkok airport early Saturday morning. We passed the large place where the King lives. Our taxi driver pointed it out and added how much he, and all the people of Thailand, love and respect their King. We heard that a lot while we were there. At the airport there was a huge shrine to him. The flight to ... read more

Still recovering from our weekend with Kate we headed down to Krabi town for 2 nights, on the Andaman coast - this time only a short 15 hour overnight bus, a breeze! Being totally honest there isn’t much in Krabi to report on – it’s just a sleepy little Thai town that’s pretty much a stepping point for going on to the Thai islands down here. But we did find a cool wee hostel that was ideal for us backpackers to chill out in - they did the best burgers in town and even put on a film each night for us to lounge to (felt like a bit of home comfort!) Krabi gave us a couple of days to relax and look into booking the next legs of our trip which we have been excited ... read more

Well another week in Krabi and we still haven’t made it to Tiger Cave Temple!! Instead we have relaxed on the beach, enjoyed the Loy Krathong Festival and I become a certified Diver!! Loy Krathong festival is celebrated according to the lunar calendar and so the date is different every year. It is a festival of lights with lanterns being launched into the sky and flowers and candles being launched into the water ways. It is to wish for good luck, merit and apologise for the polluting of the water ways by celebrating the festival!! Thais make the floating flowers out of a bamboo stem wrapped and decorated with banana leaves and flowers before 3 incense sticks and a candle is placed in the centre. We were invited to make these by one of the girls ... read more

After an hour ferry ride and 3 hr bus ride we arrived at Ao Nang Beach in Krabi. Not somewhere we had initially intended on visiting but from hearing about its beauty from fellow travellers we exercised our rights as travellers and altered route slightly. From stepping off the bus we were welcomed by the sight of beautiful beaches with long-tail boats scattered along the waters edge, something straight off a postcard. There is a good amount of development on the streets but local laws prohibit development on the beaches themselves so it affords Krabi the perfect balance between holiday destination and remote paradise. On our second day there we ventured to nearby Railay Beach. It cannot be accessed by land due to the large limestone cliffs surrounding it but 15 mins in a long-tail boat ... read more