Trang

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I'm in Trang, a city of approximately 70,000. I left Koh Lipe this morning by boarding a longtail boat from the shallow water of the beach near the Mountain Resort. There is no pier on Koh Lipe. You arrive and depart the island by longtail boat (40 baht per person; $1). I like it personally. It adds to the experience and forces people to get a little wet. 😊

There are 3-4 ferries per day during the high season (the ferries don't operate during the low season due to choppy seas). I chose the fastest boat ($14) which left at 10:00. It cuts an hour off the travel time from the next fastest boat (1 1/2 hours vs 2 1/2 hours) for only a couple of more dollars. Recovering from being ill, no need to be stuck on a boat any longer than I had to, right? 😊

I arrived in Pak Bara which is little more than a one-road town that extends from the pier. From there I got in a car with some other travelers to make the 1 1/2 hour drive to Trang. We were supposed to travel by air conditioned mini-bus but that was overflowing and didn't look very inviting. The overflow of passengers got split between two cars that had, umm, character? In this case, that translates to an old, dirty car with a cracked windshield, broken door handles, broken speedometer (pegged at 60), no parking break and cardboard as floor mats. Windows were down too since there was no A/C. We had to stop for some cows crossing the road, but otherwise made it to Trang without further incident.

Time to make a sidenote here. I've noticed that when the taxi and bus drivers fill up at the gas station in Thailand, they never turn off their engines. They leave the engines running. They also never seem to fill up the tanks completely. They just put in enough to get them to where they are going. This has been consistent every time a driver has stopped at a gas station with me in the vehicle (4-5 times). I'm not sure what the general population does but I found it interesting.

Ok, I'm back with the program. Anyway, as I was saying before I interrupted myself...we made it to Trang, more specifically to the train station in Trang. At this point, it was 3:00 and I figured I'd done enough traveling for the day. I checked into a hotel with A/C and hot water for 450 baht (around $11).

Trang is the kind of town that most tourists would just pass on through. These are the kind of towns I like to see. 😊 Every town has something interesting about it. In this case, I saw a baby elephant walking down the street. Now, it wasn't a wild elephant mind you. It's owner was trying to sell bananas to customers to feed the elephant, but still it was neat to see. I had a great dinner of fish and baby corn for $1.50, enough to fuel my limited update tonight. I'm feeling better but not totally recovered yet.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Phuket.

Look! There goes Dave!

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Photos

What's for dinner?
The kitchen section of a restaurant I visited in Trang.

Baby elephant
walking along a road in Trang

Comments

[jonathan.]

what up?
was great to see you in the kingdom... thanks for making the time! enjoy the warmer weather, i got back home to east asia a few days back and it was (and still is) in the mid 30s... so much for that suntan. and class starts monday. neat.