Krabi Part 3: Boat for one please

My time in Krabi had not gone all that well. I arrived, and wasted my first afternoon/evening. The next day I went on a wet, cold boat trip that resulted in me coming down with a flu for several days where I could do little more than sleep, eat, and walk between sleeping and eating places.

However, by my fourth day in Krabi, I was determined to be productive once more. I woke up at midday (early compared to the previous days), feeling OK, loaded myself up with Strepsils and Paracetamol, and set off to do...well...something...anything...

After some absent-minded walking, I decided to go and explore the Muslim fishing village on Koh Klang, across the estuary/river from Krabi. I had seen it from this side of the river, but the weather had previously deterred me from committing to a ferry ride to an island with little infrastructure or cover. Today however, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I was feeling positive.

I had not seen a blue sky in a while.

The fishing village from Krabi.

I had previously worked out that you can avoid the touts and tourist ferries by walking further south along the shore, where there were local ferries frequently running across the estuary.

I arrived at the piers, and the frequent ferries were nowhere to be seen; there were just empty boats, and old Thai men sat around talking. I must have looked confused, because several of them approached me, and one of them offered me a tour of the mangrove swamps nearby, and then would drop me off on Koh Klang on the way back. (Ultimately I came back to Krabi directly, as the boat trip tired me out - still not well.) It sounded ideal, as I had wanted to see the mangroves, but could not find a tour that suited me. 


He enquired how many people, and I confessed to being alone in wanting to do this tour. He paused and considered, and eventually, hesitantly suggested: "400 baht".


In hindsight, I should have negotiated, I really should, as if he started at 400B (£8), what might he have ultimately accepted. But my thoughts at the time were that 400B for a two hour long private boat tour was incredibly good value, and would allow me the convenience of a tour without the inconvenience of other people on my tour.


I readily agreed and we cast off.

My OWN boat (I decided the best seat was just behind the prow).

We moved out into the river, and I fear I went rather photo crazy, and just photographed everything. The boatmen was laughing at how much I was glued to my camera screen. I am going to blame it on not doing a lot for the last two days, and also my happiness to have my own boat.

Have I mentioned I had a private boat yet??? p the river, all the views, etc

Little stilt houses sat off the banks of the river's tributaries.

The view of Krabi from the water.

We all headed past the fishing village I had intended to visit, but was too lazy to do so. It looked pretty from the water at least. At least I got sort of close...

There are a lot of photos with the boat's prow in - it was rather in the way a lot.

Some of the beautiful karst mountains/mini-mountains that abound in the region. 

Too soon, we arrived at the first stop; an ecopark and cave system that ran through the second of the two formations photographed above. The boatman did not have much English, so could not explain what I was supposed to see; he just told me "sam sip (30) minutes" and proceeded to chat with the woman in the ticket office. 

Not knowing what to expect, I pressed on, and soon came to some steps leading up into a cave system. I like a good cave, and by good, I mean those caves where they are dark, dank, and filled with the squeaking sounds (and acrid smells) of bats and bugs.

I appreciate that they tried to make the steps fit in with the rock face. 

I would give this cave a solid 7/10 because it had the dank and the dark and the smells down, but it was fairly small, and I had seen all of it within around five minutes. 


This being Thailand, there were of course unexplained oddities within the cave. The first was this skeleton lying outside the cave. There was a sign in Thai, but that was of little help to me. I presumed it had something to do with the prehistoric discoveries in the province, and linked to the prehistoric man/gorilla statues in the city.

Who or what are you???

Then there were these life-sized figurines of Japanese soldiers from World War II, who apparently made the cave a base during their occupation of Thailand. I am unsure exactly why. The cave is not that easily accessed, and the town of Krabi, which undoubtedly had better accomodation, lies just a few kilometres south. Odd...

