Don't Get Krabi

It hadn’t gone well. The idea to put some music on had backfired as I got distracted listening to it rather than trying t get off to sleep. Also, I had switched round the bed so that my head was away from the door, but it meant that the light from the corridor was peeping through the curtain. Consequently, I didn’t get much sleep. One of those nights when you feel like you have been awake for the entire night and don’t remember ever getting off to sleep or dreaming. But it seemed that everyone else was in the same boat too.

Me and my bunk!

We would soon be approaching the border town and would need to get off, go through immigration and get through to Hat Yai on the other side, the 4^th largest city in Thailand. When we arrived everyone seemed to get off, but nobody had told us what the protocol was, so we eventually all got off (the 5 Westerners by the doors, in the cheap seats) and grabbed our luggage to follow the rest of the passengers. The couple across from us (one American guy and one Scottish girl, I think) weren’t sure what to do and were dallying, and then the tall blonde girl (nationality unknown) had jumped off the train but left her main bag on there. We all assumed it would be fine, but as we still hadn’t been told what was going on there was always a slight chance that something wouldn’t go smoothly.

Playing cards the night before

Once through the passport control we had to get through customs and get a visa organised. It turned out that the guy dealing with the visas spoke very broken English and advised us that we would only have 14 days in the country. We had planned in round about 15/16 days and realised that we might well have to truncate our trip in Thailand and get into Cambodia sooner than expected. We had to wait on the platform for an eternity before we could continue our journey. The problem was, the train had left the platform, along with the tall blonde girl’s bag. But it was OK, it was just being serviced on another track. The tall blonde girl turned out to be Ukrainian, and called Svetlana, and joined us in conversation until the train was returned to us, including her big bag that didn’t seem like it had been rifled through.

James, Tim and Svetlana...waiting on the platform

The rest of the journey was quite uneventful, and we entered Hat Yai soon after the border crossing. A couple of tuk-tuk/taxi drivers had managed to get onto the train and were already trying to hustle us into getting their tuk-tuk/taxi to wherever we needed to go. As we needed to book our train tickets to Bangkok ASAP we declined and I sorted the tickets out whilst James and Svetlana waited in the station, and unfortunately had to watch a very poorly dog dragging itself across the floor. But tickets were booked, and unfortunately we would be by the doors again, but at least we knew that we would be on the sleeper to Bangkok.

We would need a taxi to the bus station to get a coach from Hat Yai to Krabi and Svetlana took the bull by the horns and drove a very hard bargain with one of the taxi drivers hanging around us. We clambered into the back of his over-sized tuk-tuk (not the small Indian ones) and we sped off towards the bus station. After a few minutes we were at the station and we bought tickets on the next bus to Krabi. It would take us about 4-5 hours to get there, but the coach seemed nice enough so it surely wouldn’t be a rough journey.

Me and Jimmy in the back of the tuk-tuk

After the bus stopping for 20 minutes for “running repairs” and a lunch stop, we were well behind schedule, but we made it to Krabi in one piece and jumped in another tuk-tuk to get to the hotel Baan Andeman. Svetlana had told us on the train that she was going to Krabi so it made sense for all of us to go there together, but she had not booked anywhere. There was a room available at the Baan Andeman so she checked in with us and we all got showered and freshened up, ready to go to the Dee Andeman hotel just round the corner as we would get 20% off the bill due to the connection between the hotels. The hotel was cracking, and a far cry from the pokey little place in Singapore. And for only £8 a night we were pleased with our hotel selection.

The great Baan Andaman hotel

The Dee Andeman round the corner was even nicer, but obviously more expensive, and we made our way up to the Sky Roof bar as the sun was setting in the distance. It was an amazing sight, with billowing clouds lining the horizon. There was only one other table in use, by some more Westerners (they get everywhere don’t they!) so we chose the white table in the corner and got ourselves comfortable. We assumed that the prices would be pretty high as the décor was pretty plush. But by our standards it was very affordable and we revelled in the fact that we would be eating top-quality nosh on the top of a very nice hotel, with the sun setting in the background and a new companion to converse with. And James was also very happy when he saw the price of the beers too.

Sunset at the Sky Roof bar

We sat, we ate, we savoured. We were up there for a long time, another round of beers after dinner kept us going, although Svetlana was almost asleep at one point, until she got her “second wind” and began teaching us about Ukrainian culture and other such stuff. And there we stayed until we could keep Svets awake no longer, and walked the short way back to the Baan Andeman. With Svetlana tucked up in bed we relaxed in our own room for a short while before finally calling time on our first day in Thailand, and what a great first day it had been too.