Krabi by Land (Pt. 2)

Krabi, although a fishing town, is also very interesting when toured by land.

When you’re coming from the Land of Snow (good ole Minnesota) it’s nice to have a few days of laying around in the sun. Brian, Brittany and Larry had fun roaming the streets by our villa and found a nice place to eat lunch about a mile away. One day we all took a nice little walk there, ate lunch, and came back to the Thai people in our villa freaking out. Apparently they had heard that a few tourists were killed somewhere in Krabi and our “neighborhood” isn’t the safest. Oops. After what felt like a big game of charades we found out that Khun Bill (a different one than the speed boat navigator), and the three Thai women who work at the villa were driving around on motorbikes looking for us and asking if anyone had seen 6 tourists. When they heard no good feedback they sat at our villa and waited. Double oops, sorry.

Our next trek by land went a lot more smoothly. The closest “city” to our villa is a place called Ao Nang. One day we hopped a taxi van and spent the day walking around, laying on the beach and shopping. When shopping it is always an interesting experience. Vendors yell out “cheap cheap” and “special deal for you.” Britt cuts the price down to half of the asking price, Lexie quietly gets it down a few Baht and Robin just asks Britt to do it for her. Quite the opposite of their shopping personalities in the States! This town boasts more familiar places too like McDonalds, Haagan-Dazs and Starbucks. It was an exhausting urban adventure.

Our final ‘land tour” was one done through the jungle. On this tour we stopped at a natural hot springs, a naturally emerald body of water and a naturally deep blue pool of water. We couldn’t swim in the last one because the floor of the pool was made of quick sand. It was a great change of scenery walking through the jungle and a very different experience. On the same tour we got to see pineapple plants and how they’re harvested as well as rubber trees and how they’re tapped. In Krabi the making of rubber is the most common job held. We ended the day by going to a Buddhist temple built into caves. Not your typical place of worship.

It was a very busy week in southern Thailand, but we were able to soak in sunrays, take in the scenery and learn a fair amount of knowledge both by sea and by land.