Feb 14 - I don’t often miscalculate the days we are staying in a town, but here I did that, assuming that we would be here another night. By the time I realized we needed to move on to Krabi, we had already decided on some things to see in the town and area. Because the trip to Krabi didn’t look longer than two hours, we decided to do everything anyway.
Start today with a one hour tuk-tuk tour to various sights around town.
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Across town to a Buddhist temple.
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After this we make several stops at well-known street art locations. It is obvious that the Rotary Club sponsored it all.
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Return to our guesthouse, pack out the gear, and load into a taxi that will take us around for about three hours and leave us at the bus station. The cost is 100 Baht/hour, plus 6 Baht/km. I estimate that a three hour trip will be about 900 Baht, or $57.
The first stop is Namtok Lam Plok. It is touted as a ‘six story high waterfall’ but if so, the actual falls must be further up the canyon than we were able to get to.
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From here, on to Sai Rung Waterfall. This area, north along the western edge of the mountain range, is a forest preserve. Again, not much in the way of an actual waterfall, just water tumbling over the granite boulders.
There are many other places to go in the countryside east of Trang, but we do need to get on a bus today so after these two ‘waterfalls’ we get some food. The restaurant we go to is an old wooden house at the edge of a rice field. We order one huge plate of pad thai for the three of us.
From here, straight back to the Trang bus station, which is much more active in the early afternoon. Wait about an hour for a minivan to Krabi. The trip is a bit slow, with road construction along the route, and we get there only at about dark. The Krabi bus station is silent, but a songthaew shows up and gets us into the middle of town. The price seems really high but now I know that any transport one needs ‘after hours’ is going to run up in cost. I can hear the driver gouging a few other tourists as well, so we are not alone.
Krabi is really attractive as a city. It sits on the edge of an estuary, with solid mangrove forests on the other side of the channel. Also, nearly vertical limestone hills decorate the edges of town on the north and west. Unfortunately, the songthaew drops us off far from the hotel and we have to walk it in the dark. Luckily it is all downhill and it is not raining. The guesthouse we are staying at is run by a family, super friendly as I figured they would be. We organize a taxi tour for the next day and go down the street to the only restaurant within short walking distance. Janet gets a coconut and prawn soup that is really good.
