Feeling Krabi

Bangkok

Not to suggest that it’s likely, but if you’re ever in the position to cross the land border between Cambodia to Thailand, a word of advice: don’t! We travelled 3 hours by bus from Siem Reap to the border and then we queued for what must have been 2 hours in the border terminal, edging slowly along a few feet at a time, crying on the inside. Eventually making our escape, we waited roughly another hour before we were allowed to leave for Bangkok, as the driver of the mini-van wanted to squeeze in every last person that he could.

Arriving back in Bangkok, something felt different. The last time we’d been here, I was ready to move on pretty quickly. But now I was happy to be back among the hustle and bustle of the city, no doubt travelling for over 2 months had softened my attitude to the gateway city of Southeast Asia (and it probably had a lot to do with spending time in the ridiculously loud Hanoi). Although we did very little in Bangkok barring visiting our favourite Pad Thai place and going to the cinema (again), it was great to go back and made me realise that perhaps I had grown a little from all of our travelling in the last few months.

Krabi

We left Bangkok again by bus (VIP apparently) and headed to Krabi town, a small town on the south-west coast of Thailand, which is used as a gateway to the south-west islands. We left Bangkok at 6pm and arrived at 5am in Suratthani, where we were transferred to another mini-van at 7:30am, which meant a 2 ½ hour wait outside with hungry mosquitoes. We arrived exhausted in Krabi at around 10am and set about gaining back some sleep that we’d lost, but unfortunately we were challenged by the noisy builders working on the hotel where we were staying.

Krabi is a strange little town. Due to its proximity, it is used as a stopping off point for tourists looking to spend time on the south-west islands of Thailand. But it is a small town with very little to do, and so there are lots of westerners and very few Thais.

On our last full day in Krabi, we booked onto a tour of the beach islands surrounding the coast and set off early to get there. Much like the beaches in Otres and Koh Rong Samloem, the water was a beautiful blue/green and great for swimming (It was actually possible to walk between some of the islands!). We spent time snorkelling off of the boat and saw amazing marine life swimming past our hands and faces, including what looked like a very small barracuda. I’d had problems with my mask and had to spend most of the time holding my breath under the water and as a result I swallowed a few pints of the stuff. This made the swim back to the boat an absolute nightmare as I was completely out of breath and retching and Jane thought for a while that I might drown, but now she finds the whole incident hilarious. She’s so sweet.