We enjoyed our last breakfast in Khao Lak, packed up in the
car and headed south towards Krabi, the centre of one of the most popular beach
areas in Thailand. We drove for a while
on a fantastic highway then the road started to narrow and soon we were into
the mountains. The mountains here are
the towering, cylindrical limestone ones you often see in the photos of Thailand
and are majestic and amazing to see. The
road narrowed considerably and wound through a never ending series of
switchbacks, working its way up a steep incline with heavy jungle on both sides
of us, trying its best to reclaim the road.
Once in a while there would be a slight break in the jungle growth and
we could get a quick view to the neighbouring mountains. We soon crested the mountain and found a
clearing with a small Buddhist temple and a lookout point, but there was a lot
of construction happening and a dozen workers so we decided not to stop and
began the long, curvy descent. As we
neared the bottom of the mountain we saw a rest stop and small parking lot,
behind which was a giant bold Buddha statue in the rocks and what looked like
an entrance into a cave. I cranked the
car over and the kids decided to stay in the car while Ana and I had a
look. We walked into the cave (followed
by a pack of hungry looking stray dogs), which opened up into a park that was
surrounded by vertical cliffs, jungle and many Buddha statues. The most incredible thing was we were the
only ones there, save for the dog pack that followed us around the park hoping
for a handout. We walked around the
mossy rock paths, took a few photos, still amazed that here was nobody there,
then returned to the car and continued along the highway, which had again
widened and got busier the closer we got to Krabi.
After a few bad turns, we eventually found our way to our
hotel on Noppharat Thara Beach, which is west of Krabi Town - the main city of
the area. Though Krabi town is the
epicenter of tourist activity, there are many beaches and villages in the
surrounding area, all of which are dense with hotels and tourist
infrastructure. After checking in we
went for a walk on the beach and found it to be littered with natural and human
debris, mucky, rough, and generally not very nice at all. The concrete promenade on the beach was
broken and destroyed and the trees all had their roots exposed, making it look
like a large portion of the beach had simply been washed away. Was this damage from the Tsunami? That seemed unlikely as it was so long ago,
but it was hard to know. In any case,
this certainly wasn’t what we were expecting from Krabi. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed
for the season but we did find one pizza place that served up a decent
lunch. We returned to the hotel, had a
little break, then went out walking once again, but this time in an easterly
direction to see if we could find a better beach. Well, we sure did – Ao Nang Beach was clean,
beautiful, and exactly what we were expecting to find in Krabi. The coastal road was bursting with activity
so after playing around on the beach for a while and enjoying the sunset, we
walked down the street, checking out the shops and dozens of restaurant
menus. The original plan for a
backpacker dinner in our hotel room (typically instant Tom Yum noodle soup,
Ritz crackers, lychees, canned tuna and Pocky Sticks) was shelved and instead
we found a nice little Thai restaurant and enjoyed drinks and dinner as we
watched the many tourists passing by.
After dinner we continued wandering up the street and it
went for a very, very long ways. One
thing we have noticed here is the lack of overt sleaziness that we saw in
Chiang Mai. Once during our walk there
was a street leading behind the main road that looked to have some bars with an
awful lot of red lights, so perhaps that’s where the late night shenanigans
occur, but besides that, it all felt and looked very clean and family
focused. The majority of tourists seem
to be couples, families with a few backpackers showing up here and there, but
not many. There has only been about a
dozen or so sightings of those MC Hammer clown pants, so looks like all the
hard core backpackers have left Thailand for the touristos and focused on the
cheaper surrounding countries.
We did see one Muslim family who put on quite a show. The group consisted of the dad, who was
wearing jeans and a red t-shirt, a bunch of children, then at least seven
women, some dressed in the full hijab with only their eyes showing, and the
rest had their full faces showing.
They were moving as a pack down the sidewalk, wandering from side to
side and taking up the entire space, so it was hard to get by them. It’s hard to tell how they were all related,
but it started with a commotion between two of the women, presumably his
wives. They started yelling at each
other, pointing fingers at each other, then the dad, then the other women, and
that escalated into a shoving match. The
other family members pulled them apart and the dad tried making peace. One of the ladies punched him in the face,
screaming violently, then went after one of the women and there was a major
scuffle, spilling out onto the busy street.
I think one of them got pushed to the ground and there may have been a
few more punches and slaps landed, though it was hard to tell as there was so
many of them. The main instigator then
pushed ahead of the group and fired Islamic insults back to the rest of them,
screaming at the top of her lungs. The
younger women looked like they were trying to continue walking and ignore what
was going on. The dad, after recovering
from the blow, just continued eating his ice cream. A few of the other women were still in a
fighting mood and screaming at each other.
By this time all the vendors and tourists on the entire street had
walked out to see what was going on and everybody was looking at them, some
laughing and others just rolling their eyes and slipping past them on the sidewalk,
trying not to get cuffed. I told the
kids that the Muslim concept of having multiple wives might sound good in
theory, but in practice it probably just ends up in a lot of punchfests and smackdowns.
After finding a McDonalds and having coffee and ice cream
(McDonalds has the cheapest ice cream cones going – less than fifty cents
each), we turned around and began working our way back. Along the way, we found another street
critter – a man holding a monkey and letting tourists take photos with it – but
the monkey was not nearly as adorable as the baby lemur so we gave it a miss
and continued back to our hotel where we settled in for the night and started
kicking around a few ideas for our next destination.
No comments:
Post a Comment