Ramble On, Rose: Krabi , Part 1

Expect some concentrated posting in the next week or so as I've suddenly realized that I’m about to depart on some serious travels without a laptop and that I've done a dismal job of catching this blog up even to the present. I've always worked better with a deadline anyway…

So, back to October (yikes): after our training in Phuket, we were told that we had less than a week before we had to be in Bangkok for two other training sessions. Four days later we were told that the first training session was cancelled, so we ended up having much more time than we expected. At that point we lit out for Chiang Mai, which is where we wanted to be in the first place. But while we were under the impression that we only had five or six days to work with, some girlfriends and I went to Krabi, a town on the Andaman coast which is just a long-tail boat ride away from the most beautiful beaches in the country.

First, introductions! Below are my wonderful travel buddies. From left to right: Anne, Leah, Creepy Dude (not a travel buddy- more on him later), Roisin, and Kaleo. Anne and Leah are from small mountain towns in North Carolina and are hilarious and fantastic and are taking Vietnam or maybe Cambodia by storm as I type this. Roisin the redhead showed up on this blog before; she's from Donnegal, Ireland, and is sporting a bit of a black eye in this photo (always make sure your motorbike driver is sober, kids). Kaleo is from Hawaii and is rocking some ridiculously awesome braids she had done in Phuket, which lasted three weeks before we took them out in the middle of orientation in Bangkok and she accepted her certification looking like she had just been electrocuted. They're fantastic, and I miss them like crazy even though I saw all of them except Roisin two weeks ago. Great girls.

Beautiful girls and slightly creepy dude

In Krabi we stayed in an incredibly wonderful, modern, streamlined hostel called Pak Up.

Pak Up

It was the first hostel I ever stayed at, and I’m afraid it’s ruined me for others.

It was sparkling clean, air-conditioned, and had laundry facilities. It was lovely.

On our first evening there we wandered down to the river (Krabi is at the mouth of the Krabi river where it empties into Phangnga Bay) and were promptly coerced into taking a long-tail boat ride by this guy, who was very charming before we got on the boat and then pretty rude once we were on it:

Smirk.

Back to the adventures! Our dude showed us some interesting caves along the river in limestone formations like this one:

Truly beautiful.

I didn't get such good photos seeing as the caves were quite dim, as caves tend to be.

But they were cool: some of them bore signs of very early habitation in the way of bones and cave paintings, which are now in a museum somewhere and have been reproduced in the campiest way possible.

The caves also sheltered Japanese soldiers when Japan occupied Thailand at the beginning of the Second World War. The same artist in charge of reproducing the skeletal remains and wall paintings of early inhabitants also erected freaky statues of Japanese soldiers, so that when you're wandering around you'll occasionally stumble upon a waxy, dead-eyed manikin in the gloom. For unfathomable reasons, I didn't take any photos.

We then headed downriver. Just being on the water at dusk was really lovely.

A home on the water

It was restful and pleasant until our peevish friend steered us into a gloomy, thick mangrove swamp, which made me pretty nervous as I suddenly realized that absolutely no one knew where we were.