Krabi - The still naive traveller

It has been quite a few months that my friend, Shweta and I planned a farewell trip to Krabi, Thailand before she moved to Europe. However, the move happened earlier and I was left with a ticket that I did not want to loose. So guess what? Even though it is not quite my type to travel alone I decided to head to the town that I know fairly well by now.

After work I took the metro to the airport what I just reached on time before the closing of the check-in. The lady there told me that as I did not have two passport photos accompanying the visa application form, I was not allowed to get on the plane. She really pissed me off! It is such a typical Singaporean approach: if something does not fit what is written on the papers, it is not possible. I did not ask them any illegal things, I told that I had been to Thailand 12-15 times already and they only ask one picture and 1,000 baht. She did not get it. But I did not let myself be won over. I was ready to fight :-) as I had a very different idea of my weekend, i.e. in Thailand! Hehehe. The lady was very slow but I requested to talk to her boss. She disappeared for a while with my paper, she did not dare to call for her manager so when she returned she gave me my flight ticket. Finally! I wonder why she wanted to make her life so complicated though :-P?

After the 1.5-hour-long flight, we were at the immigration. I was the only one who needed a visa on arrival. A young Thai man and an older Thai woman were my special immigration officers, pretty happy to receive me as I gave them some work. After a few minutes of talking, the guy wanted to spend his Saturday with me and he read up a few times the address of the guesthouse I named on my form. What should I have said to that? Nothing really. The woman was very much agreeing with him and she kept repeating it would do good to his English. I just politely smiled and tried to finish the immigration process. Well, I surely got attention.

I was backpacking and as I had been to Ao Nang, Railey and Tonsai, this time I decided to stay in the small town of 30,000 people, Krabi town, which is not quite a touristy place. I found a place through a hotmail address, called Krabi City Seaview Guesthouse which was actually far from being in a city and being by a sea (it was a river :-)). Interesting marketing, ay? Based on the price I did not expect much but it was a surprisingly clean and neat place. My room was between the ground floor and the basement, its window opened towards a concrete wall but I did not really care because with the cheap room I got more money for massage ;-). The driver that was to pick me up from the airport, held a sign “Margit Treckers” ;-) and within 20-30 minutes was a great chat companion until we got to the backpackers place. He had never been abroad but knew impressively a lot about the countries in the world. I enjoyed talking to him.

I left my stuff in the room and then I went to the night market which was around 500m away. The locals were eating their delicious snacks in absolute peace and tranquil but I was a bit concerned of the hygiene there (with a reason) so looked for a small restaurant/ bar. There were hardly any tourists in this town so there was not much choice, yet I found a cute bamboo place to rest at. I sipped on my Blue Margarita cocktail (they did not serve food any more that night), read my book and just enjoyed the peace of the place.

The next morning when I really could not sleep more, I decided to take the local bus to head to Ao Nang, 20km away. The “big tuktuk” seemed to be nowhere so eventually I joined a motorbike guy to head to my destination.

I bought some Thai silk four years ago in Bangkok and I really wanted to get something tailor-made out of it. In this town, there were plenty of Scandinavian tourists so most tailors asked for a fortune for even a simple design. After quite some search, one seemed to have come to his senses and I was on my way to complete my dress mission ;-). While walking to the beach, the turquoise palm-tree surrounded beach was absolutely breath-taking. My sister-in-law saw a nice woolen bag in September that my brother stopped her from buying so I had this shopping mission which was easily completed, yet again.

Amongst the restaurants on the beach I chose Moon Terrace because I liked its in brown wood - white woolen sun-umbrellas and finally I could eat! I had one of my very favourite meals for lunch: coconut chicken soup. During the meal, the restaurant manager approached me to talk. I was just reading so had a lot of time to chill out. His name was Thong, originally from Bangkok but had quite some time in Cambodia and Kuwait which he happily talked about with his very broken English. We even talked about the book I was reading that time, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. It seems he liked me because after half an hour he returned with a red rose and a necklace. He also got me to the first floor terrace where the hotel’s swimming pool and massage place was (as a non-guest I was not supposed to be there). It was good for me as due to my recent eye surgery I could not do anything with water, but rest, write and read. I got a massage in a spa and relaxed for hours there :-). A few hours later he appeared again and was insisting to take me for dinner but I really had enough of the situation and walked away on the beautiful beach.

I climbed the rock by Ao Nang beach, enjoyed the fun presence of little monkeys in the sunset and wondered at the beautiful nature. At last I went to try on my soon-to-be-dress and then took a tuktuk to Krabi town. There the receptionist told me that someone had looked for me from upstairs but I was pretty surprised as I got to the place very late the night before and had met none at that time. When I was attempting to go into my room, the security guy refused to let me in and kept on telling me “Polish, Polish”. I did not meet anyone Polish but could not get into my room either so took him to the receptionist who told me that someone looked for me from the police. I said WHAT? Then she checked her dictionary and corrected herself, it was someone from the immigration. She was concerned, she was not sure if something happened to my passport or my visa so she called a number that was left behind. As soon as I got the phone to talk to the officer, I realized it was the immigration officer from the day before. He waited for me between 7-9am but I was not awake. He wanted to see me the next morning at 7am but I told him I was on holiday and did not plan to start the day that early. I did not want to oppose him as I had no idea what authority he might have. The receptionist realized I had nothing to do with all that was happening and told me she would not wake me up the next morning if I wanted so. So we agreed. He did come again the next morning but fortunately I checked out of the place later. I was a bit paranoid though because I was to fly off that night and he knew my details from the visa form.

In Ao Nang I switched off, and went to my favourite beach, by Railey Beach, I relaxed, ate, drank and chatted with people. The I headed to the airport, with some tension inside, of course. Fortunately there were heaps of people there that night and I did not meet him again. It was all quite strange.

It was an unusual weekend, that is for sure!