Outside of the cave, the small eco-park was adorable and yielded one of my favourite photos of my entire trip so far. There was a small fishing boat anchored in amongst the mangrove trees, and I just felt it made a lovely picture, so here it is:

After my allotted thirty minutes had passed, the boatman and I headed off back down the river in search of mangrove forests. En route, we were passed by several boats which were evidently running on the same tour we were doing (I know this for sure, as the boats turned up at the same restaurant later), and which were laden down with around a dozen tourists in each boat. The occupants looked singularly uncomfortable, and there were some envious glares cast at me as I reclined at the front of the boat, solo, enjoying the cooling wind.

Poor tourists. 

I like to think they paid a similar price to what I paid to sit sweating in lifeboats in a very full boat. They cannot have paid much less, as Thailand is rarely that cheap.

Me on my own boat ;)

Before long, we veered off the main river, and down a smaller tributary. I was enjoying the view, and thought that this was the mangrove-part of the tour. But then we turned again to point directly at this tiny parting in the mangrove growth, which revealed itself to be the entrance to a narrow channel barely big enough for the longtail boat to nose its way through.

Will we fit in there???

Entering the channel we emerged in a dappled, green, slow world of leaves, branches, mud and water. It was difficult to see where the water ended and where land began, and as the engine slowed and fell still, we glided silently through a green tunnel that echoed with insect calls, and the occasional holler of a monkey. 

These few minutes made me so glad I had taken this tour; there is something otherworldly about a mangrove forest, perhaps because it is a forest in water, or...haha...a literal sea of trees.


After several minutes of green, leafy silence, we emerged into a different river tributary, and the boatmen pointed to the approaching shore filled with stilted houses, and signalled that we would stop for lunch. I was not feeling hungry, but I did need to keep my strength up, so I readily agreed.

Lunch time!

We stopped at what I realised was a fish farm/restaurant, and after a brief explanation of what was living in each of the enclosures/nets, I was presented with a menu, and asked what/who I would like to eat.

The prices were fairly steep, but I did want to try some fresh seafood, so I opted for one of my favourite Thai dishes, son tam (green papaya salad) with sea crab. 


I felt slightly bad when, after the waiter had taken my order, he proceeded to walk to one of the tanks, and pull a struggling crab out, and walk towards the kitchen. But hey, the consequences of eating meat is that something has to die for me to eat it, and if you cannot handle seeing death, don't eat meat.


The salad was absolutely delicious, though the crab claws/legs were hard to break into with only chopsticks. Things got very messy.

Delicious

Full, sticky, and smelling faintly of crabsticks, I clambered back onboard the boat, and we motored slowly back towards the pier, having decided by that point to skip Koh Klang. The restaurant was on the island, so I sort of visited, right???

Back onshore, I watched my erstwhile boatman jet back up the river to his next job, whilst I ambled back to the hostel for a nap and some laptop time. I was feeling better but still tired easily, so I only resurfaced for dinner, where I met this rather handsome chap called Nam.

We had been trying to meet for days, and finally our planets aligned and we met on my last night in Krabi. We wandered around the weekend night market, perused the food stalls, and tried not to listen to the awful attempt at singing on the stage behind us. He was sweet, and it was a decent evening. I found it especially amusing that after we posted a selfie on Facebook together, all of his friends were making lewd comments about us. 

Thai people, Facebook can translate Thai into other languages, so I can read it all.

...I mean, much of it was fairly accurately lewd, but still, it does not need to be put on Facebook!

Needless to say, I had a good night eating, drinking and relaxing. Tomorrow, on little sleep, and still not 100%, I journey to my next country: Malaysia. 

Until tomorrow,

DSP

PS: I've had a few comment about the lack of pictures of myself in some of my blogs. This is a slight disadvantage of travelling alone: there is no one to take pictures of you. My phone does have a front camera, and I do make attempts at taking selfies, but the sad fact is that 90% of my selfies never make it onto this blog, as my face seems to see a camera, and go into full-on fat owl mode.

For example:

These are edited, and the best I could make of them. I do not want to have look at my ugly mug when I am editing, and equally I do not want to inflict these faces on you all. Just trust me, if there's no selfie included, there's a good reason for it. ;)