My Summer Vacation
Part 4: Krabi

We rode an overnight bus through half the length of the country to reach the southern beach town of Krabi. It's not quite as popular as Phuket, but it's just around the corner and a little bit cheaper. Everything you'd expect in a lazy beach-tourism oriented city; tacky gift shops, overpriced restaurants, giant hotels, ocean and jungle tours, sleazy locals. It was a lot like Key West, there was even a comparative "Duval Street" with shops and bars lining the beachfront. Of course, as soon as you leave the little pocket of modernity and choice property, you're right in the thick jungle and jagged cliffs of southeast Asia. I didn't get out into that real stuff, but I did some jungle trekking on a resort island, which was just as good in my first-timer's eyes.

The tour company put us up in with a good deal. We had our choice of bungalows around town, and ended up trying two different places at no extra charge. We were given a free one-day four-island boat tour. They also hooked us up with a "guide." He picked us up from the bus station (after a few tense phonecalls to find out if he actually existed), helped us check in to the hotels, and his wife/assistant made sure we got to our departing train on time. I can only assume he was working with a good number of similar visitors, because he wasn't really that easy to get a hold of, giving me and my girlfriend a bit of stress now and then. In any case, the accomodations were great, especially considering how cheap they were.

Most of the time spent in Krabi was lazing around the room or walking up and down the street. I was glued to the TV, being in Japan with no English channels, I was sucked in to the cable on tap. They even had some music channels, which I watched doggedly. Thailand is apparently somewhere in America's mid-90's, they like boy/girl bands and grungy hard rock (Japan is the 80's - they love glam rock). The four-island tour was fun, was saw Chicken Island, a nice pack of monkeys, and a phallus-filled shrine cave. The beach area is a bit out from the city proper, which we visted briefly. Nothing special, except the traffic lights! Our last night in Krabi, we saw some muay thai fights. It was just kids, I think the fighters were from 5 to 20 years old, but they were really good and I was impressed. I still entertain the dream of dropping out of society for a few months (or years) and living in a muay thai gym. Krabi looks like a good place for it, I wouldn't mind calling it home.

My Summer Vacation
Part 3: Bangkok

Where else to begin a tour of Thailand than Bangkok? An amazing city, once you get used to it.

I had been told that a trip to Thailand requires little to no planning, and took precisely that route. Upon arrival, we had not hotel nor itinerary. I was also rather shaky about the locals, having heard that all kinds of horrible things happen to blissfully unaware tourists. Luckily, we had the crew of Japan refugees with us and they all had about the same plans we did.

The first stop was Khao San street. It was like walking into Mos Eisley; filled with random drunks, street vendors, and sketchy locals. Once I got over the initial "not as dangerous as everyone imagines" jitters, it turned out to be a great place to hang out and take in the atmosphere. It also shows the division between the expensive vacation and the cheap trip. My girlfriend knows lots of well-to-do Japanese, and though many of them had been to Bangkok, almost none knew of Khao San. On the other hand, all the working-class types I talked to said that's the place to go. I imagine if I was super-rich, perhaps my travels and concepts of particular nations would be vastly different.

Going to Khao San and being a backpacker made us good tagets for the Thai tourist machine, and it swallowed us whole. A tuk-tuk (little moped taxis) driver pushed enough of the hard sell
to give us a ride around town. He took us to some nice shrines and temples for next to nothing, but he obviously made his money bringing us to the shops. Again, we were given the hard sell and ended up with a couple hundred dollars worth of custom-tailored silk suits. Nice bargain, no doubt, but not necessarily needed when trying to travel on a budget. After dropping way too much at the suit shop, we were quickly hurried to a most-likely official travel agency. We told them what we wanted to do and how much we wanted to pay, they worked out lodgings and travel for the rest of our stay. Sure, I damn near cleaned out my savings, but it ended up being a pretty good deal and very little hassle. I figure Thailand gets so many tourists doing exactly what I did, the process of squeezing every cent out them must be refined to an art.

The first two or three days we spent in Bangkok were otherwise full of random wanderings. We would usually meet our friends at night for dinner and nightlife, shop and eat during the day. I'm a big fan of Thai food, but I gotta go mild, they eat some brutal hot stuff. Fruit was an adventure, they have so much variety, most of it I'd never seen nor heard of. And of course, I love pad thai noodles, so I had to sample them everywhere I went.

After Bangkok, it was south to the mountainous shores of Krabi.