Today I went to Krabi, which I thought was a historical town. I didn’t see much there in this respect. On the way there there are some scenic limestone outcrops standing above the bay that are very nice. After some roaming through the city I ended up in its holiday part where all the tourist life is, as well as some beautiful beaches with views to some really pretty limestone outcrops protruding out of the water in the distance (N8.03112 E98.82219). These look like the ones you might have seen in the movie “The Beach”. You can take a long tail boat day-ride around them with meals or without, whatever you fancy or the budget allows. On the left the beach ends with a very pretty mountain.

This part of Krabi is really touristy so you will find all the other things like motorbike hire and different types of hotels and bungalows here.

I met an Australian girl who owns one of the long tail boats and gives day rides to tourists. She’s been doing this for the past 2.5 years. I met her since she recognized an Australian number plate and her Malaysian friend who was driving her on a bike behind me shouted “Australia!”… :-) We stopped and had a talk. Apart from a nice chat we had I learned a few things from her and then jumped back on the bike and I was heading to Phuket. Everybody in Malaysia suggested visiting Phuket, but the Oz girl warned me that I would not like it. Not much later I discovered she was right.

On the way I detoured a few times to follow tourist markers leading to different bays and beaches. The problem with these signs is that they do show you the direction (sometimes a bit confusingly), but they don’t tell you the distance. So you could sometimes be driving for tens of kilometers and still not be there, having no idea how much further you would still have to go. My first experience with this was when I followed the first sign leading to a waterfall. I was riding dirt roads for about 15km before I decided to turn back as it was going to get dark soon. I tried a few kilometers of another road, thinking that I might have chosen a wrong road the first time, but that one looked even narrower, not promising much, so I turned after just a couple of kilometers. Since then I’m not trying to follow any of these signs. It was different with the bays and beaches, since one can at least see how far from the coast he is and therefore roughly estimate the distance.

I did it again – I arrived to my destination for the day (Phuket this time) at night. I tried to follow the “Tourist Information” sign several times in both directions but still couldn’t find the office. They have no special logo for their tourist info offices. I found it the next day thanks to a Dutch couple that I met in front of a western style restaurant where I stopped in my search for a bookshop to buy a map.

After the attempts to find the tourist info office I just roamed the city, searching for some cheap place to stay. I asked around too. For some time I had no luck, until I asked a guy in a computer gaming lounge that I was passing. He kindly hopped on his bike and led me to On On Hotel, (N7.88366 E98.38836) apparently the cheapest place to stay (I later confirmed that from the hotel price guide I received in the tourist info office). It was 140 Bath and it was so far the worst room I had. It wasn’t that bad though – I was just comparing. It was in this hotel where I used the squat toilet for the first time in Asia (and probably ever).

I always feared the squat toilet. It actually wasn’t that bad. I attribute it to being cleverer than when I was 7 years old and had to go in a forest. Then I put my pants right down to my ankles and of course had quite a struggle to not piss right into it J. Well, little over a couple of decades later I had to do this again here. However this time I left my pants around my knees and voila it worked much better.  J What a story! ;-)

(460km)