Booking The Boats

We had all had an excellent nights kip in the Baan Andeman hotel, which surprisingly enough had much comfier beds and quieter surroundings than the overnight train to get through Malaysia and into Thailand. James, Svitlana and I all met for breakfast and enjoyed it at one of the tables outside. It was the first time we had eaten breakfast outside, and it was a great start to the day. The rest of the day would be spent wandering around Krabi town and seeing off Svitlana as she departed for Railay Beech, just down the coast from Krabi. But first, we would need to buy some boat tickets…

We wandered into town and gradually got acquainted with the area and the way things worked in Thailand. We had a quick walk round the shops and then headed towards the river. It seems that in Thailand you need to get all your travel arrangements through travel agencies, who just so happen to line the streets of every town and city across the land. And this is where the bartering comes in. You see what the going rate is and try and get them as low as possible, without insulting them in the process. For Svitlana’s journey to Railay Beech it would only be a small “long tail” boat’s ride away, but I would need to get a proper ferry ticket to get to Phi Phi Island the next day. As soon as we approached the river a chap in a hat came up to us trying to sell tickets to Railay Beech, and Svitlana engaged him in conversation. He was offering a fare of 150 Baht (£3) to get there on his flimsy long tail boat, but it would only leave Krabi if he could fill the other 3 spaces in his boat. It seemed a silly way of doing things, although great for him, so we wandered on to the next guy who came bounding up to us offering tickets. This guy also claimed he could do it for 150 Baht and would also pick her up from our hotel at 2pm, so that was a bonus. With that sorted it was left to me to arrange my ferry ticket.

Svitlana, obviously happy after booking her ticket to Railay Beech

A few minutes walk from the river and we came across a travel agency that looked half decent, and not too pushy – this is always a good sign as the pushier they are the higher the prices. The hotel had offered me a return ticket for 800 Baht, which I felt was a little steep, even though it was almost a 2 hour crossing each way. In the travel agency they tried to get me buying a ticket for 700 Baht but after using a little bit of English charm I managed to get it for 600 and a pick-up and drop-off from/to the hotel included. Svitlana would be getting a ticket to Phi Phi island from Railay Beech and we had agreed that we would meet on the pier at 10:30, so it was not the last we would see of her. And that was the next thing off the to-do list, and the only thing left was to grab some food for lunch.

Before we got our bellies full of food we happened across a Buddhist temple in the centre of town and spent some time there wondering at the beauty of it all and at how hot it was inside the actual temple itself. Svitlana seemed intent on climbing up a large tree that had some rickety old slats of wood nailed into it, but on reflection she decided against it, which was the right call.

In the Bhuddist Temple

The Chok-Dee restaurant was our pick of the crop for our mid-day meal, mainly because James had been revelling in the fact the he knew a couple of Thai phrases, with chok dee being one of them (cheers). We grabbed a table, ordered some (very cheap) food and drink and sat back and waited for our sustenance to be delivered. Mid-way through a conversation the heavens opened and poured down rain around us. The extent was so bad that we were getting splashes every now and then, even at the table in the middle of the restaurant. It didn’t trouble us too much as we thought we could just wait it out, until we realised that we needed to get Svitlana back to the hotel for her pick-up and that she would also be riding in a very flimsy boat along the coastline in torrential rain. Whether she would be roped in to bailing out the excess water we would have to wait and see.

The Chok Dee

Thankfully it ceased raining heavily as we departed and we trudged back to the hotel through the drizzle. Once inside and dry we waited for her ride to arrive, and when it did we all looked at each other with a wry smile on our face. It was the ticket guy on a scooter. It was a good job that Svitlana had arranged with the hotel to leave her main luggage there for 3 days whilst she went to Railay, otherwise it would have had to be dragged along the road behind them. As they sped off back into town James and I retired to the room to catch up on some “admin” and generally have a relaxed afternoon.

We had discussed going for a wander later in the day and the clock had hit 4pm, so it was probably about right to go out and get some exercise to build up an appetite before dinner. After checking Facebook one last time we noticed that we both had a message from our Ukranian friend, stating that she was still in Krabi. She should have been sunning herself on Railay Beech or climbing up some rocks by now, but for some reason the boat had not gone and she was heading back to the hotel. We said that we would meet her there after our little jaunt and she would book in for another night at the Baan Andeman.

Our walk was good, it worked up a bit of an appetite, and we almost learned something about the Thai alphabet. The park that we walked through had little statues of things next to the letters of the English, and then the Thai, alphabet. But we couldn’t work out what some of them were, so we ended up heading through the park and back towards the hotel. We met up with Svitlana doing the same walk by chance and arranged to go for dinner in town at 6pm.

A boat

We did the usual Baan Andeman-Krabi town centre walk that we were getting to know very, very well, but we only got a few hundred yards from our hotel. I was wearing flip-flops and somehow managed to catch my heel on a metal pin sticking out of the road. It wasn’t rusty, which was good, but it still flipping hurt like a mother flipper, so I had to go back, clean and plaster it before we could continue. But continue we did, and we found ourselves in a lovely little place down by the river, and it turned out that it was a “soft opening” which meant that the chef hadn’t quite mastered all the dishes and the menu wasn’t set in stone, but it looked jolly lovely inside so we made ourselves comfortable at one of the tables.

It seemed cheap enough and a good selection of foods on offer, and the owners were quite chatty with us, but not over the top, which was nice. After not achieving the pad thai in the restaurant in Kuala Lumpur some days ago I plumped for it again, with a side of vegetable rice. It wasn’t long before the vegetable rice turned up, and it was good, VERY good. All I needed now was the pad thai to go with it. James and Svetlana’s dishes both turned up soon after, but I was left waiting for the pad thai. The problem was, as it turned out, that the kitchen had run out of gas. So my pad thai would have to wait, until they had wheeled out the empty canister of gas and rolled in a new one. All in all this took about half an hour and my veggie rice was decidedly cold by the time it arrived. But when my second dish did arrive it was very nice. Not amazing, but good. And we got some complimentary “special” spring rolls because of the wait.

After the dinner we walked vaguely back to the hotel, but found ourselves in a slightly different part of town. We stopped off to search out the strange noises emanating from the lawns down by the Marina Bar. It turned out to be a combination of cicada beetles and tiny little frogs, who we managed to outsmart by keeping quiet – you really had to be there. And that was all we had time for really, as we needed an early night as myself and Svitlana would be up early in the morning to go to Phi Phi island…