A Krabi Happy New Year!

Senne's Summary: We spent 3 days in Krabi just basically hanging out. Weather wasn't that great so we didn't head to Railay Beach like we planned.

We had three days to spend in Krabi, before heading to Ko Phi Phi. Unfortunately, the first two days were cloudy and rainy. It doesn't really bother us since we’ve had our fair share of sunny days already, and even when it’s cloudy it’s still hot enough to walk around outside in your shorts and t-shirt.

We flew from Koh Samui to Krabi with Bangkok Airways. When we arrived at the Samui airport (about 10:55 AM) for our 12:30 flight, they informed us that they were going to put us on the earlier flight because ours was delayed for two hours. The earlier flight was at 11:10 (yep, in 15 minutes) so they quickly checked us in and sent us running down (and I do mean RUNNING) to the gate. I guess if you need to check in with only 15 minutes to spare it’s possible 😀

We arrived at our hotel and were a bit surprised. We chose to stay in an area called Ao Nang Beach thinking that it was a beach/resort area. Apparently we were incorrect. Our hotel is on a busy street surrounded by Subway, 7/11 and Starbucks. Now I’m not complaining… you know how we like to have access to "stuff". We were just surprised. When you stay at a place called “Krabi White Sand Resort” in “Ao Nang Beach” you don’t expect to be staying in small city atmosphere 😀 Our room wasn’t ready (we were early after all!) but they let us put our bags in the room.

We decided to go check out the town. Hey! Guess what else is right beside our hotel? An ice cream shop! Steve and I each ordered our own treat, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake because they were both gigantic! (Don’t worry we didn’t waste any!) There’s nothing wrong with ice cream for lunch right?

They love their King here. You will see these shrines with photos of him all over the place in Thailand.

After lunch, we headed out to see what was in Ao Nang Beach. This is what we found: lots of stores, restaurants, tour agencies, tailors, laundries, massage places and of course a beach at the end of the street. It looked more like a beach where boats dock then a beach for hanging out at though. (Not that it really matters in the rain!)

One of the funny things about this town is that there is a truck that drives up and down the street advertising the “Krabi Snake Farm” over a loudspeaker. If you want to go you can hop in the back of the truck and they’ll take you there (no thank you!!!!) Anyway, the guy over the loudspeaker says a bunch of stuff, but my very favourite is when he says, “Snake show! SNAKE show!! SNAKE SHOW!!!!!”  (Steve has added this to his dance repertoire… I’m sure you can imagine the snake show dance!) The rest of the message sounds a little like this (keep in mind that he repeats every line twice in a voice that sounds extremely enthusiastic), “Very exciting show! Show at Krabi snake farm! Open every day from 9 O’Clock morning to 9 O’Clock evening! Best show in Krabi! Have to see it!” Maybe you have to be here to think its funny… just trust me on this one!

For the rest of the first day we just wandered around, had a very wonderful foot massage (how can you not when they’re less than $10 for an hour?!?), and had some delicious Thai food.

Side note: Steve’s favourite part of the massage was when the lady went to massage his shoulders and asked him to take off his shirt. When he took it off she said, “Oooooh, like stone!”

Our second day was pretty much like the first… a little shopping, a little eating (okay maybe more than a little), a nice massage (this time Steve had the Thai massage and LOVED it!) and a lot of just hanging out. It’s funny how a whole day can pass by and then when you look back you wonder how you filled all those hours :)

Getting my Thai Massage

We were going to attempt to stay awake for New Years Eve… but both started crashing at about 10:30. You have to be really tired to sleep at our hotel, by the way, because the noise from the bars sounds like 100 people are partying in your room with you. Anyway, we both fell asleep…

… but were woken up at about 11:55 by all the loud noises. The firecrackers, fireworks and celebrators were making a deafening noise (if you know me well, you know how loud it needs to be to wake me up!) So we got up and went out on our balcony. There were fireworks and strings of firecrakers going off everywhere… it seemed like every business and person had a few… as well as a couple of big displays of LOTS of fireworks. It’s a little disconcerting when someone below your balcony on the street sends a firework up in the air that explodes right above you… but no worries… we still have all our limbs.

This family was on the sidewalk under our balcony. having a picnic and setting off fireworks.

As well as the fireworks there were hundreds of the lucky lanterns in the sky. People wrote their wishes on their lantern and then sent them up into the sky. It was beautiful to see hundreds of lanterns among the fireworks! At one point there were so many lanterns in the sky that they looked like stars.

For our last day we were going to go to Railay Beach… but somehow the day just got away from us and we didn’t make it there. We’ll go when we are back in Krabi.

Just as we were finishing eating our dinner guess who walked by? The teachers we met in Bali who live in Duncan! We stopped and chatted a bit with them and compared travel stories. It was nice to see them again!

Other than that, the day just seemed to melt away. It’s funny how that can happen…