I made it Krabi City in Thailand about five days ago and like what seems par for the course this trip, I have taken very few photos and have neglected the blog. Hopefully this entry will be enough to sum up my experience(s) so far.

Krabi City, aka, Krabi is the main city in the Krabi Province. It’s small, but not so small that it’s boring. There are big stores here as well as some Western fast food outlets, like KFC.

I like this town. The city, as mentioned, is small and a little touristy, but not as bad as some of the places that I’ve been. Koh Lanta was less touristy, but in some ways Krabi feels a little bit more ‘natural.’ Many of the locals don’t speak any English and although it can make for difficult interactions, it’s something that I truly enjoy.

As much as I do enjoy being here after nearly a week of just hanging out, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m ready to move on. I’m definitely getting the “hotel California” feeling being here. You know, “You can check in anytime you’d like, but you can never leave” feeling. That part of the song runs through my head if I start to get a little bit too comfortable someplace, and especially if I’m sitting in my ‘usual seat’ watching people check in, and a couple of days later, still in my usual seat, see them check out. It was really hard not to warn people at Koh Lanta. At times I’d have to hold back from yelling, “Don’t check in, it’s a trap. You’ll never get to leave.”

My next stop is Penang, Malaysia. I’m not sure how far it is from Krabi (just googled it, 500km), but I know that it’s close enough that if I leave relatively early, I should be there in the afternoon. That’s including crossing the borders. I’ve rented an apartment for a month there, so I know I’ll be there for at least thirty days, but I do intend to live in Kuala Lumpur as well. The problem with KL is that from what I can tell it’s pretty expensive to rent a place, so I may only stay for a couple of weeks. I’d really like to be in KL for New Year’s though… But I’ll have to play it by ear for now.

Today I went on my first ‘touristy’ thing since I’ve been here. You know, I hate to admit it that It was just what I needed. I’ve said it to other people and I guess I needed to hear the same thing, the reason people do touristy things is because they’re usually fun. It was a fun day.

The itinerary said that it would be a full day of kayaking and sightseeing, including a visit to feed some ‘friendly monkeys.’ I could have sworn that some snorkeling was involved, but I think I may have misread or confused this trip with another, because we didn’t do any snorkeling.

The truc picked me up at about 8am and made the rounds to pick up the other people who were going along. When I got on the truck there were already two young girls on board. You could tell that they were the shy nervous type… It turns out that they were from Myanmar and to be honest I was glad that the trip wasn’t full of Aussies or Europeans. When we finally emptied out of the truck there was a total of about 8 of us and two were small children. We arrived at the dock at about 9 that we would board a traditional fishing boat called a long-tail boat that would take us to the spot where we would do some kayaking.

It wasn’t that long, maybe thirty minutes before the long-tail boat pushed up on the very small beach where we were to begin our kayaking adventure. As each kayak was lowered to the water two people would jump on and start paddling out to wait for the rest of us. I kind of hung back because as I’m always so painfully reminded, I’m by myself and don’t quite know who’s going to be with me. I can compare it to being the last to be picked for a team. You watch as people start leaving and pretty soon you’re the only one left. It turns out that the guy who is in charge is going to be with me. While we were getting set I look over at the two girls from Myanmar and they are floundering… they are going in every direction but the direction everyone else is going. It was so funny to watch them. It wasn’t long before the guy in charge switches the girls with us, I was with one of the girls and he was with the other. The girl I was with was named Bam.

After the kayaking we jumped back on the long-tail and headed to a small island for lunch. The island was beautiful and the lunch was okay. We were there for probably an hour, but probably closer to two. To get a feel for the island, it’s got white sand beaches and little to no waves. The water is warm, in fact any warmer it probably would be too warm Nearly everyone in the group went for a swim and took a nap afterwards… that is except for Bam and her friend, they just hung out at the table we ate lunch at. They didn’t get up or move the whole time, I even tried to convince them to go swimming, but with no luck.

We loaded up the long-tail and headed to a mangrove area that had ‘friendly’ monkeys, if you were to believe the brochure. Turns out the brochure was pretty accurate. These monkeys have grown accustomed to people feeding them so they are pretty friendly. We had a few jump in the boat and steal things, mostly just garbage, but it was fun to see. I’ll post photos since it would take too long to explain.

We spent about thirty minutes feeding the monkeys and soon we were on our way back to the dock. It was a good time and although I think I would have enjoyed more kayaking than we did, I can say that I had fun and glad that I went.

My time in this resort is ending in about 6 days and to be honest I think I’m ready to go. I mean, the place is beautiful with its foliage surrounding the bungalows and the sound of waves breaking in the distance, but generally I feel a little bit locked in. Everywhere I turn there is someone around me to the point that I feel like I can’t just hang out on my front porch without feeling that I’m being strange. I guess I think that I’m being judged by not spending my time doing all the touristy things that a person at the resort should do—did that make sense?

Besides feeling like people are judging me for being boring, I must admit that I am also kind of bored. My goal on this trip was to experience culture, but where I am is really not that close to being in a cultural environment. I’m a tourist and there is no way around it. I think if I were in a bigger city I would be able to shun touristy things and try my best to blend in with the locals.

There are some things that I still need to do before I leave here. First I want to go on a tour of popular islands around the area. I’ll probably book it for tomorrow morning. It should be fun from what I’ve read about people who have actually done it. The second thing I want to do, but I’m not sure that I can is find a place that has a ‘package’ is to go trekking in the mountains. The jungle around here is closer to being the real thing than I’ve seen in quite some time and I’ve got this urge to hike. The problem is, is that I haven’t seen anything that suggests that this is even possible so I’m not sure if I can do it or not.

The last thing I have to take care of is where I’ll go when I leave here. I’ll still have about two weeks in Thailand before my visa expires and I don’t want to leave. I’m planning on spending a week in Krabi and a week in Bangkok.

So I’ve been in Koh Lanta, Thailand for about nine days and the first thing that comes to mind is that it is close to paradise. The days are warm with just enough clouds to cool you down when it seems like you need it most. Usually a rain shower comes by at least once a day effectively cooling things down for a while. Add to this, the sea is warm, the beach is long and everywhere around me is jungle. Yep, pretty much makes this almost perfect.

I got to the place I’m staying about nine days ago and since I’ve been here it’s been a little bit like a ‘kids’ rollercoaster, ups and downs but nothing too up or too down. I’ve rented a scooter twice to make my way around the island, and I’ve even taken off on a couple of long walks.

The island is very small, about 30km N/S and 10km E/W which makes it pretty easy to explore. Maybe, if I were to be honest, it’s possibly a little too easy to explore. Like I mentioned I’ve rented a scooter a couple of times and I saw the highlights of the island in a morning on the first time. The second time I went in different directions and then went back to the places that I explored earlier. It is definitely fun but not that exciting.

About a week ago I decided to walk to the nearest town (Sala Dan), according to Google it’s about 5km away, though it sure seemed further when I was walking it. Nothing really interesting happened, but I did get to see the area at a slower pace than traveling in a car or on a scooter. Along the way I was kind of haunted by one taxi driver in a pickup. She must have stopped me about 3 times asking if I needed/wanted a ride. Each time I declined and had to convince her that everything was okay. It was kind of cute in a way, almost like she took it upon herself to watch over me. The last time she stopped me, she said the ride was free and to get in. I didn’t because I was there for the walk, but it kind of gives you an idea of her determination. ☺