Activity Summary
Friday 30th September - Day 29
Travel (bus) from Koh Lanta to Ao Nang
Walk around Ao Nang
Nopparat Thara evening beach walk
Saturday 1st October - Day 30
Krabi old town
Mangrove walk
Khao Khanabnam cave
Summary
The weather in Ao Nang / Krabi really wasn’t in our favour. As British as we are, absolute downpours we cannot power through and the things we missed out on were Railay beach and Dragon Crest viewpoint / hike. However, we were able to appreciate the local beaches for a short time (although not in the stereotypical ‘ideal’ scenario) and with our visit to Krabi town we felt like we had gotten everything out of the area that we could.
Some people that we met spent a lot of time in this area for a relax and chill and absolutely loved it but from our opinion Phi Phi was much better for this kind of activity.
Accommodation
Krabi Forest Homestay - 2 nights - 400THB/n/p
As Luke had been feeling a lot better we could go back to downgrading our parameters for accommodation and settle on the more cheap and cheerful places. Maybe not a great decision to settle on one with a tin roof when it rained so frequently or had any ability to drain said water from the front of the bungalow but otherwise was pretty decent for the price.
It was situated right between Ao Nang beach and Nopparat Thara beach which meant that we could go either way for food and entertainment, the latter direction being the far nicer choice. It was also nice to get a bit of a walk in to go to town rather than scooting or having everything on our doorstep.
Travel
TO
Ko Lanta hotel -> [minivan] -> Ao Nang hotel
Diary
You really can get to most places in Thailand by finding one of the many tourist booths in a place which will in turn arrange a company to take you and quite likely a bus load of people to various locations which is pretty affordable but can be time expensive. In this instance it was one of the seemingly more chaotic minivans to Ao Nang. The locals have a habit of filling the bus with as many tourists as possible and so we all had a multitude of bags on laps and squeezed in the pathways. Not a comfortable journey with it ending with us saying “just drop us off here, we’ll find our hotel” after the bus driver doing drop offs failed a number of times to drop us off at the right location and Google served us much better.
As we got off the bus the heavens opened and as we walked over to the bungalow room we essentially had to wade through a pond outside our room given the amount of rainfall. Feet 100% saturated we settled in and headed off for our first meal of the day at around 2pm.
We settled on Ao Nang rather than Krabi town as it has a number of beaches nearby and is known to be more touristy (as more of a party place although we didn’t witness this at all) and quote from an online review “there is nothing to do in Krabi”. We can definetely conclude that Ao Nang’s food scene was a weird one. Every restaurant between our hotel and the Main Street seemed to be offering the same fashion food of “Indian - Thai - Seafood - Pizza - Pasta” which in our minds was a big turn off when a restaurant has such a ridiculously large menu and can’t seem to special in one area of food. More likely that Luke being stuck up but it certainly did not make for an exciting selection of food. This was however the first time that we had experienced a dominant Indian cuisine offering in our travels which, if Luke wasn’t still feeling the effects of illness, might have swayed him into eating it. In the end we settled on what we considered to be a sensible lunch spot called cafe 8.98 which, although more expensive, was absolutely the only place that appealed for lunch (coffee style brunch food).
Unfortunately our time in Ao Nang was in the middle of Typhoon Nora which meant the two days were a washout and our grand plans of going to places such as Railay beach etc. were flatlined. It was particularly bad that afternoon, so after renewing our SIM cards we wandered around for a while to find a sports bar so Luke could watch the Arsenal v Spurs game. He subsequently realised that he had got the wrong day for the match but this was before actively walking into sports bars and asking people for the game, who despite being absolutely baffled, tried so hard to accommodate him.
Post this faff we set off for an evening walk along Nopparat Thara beach which was a great walk and allowed us to stretch our legs properly in what felt like a long time. The rain held off and the retreated tide had allowed Nicola to go rock pooling - we found a couple of fish, crabs, sea slugs and what looked like big ol squidgy sea cucumbers. Nicola also took this moment to toss off the Ao Nang swordfish statue for ‘good luck’.
[Don't use gabians kids]
Our plans in the morning were to go to some of the local beaches but the torrential rain overnight (and incredibly loud noises made on the tin roof of our bungalow) continued into the morning and we very quickly gave up on that idea. After a late breakfast we got the local bus from the bottom of the main road in Ao Nang to Krabi town for a respectively 50THB per person (rather than the 500THB for tuktuk advertised) which while cheap did offer Nicola a big ol slap of pollution to make her feel worse for wear by the time we arrived. Luke’s London lungs barely flinch at these things (soft country folk these days amiright?).
We quickly got Nicola a new sim card before heading over to the river for a quick drink and a sit down at a pontoon restaurant so Nicola could compose her lungs. We were fascinated with one of the staff members spending time sweeping up bottle caps and other non-degradable waste together on the pontoon to then simply sweep into the river to our bewilderment. Really is a different mindset, not the least a freakin’ stupid idea to pollute the river around you that makes your restaurant actually remotely unique. Leaving that Luke got his desired photo with the giant crab statue and has had the South Park “crab people” concept stuck in his head quite a lot since he started seeing them all over the place. Again Nicola really doesn’t give him much time of day about these things.
On both sides of the river there are networks of Mangrove forests and along the built up town side, a walkway exists through part of the river which we decided to venture along. It was a nice and easy walk with a four storey viewpoint to see Krabi and river over a 360 view.
Across the river is Khao Khanabnam cave which is accessible by long tail boat. Annoyingly if all the tourists had spoken to each other and chartered one boat we all would have saved a great deal of money (500THB for the boat trip). However the solo boat ride was pretty fun and meant we could leave when we wanted to. The cave itself was decent and having seen a shortish rope that allowed topping out of the cave, Luke decided he would macho it up and achieve such a (tiny) feat. From his perspective, it made the cave experience much more fun and the view the other side wasn’t half bad.
Once back on firm ground after the boat, we felt we had achieved everything Krabi town had to offer so local bussed it back to Ao Nang in surprising ease. We stopped off again at a bus tour operator to book travel to Khao Sok national park the day after and while walking to a fancy coffee shop (by local standards) past some sort of toy store a drone flies into Nicola's head. Turns out some morons were badly flying a drone on the pavement which meant that it dropped and hit Nicola eyes first. Very very very fortunately for us and them, she was wearing sunglasses which protected her eyes completely from the spinning blades that would have surely done a lot of damage. Had it been Luke who was not wearing any shades it could have been a very different story. Both of us were furious and having shouted obscenities at them, which were likely brushed off and ignored nor had any resonating impact, we walked off. At this point there was some of that long forgotten blistering sunshine that had eluded us for about a week, and were able to soak in some nice views of Ao Nang beach while returning to our hot and sweaty former selves long forgotten about.
Second attempt at getting the football day correct, we sat at a bar round the corner from the hotel and formed one of the two only tables in the place watching the game. However there were no spurs fans in the building. Nicola in her customary manner when Luke drags her to one of these things, completely ignores the game and armed with her Nintendo switch and phone acts like a kid out with the parents for a ‘grown up’ meal and needs entertainment to keep her behaviour in line. Nicola however refers to Luke’s watching of football games as quote “testosterone Luke” where his very calm and well mannered persona goes completely out the window and goes ‘full north London’. Good thing for Nicola is there is plenty more football to come with the World Cup although doubtful that Luke will have much to cheer about here.
Arsenals glorious derby victory in hand, street food quaffed for dinner and then we went back to pack, albeit at separate times as Nicola couldn’t get internet on her phone the switch battery ran out midway into the second half so she ran away as fast as she could.
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