Krabi

After a 10 hour bus ride from Kuala Lumpur we arrived at the Thai border and faced the gruelling task of entering the land of smiles. The queue to enter the country was short, no more than 60 people, however, the immigration officer decided to take perverse pleasure in prolonging the experience and ensuring a 60 person queue took 90 minutes to clear. Normally this wouldn't really bother me, despite what you think of, but on this morning, after no sleep or food I didn't enjoying standing up for such a extensive period. When I finally arrived at the front of the queue the procedure was swift, it took no more than 30 seconds to add the 4th stamp to my passport, heaven knows what was holding the queue up.

Once through immigration we faced another 6 hours on the bus to get to Hat Yi, a small interchange town from where all of Thailand is accessible. It was here we picked up our connecting bus to Krabi. What an devilish journey this turned out to be; 5 hours squashed into a bus which could only have been designed by a dwarf taking revenge on normally sized peopleKrabi. I really wanted to sleep but each time my head drifted backwards it dropped over the back of the neck rest, a neck rest which I commend for its fine work supporting my upper back. Eventually I gave up because I was getting whiplash.


Krabi is the capital of Krabi province, usually tourists stay for a night or two before moving on to the surrounding islands to snorkell or partake in other wrorldly pleasures. Us on the otherhand decided to take five nights there, partly because we arrived far too early and secondly because we were meeting Pez who was flying out on the 8th May. The five nights were enjoyable and we met a good few characters, I especially enjoyed chatting to Bob, the ultra conservative American. He wasn't quite the gun toting Texan redneck but didn't tolerate people who strayed too far from his political alignment. His introduction was:

"I'm Bob, from the right"

I should have been adventurous and introduced myself as Mark from the Left but that would have only caused complications and added unnecessary friction to any proceding conversation. Proudly I did bring up Iraq and told him it was shit idea, the corresponding death glare I received wasn't pleasant but last time I checked the UK was still a free country; soon to be freer on June 27th.

It was in Krabi Manchester United won the EPL, as it is called here, English Premier League for those of you not in the know. We sat down to watch a boring derby match but the result was all that mattered and because it was fitting we get pissed. Similar story the next day, Chelsea could only draw with Arsenal so we were champions, fuckin' A.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the bar we were frequenting had the poorest excuse of a Ladyboy working behind the bar; I mean it's a poor excuse anyway but this was blatent. A big fat jaw and stubble surely couldn't confuse even the most desperate sex starved perverted tourists. It sure was funny watching her? walking around serving the drinks, imagine any bloke you know fitting himself into high heels and drinking 2 bottles of red wine and, upon instruction, get up and stumble comically around the room. I had a good chuckle, haha.

The next day we took a bus to Ao Nang beach, 20km from Krabi town, upon arrival it began to rain. It proceeded to rain heavier so we took shelter and got some lunch. It continued to rain and got even heavier, it was beginning to feel as though the monsoon had arrived early, if not monsoon then at least a minor hurricane. This continued all day so we decided to scarper. Upon arrival back as the hostel the receptionist promised us 4 days of rainstorms; brilliant.


Escaping the Ao Nang rainstorm, not pictured, the rain.


Pez arrived on the 8th and we went out for a few drinks. We found an awesome reggae bar, reggae bars appear frequently here, and dived in for a few games of pool. I went unbeaten for 6 matches which was an absolute miracle considering I couldn't focus when looking above my glasses; because they fell down my nose, not because I was pissed, yet. I even beat the shark of the bar, Pond, he must have been having an off night. After a few beers and White Russian cocktails we, and the other punters, nine of us in total, were treated to a few free shots from the bar owner, Wood. It was a great place to be and the vibrant, alcohol induced, atmosphere, was hard to detatch ourselves from but, come 2am we decided we had to leave. We had an early ferry to board to Ko Phi Phi, a beautiful island totally destroyed by the Tsunami of 2004. I'll write more about this in a later entry.


Pond takes defeat with a smile, beer and ciggie.


Having become so slack with my blog recently it took a lot of energy to type this, even more so when I hit the stupid power button on the keyboard and lost all my typing. Why do they put those stupid buttons on a keyboard? Somebody from work please tell me, they are frigging annoying!