making up syllables: 1m2tm: krabi ao nang, thailand

there wasn't a direct train from bangkok to krabi so i booked an overnight sleeper train to trang, some 14 hours away. the train ride was actually fairly nice - i had my own section to myself and the fold out mattress wasn't entirely uncomfortable. there was a diner car immediately adjacent to my car and i was able to get a decent dinner and tall beer, which helped put me to sleep. in fact it wasn't until the morning when i noticed all the other foreigners were gone that i began to get nervous. this turned out to be my number one problem the entire time i was traveling alone - the self doubt, the second guessing. especially since i did such a 'loose' job on the pre-planning. but, once i confirmed we had not yet reached trang (with the help of signs on the outside train stations) there was nothing i could do except keep going until we reached my destination. at trang i took a short ride to the bus station where i learned that i could indeed connect to krabi from here and it would only be another hour by short bus. i had not failed. yet. apparently, in thailand, all roads lead to krabi. meaning there's more than one way to get there and i just took the road less traveled. that's bonus travel points, right?

train to bike to mini-bus to mini-bus to bike and 18 hours later i arrived at the ao nang grand inn, my next accommodation (★★, it was a private room but pretty run down and with a shared bathroom. there was no common space so it was pretty much impossible to meet anyone and you had to pay for computer use. for the area you could do a lot better for a little bit more. but it was pretty close to the beach so i guess that's something). Another recurring theme was the travel downtime between place to place. An 18 hour trip leaves you feeling pretty drained so i didn't do too much aside from a bit of wandering - down to the beach, around the shops, scoping out bars, etc. - and then made a reservation for a guided tour on the following day. in hindsight i should have used the opportunity to go to the beach as it was the nicest weather i would have in thailand.

the next day i boarded another bus with a group of people for an all day excursion around krabi/phuket. a 40 minute drive took us to a dock and we piled on a long boat. it had already started spitting a little bit at this point but with the ocean spraying in our faces it really didn't matter much. along the way we passed countless limestone formations jutting out of the ocean like clumsy pillars, and the rain and mist added to an already other-worldly atmosphere, like we had fallen into the land of the lost (if only! what an adventure that would have been). our first stop was phang nga bay, aka. 'james bond island' as it was used as the evil-lair-hideout of the man with the golden gun in...um...'the man with the golden gun.' it would have been a beautiful photo-op were it not for the aforementioned poor weather and the numerous knick knack stalls installed on the island. how or when the workers got there was as much of a mystery to me as the limestone giants. what did they do with their wares when they left the island? did they have to worry about thieves in a place like that? there's probably some sort of tiny thai island code they all swear by.

after the spoiled bay we hopped back on our long boats and went a short distance to board another larger boat just to get on much smaller kayaks from there. the thing about these tours is they're usually full of groups of people - pairs or threes or fours, but very rarely singles. sure it was a little weird at times ("whose going to sit with the weird white kid?" perhaps someone thought) but at other times it worked well in my favor. kayaking, for instance. whereas most people joined a kayak and a guide in pairs, i claimed 'v.i.p' status: just me, a kayak and a guide. this also meant that i was allowed to paddle myself instead of having the guide do everything, as per norm. at this point it was raining a bit harder but, again, we were probably going to get wet anyway so really it only made taking photos a little difficult. this was probably the best part of the tour as we were able to kayak through and into the limestone rock faces, finding shallow alcoves surrounded on all sides by rock faces and clinging vegetation. i couldn't really capture this in photo as the light contrast was too extreme. we also wound our way through mangroves, not to mention other peoples' kayaks (more koreans! it warmed my heart and they were totally weirded out by my greetings of '안녕하세요!')

for our next stop we visited the floating village of kho phan yee, a muslim fishing village braced against the side of a limestone karst. it was apparently a fully self-sufficient town complete with school and medical center, and im sure they had some sort of income that involved fish, but it was pretty obvious these days they made their money on tourism. an entire side of the village was dotted with identical restaurants which served the various tour groups. once inside you were left to walk through a maze of shops all selling similar shirts and bags, tapestries and trinkets. sometimes people held out animals so you could take your picture for a price. it was a little less enchanting than the initial promise (to remind you: a muslim floating fishing village, not a floating chain of souvenirs).

back to the mainland, our next and final destination was the monkey temple, which sounded kind of indiana jones-ish. the monkey temple turned out to be a cave which housed a fairly decent sized reclining gold buddha and some lesser figures. and, of course, the monkeys. my first experience with temple monkeys! they really are fun to watch - they're just like us! but small and hairy and boy do they love bananas! the temple was fairly large and extended back into a nice cave section with stalactites and stalagmites but mostly i just sat and watched people throw bananas to the monkeys who fought over them.

we returned in the evening right around dinnertime. walking down a small alley i found a pretty decent outdoor reggae bar ran by this old dude with some impressively long white hair and beard named mr. long. he had a free pool table in back and there was a regular stream of challengers, including this russian guy who had a watch shop on the strip and mr. long's son, mr. long jr. i ended up meeting and talking to quite a few people this way. all in all, a pretty good night. before i went to bed i checked the weather for the rest of the week and decided to ditch rainy thailand and book a bus for penang, malaysia for the following day. this would essentially be another wasted day as i would be shuttled from bus to bus, across the border, through immigration, and finally into georgetown, the captial of penang, some 15 hours later.