Krabi

Krabi was a cool and beautiful area I managed to stop in for about a day and a half. Was essentially on my way to Phuket to see Soozie and Sky but jumped on a bus taking me to Krabi, several hrs from Phuket. Got there around 6pm and found myself a pretty nice room. Just hung out for the evening and went riding my motorbike and walking around town. Not too much going on in the town except for the usual markets, some bars, and plenty of massage parlors. The best sights are outside of town including incredible rock climbing around the beach of Railey, as well as the touristy beach area of Ao Nang Beach. Also dozens of small, isolated islands including Ko Phi Phi, where parts of the movie 'The Beach' were filmed, and James Bonds island, where one of the James Bond movies was filmed. I rode my motor bike the next morning from the town of Krabi over to Ao Nang Beach, which took me about 30 minutes. The beaches were pretty nice, but extremely crowded compared to those on Ko Phangan. I would have liked to have gone for a swim but decided not to since I still have a bunch of small infections from mosquito bites and itching then swimming in the ocean every day. The bacteria in the water softens them up and makes it more difficult to heal.



Anyway, I decided to rent out a kayak from Ao Nang and paddle myself over to the beach of Railey to see if I could see any of the rockclimbing formations popular with climbers. While i paddled around some huge limestone formations and the scenery was incredible, I didn't see any areas teeming with rockclimbers, at least along my route over to Railey. Was still a great workout 90 minutes of kayaking by myself.



I would have liked to have paid one of the tour guides to go rock climbing, but since I was heading to Phuket the next day I didn't have any time to do so. Perhaps it is something I can do on a future trip to southern Thailand.

Visa Run and Phuket

Left Ko Tao on the 11th of March on an overnight visa run to the Burmese border, across from the Thai town of Ranong. While a typically high speed boat takes about 2 hrs to reach the town of ________ from Ko tao, the overnight barge was very slow and took about 5 hrs or so. There were cots and other places, mainly on the floor, to sleep on the barge. I was one of the last persons to make it too the barge as I had been getting a thai massage and almost missed the boat. Supposed to leave at 11pm, I got there about 10:50 as it was untying its ropes. Nevertheless, I was able to find a spot on the floor crammed in with everyone and their bags and attempt to sleep for a few hours. Wasn't the most comfortable but definitely alot cheaper than the other options. As the overnight boat rides are quite cheap they attract the usual crowd of backpackers and Thais looking to save money and not spend a fortune.

Upon arriving at __________, myself and others doing the visa run were escorted to a minivan for the several hr drive then to the border town. Arriving there, we were further taking to a river and had to carefully walk through several boats to get to a boat taking ourselves across the river to the Burma side. The river was extremely wide and took about 20-30 minutes on a pretty shitty motor boat to make it to the other side. Here we were able to go to the Immigration or Consulatate office to get stamped for being in Burma. Could have stayed there 2 wks which would have been an interesting experience as the Burmese town, I'm not sure of the name, had a different kind of vibe to itself. Lots of peddlers there trying to sell super cheap Burmese whiskey, pills, opium, and all other kinds of assorted stuff. After making this run across the border we were taking back across the river back to Thailand and to the Immigration office to get renewed Thai Visas. I was able to get 60 more days good till mid Mid.

While most of the other travelers I was with were intending to head back to Ko Tao and Ko Phangan, I myself had other plans and intended to head down to see friends Soozie and Sky in Phuket. After getting our visas stamped I had the driver of our minivan take me to the bus station where I was going to grab another bus to head down south on my way to Phuket. Right as I was arriving at the bus station there was a bus just getting ready to pull out and go to Krabi, an area of Thailand renowned for its limestone cliffs, amazing scenery, rock climbing, and also not too far from Phuket. I decided to hop on this bus and was immediately back on the road again heading south to Krabi. This trip took about 6 more hrs for me before I arrived in Krabi. In essence, I had been either on a boat or bus for about 17 hrs straight since leaving Ko Tao the night before. Was great to be able to get off the seats and stretch out a bit. Found a taxi and was able which took me to a decent guest house for the night.