Krabi!

Friday evening 5pm and we are off to Krabi!

It's a beautifal evening and the sun has just set, casting Bangkok into it's magical street lit night. Heather and I flag down a cab to get us to the airport, we each have our back pack suffed full of clothes and cameras, I brought along my guitar so I could play for Heather on her birthday.
The cab driver seems fine as we drive through Bangkok even tho he is a little jerky in his driving however we notice something is wrong when approching the airport the cabbie misses the "Passenger Terminal" exit and starts taking us to "Air Cargo". Now I know I'm a fat guy but I don't need to fly Air Cargo! We think that maybe this is a back route so we don't say anything untill he pulls up to the bus terminal and askes for directions, we drove past five different signs that said where to go! With new directions in his head the cab driver turns down a few back alleys and gets us on to some type of major road and almost gets hit by a truck and we almost run into another cab, needless to say Heather and I are not impressed at this point. Heather knows that we need to turn left at the next road and tells the driver and he almost doesn't turn down the street, she said it almost a half a dozen times. Finally approaching the Passenger Terminal the cab driver almost drives into a flag person who is directing traffic.
After paying the cab driver we arrive with about twenty minutes before take off so we check in and start to run to our departure gate which just happens to be the farthest terminal away from us. We started by standing on the moving walkways and eventually we were jogging on them just to make the flight. We eventually arrive at our gate and board the plane with minutes to spare.
The flight over was nice and short, they gave us a Meal in a box that was comprised of juice, water, and salad with some kind of chicken product that I couldn't really identify. Once we landed and went down to the baggage claim I had to sift through the Euro trash to get to my guitar that they made me check even though some of the noisey kids they allowed on the flight were bigger than my guitar. After leaving the airport building and buying shuttle tickets to Ao Nang, which was the closest beach that we could get to that night, we spent about half an hour sitting around on the concrete being told one thing then five minutes later another. Finally we were escorted to a shuttle van that transported Heather and myself and a flight attendant to Ao Nang which was pretty busy for a small beach town on a Friday night.
Walking up and down the main street we were asked every few steps if we wanted a room. "Cheap! Cheap! Come now!" All the cheap cheap rooms were Groooooooss! A few of them were run by white people and Heather and I both felt sketchy about taking a room in Thailand from a white person, call me paranoid but I didn't want some Thai girl to knock on our door at midnight telling us that the front counter had sent her. We soon found "The Ao Nang Palace Hotel" and at 800 baht a night it was a steal! Nice clean room with a private balconey, mini fridge, TV, full bathroon with a nice shower, and a big bed. For $24 a night I would recomend it to anyone staying in Ao Nang. This was the view from our room.

The next day we discouvered that Ao Nang did not have a very nice beach at all and Raillay beach seemed more and more apealing by the second.














Boarding a long tail boat for 60 baht we were sped over to Ton Sai beach then Raillay East then Raillay West, had we stayed on the boat we would have discouvered Pranang Beach the first day which is the nicest beach in that area. However because we didn't know what was where we spent most of the day walking around the mud flat type beaches of Raillay East, having a couple drinks at this small resturant where all the wait staff seemed to be moonlighting ladyboys, later we took a boat back to Ton Sai Beach and booked into one of the cheapest places we could find and promptly fell asleep because the heat had taken it's toll on us.



Later that day we sat and watched the sunset and took and early night.

Sunday was Heather's Birthday and we had planned on going over to another of the beaches and going for a walk up to a look out point that we had seen on one of the maps. First we needed to change accomidations so before breakfast we packed up our stuff and treked up to another "Resort" which was much nicer than our first choice. We walked around a bit but then I noticed that the heat was really getting to me because I started to see spots in my vision, so we went back to the room and I realized that I haden't drank any water so I was starting to show the first signs of dehydration. We got some "oral rehydration salts" and they definatly helped but they had the strangest picture on the package. It looked like a little bear kicking the other in the head.

After an hour or so of recouperating I was ready to trek out to see what we could see, but then it started to rain, and it rained all the rest of the day. It wasn't a bad day, we sat at one of the covered resturants and ate and drank for most of the day. Just before the sun set the rain stopped and we were able to catch a nice sun set from the beach.

We spent the evening first at a bar where there was a pool table, that I beat Heather at twice, and then we went to a nice resturant that had amazing Bar-b-q chicken, potatoes, and corn.
Monday we finally got out to Pranang beach and saw some of the most amazing rock formations that I have ever seen.
If ever at Raillay beach check out Pranang because it has the best sand, the best view and it is the most secluded.



We didn't spend a lot of time on Pranang because we had to catch our flight later in the day so we took a boat over to Ao Nang and as we were eating lunch it started to rain again, really hard. We spent a couple hours at the resturant and then took a taxi down to to the air port for a short flight home and great ending to a great weekend.
Talk to you soon
Ray