Day 55 - Ko Pha Ngan to Krabi
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
56
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Krabi,
Thailand
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Not quite sure why we ever thought it would be a good idea to leave the morning after the Full Moon party (?!), especially as I awoke with a thumping hangover, had to pack, get some money out, and then walk down the beach to the collection point.
At least we got a chance to check out the Full Moon beach 'the morning after', which still had a few casualties asleep or staggering around on it!
Although fair play to the authorities, they had already nearly finished the "clean-up" job, which was very impressive...
Here's a photo of the full moon beach (Haad Rin) from the bar where we started last night, at the right end of the beach:
We grabbed some breakfast, even had some sandwiches made for lunch which was alarmingly organised for us, and then went back to our hotel to grab our backpacks and head to the next door resort for the bus pick-up back to the port & ferry back to the mainland.
Needless to say the taxi/pick-up truck was somewhat quiet as all our fellow ravers were in a similar condition to us, except the annoyingly chirpy English girl sat next to Katie, who would not shut up the whole way to the boat. I'm pretty sure my fist was clenched most of the way as I imagined all the ways I could kill her American Psycho stylee if she didn't put a sock in it!
We'd booked a combination ticket in the town yesterday, so we were REALLY looking forward to a deeee-lightful taxi + boat + bus + taxi + taxi + bus + taxi to get to our hotel in Krabi, grrrrreat...
After a short wait mostly spent laughing at people in much worse states than us, we got onto the boat quickly and managed to secure good seats in the air conditioned 'VIP' room (that's more like it), and sat back to enjoy the 2.5 hr crossing.
Again it was cloudy and a bit rainy, so we've been pretty unlucky with our "beach week" so far, although I think I remember seeing the sun a few days ago?! We might as well have been in Cromer!
The crossing was fine, and soon we arrived in the port, about 40 mins away from Surrat Thani on the north east coast of the south part of the Thai mainland.
We all had different coloured stickers attached to us before we got onto the ferry, and had spent most of the crossing wondering what the hell they were for.
When we walked off the ferry the transport buses all had 'spotters', whose job it was to separate people according to colour of our stickers.
Our sticker was bright orange and said "Holiday", and sure enough when we got onto dry land one of the blokes was waving his arms around and shouting "holiday!" and the top of his lungs. Alright mate, I've got a hangover, can't you hold up a sign or something?
Soon we were on the air conditioned bus, and off we set to Surrat Thani.
Thankfully it took a fraction of the time it took to get here the other day (mainly because this driver actually went STRAIGHT, on MAJOR roads, controversial...), and when the bus stopped we were herded into a pick-up truck.
Our backpacks were unceremoniously shoved on the top of the truck, in the rain, and the back of the truck was filled full of hungover backpackers.
10 minutes later we arrived at a ticket agent's office, where we were told to wait until the bus to Krabi (our final destination) arrived.
The tickets said "5:30" but surprise surprise I think we eventually left there about 6:30pm, after watching some of 'Blood Diamond' with Leonardo DiCapario, with about 56,842 backpackers crammed around one small tv set.
Naturally the transport arrived with about 20 minutes of the film remaining, don't you HATE having to miss the end of a good film?!
Another truck took us into town, and at 7pm we climbed onto the bus itself (we'd been promised an arrival in Krabi of 8pm, and that was bloody miles away!), and the bus seemed surprisingly ok, ignoring the VERY bizarre Thai sitcoms screened on the tv at the front of it...
I challenge anyone to follow the plot of these shows if you don't speak Thai, it was like Norman Wisdom fronting a Carry On film with dwarves and the ghosts of fallen rock stars.
We'd been travelling up some fairly small roads for about an hour (it was now our alleged arrival time), dropping all sorts of random people off on the way, to the point where I was sure that we were actually going nowhere near Krabi.
Katie asked the driver when we were due to arrive, and he said "2 hours".
We both looked at each other and said "he can't mean ANOTHER two hours, surely?"
Errr... yep... and insert your own joke about Shirley ;)
At 10pm (2 hours late!) we eventually pulled into Krabi bus station, which looked like a municipal tip, except it smelled worse and a tip would have had better architecture.
We got unloaded into the office of yet another ticket agent (here we go again, we thought), but the staf were surprisingly helpful, recommending a good value hotel in town, and even arranging for them to collect us. Result!
Of course they must have made some commission for their efforts, but it was still relatively cheap as chips so no problemo...
The bloke from the hotel was very smiley, so we hoped the place was as nice as he seemed to be.
When we arrived we were very happy to see that the hotel itself was clean and new, and the staff were amazing, really friendly, funny and helpful. There were a few other backpackers relaxing in the al fresco kitchen/tv room area, it looked like a cool little place.
We dumped the bags in our genrously-sized room, then hit the cafe downstairs to get some food. Dinner was really tasty and very cheap, about $2 for a nice Thai curry, good WORK!
The staff helped us get our plans sorted for tomorrow (boat taxi to Railay peninsular), which was also very helpful.
We were both knackered after our late night and looooong day travelling, so we fell asleep as soon as we hit the bed, and looked forward to our trip out to Railay bay tomorrow, which had been recommended by our friends Kirsty & Rich in Singapore.
Fingers crossed for some SUN tomorrow please!
lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
