Krabi – a place, not a disposition…….  Seems like a good manta to follow as everyone here seems to just go with the flow.

Well it seems that the weather has finally caught up with us a bit after 16 straight days of beautiful weather.  We knew that it was the rainy season when we planned to come here, so we were prepared for brief rain interruptions to our plans, or having to work around the weather a bit, but were pleasantly surprised to have gone so many days with no impact on our plans at all.

But our first day in Krabi was mostly an inside day as the skies opened up and the rain came down fairly steadily until mid afternoon.  Laurie and the kids ventured out when it tapered off a bit and did a little shopping while I got some work done, and then we all went out in the late afternoon when it had basically stopped to wander about the town here and get some dinner.  It was nice to have a bit of a down day so everyone could just relax a little and get some stuff done, but it would have been nice if we could have done it by the pool.

The weather outlook says to expect more of the same over the rest of the week here, but things seem to change here rapidly so we don’t put a lot of stock in the forecasts, and just work our plans around whatever comes.  Today is overcast, but dry, so a pool day seems to be in order.

More to follow…..

We set off for Krabi in what turns out to be another big adventure – more on that in a minute…

Krabi is one of the southern provinces in Thailand on the western side that faces the Andaman Sea.  It is directly across a large bay from Phuket, and many people come here from Phuket via boat.  The coast here is a little more rugged and mountainous than any of the other spots we have been so far, and this is where a lot of rock climbers come from around the world to climb what is regarded as some of the best.  Krabi is also the name of the largest city in the province and historically has supported a fairly large fishing industry.  We will be staying in Ao Nang, which is a beach town about 20 kilometers from Krabi town.

We head down to the travel agent the day before to look into our travel options.  After our interesting journey to Ko Samui from Phuket, we are looking for some better info about what we are getting into 🙂

We had at one point thought we hooked ourselves up with a private car for about 4000B ($110 USD) but that deal mysteriously falls apart (maybe the price was too low) and now the agent tells us we have 2 options – Option 1 is for a private car, the car will take us from Samui all the way to Ao Nang and to our destination hotel for 7000B (about $200 USD).  The other option is to take the regular tourist transfer for about 3000B ($90 USD).  Having been down the transfer road before we ask more questions this time……  The package takes us from our hotel to the ferry by van where we will transfer to an air-conditioned bus across the ferry and then to Surat Thani where we will transfer to another air-conditioned bus for the trip from Surat Thani to Krabi.  Finally we would take a taxi form Krabi to our hotel in Ao Nang.  We double check the facts, and Mrs Columbus says it’s half the price and a nice bus all the way so we should take the transfer vs the private car.  We did not really stop to process the fact that we were really talking about the difference between $100 and $200 to move 6 people around – but I guess this is the way we learn lessons.

So 8am rolls around and we climb into the van to go to the ferry where uneventfully we transfer our baggage to the bus and board the ferry.  After the crossing we travel the hour or so to Surat Thani and get dropped off at a restaurant/transfer station and are told it will be about a 20 minute wait for the bus that is going to Krabi.   After a short wait we are herded off to a tuk-tuk to go to where the other bus is waiting.  Here is where the adventure goes a bit sideways…..  The bus we board seems relatively new, and air-conditioned and we load our bags and settle into some seats, and then we wait, and wait, and wait.  All the while more and more people are getting on the bus and after about an hour and 20 minutes the bus is full and finally departs.  Much to our surprise though the bus stops frequently on the way out of town to pick up even more people, and soon the bus is completely full – including people standing in the aisle and anywhere there is a spot.  It turns out that this is a local bus that is going to Krabi, but not via an express route, and going through a bunch of samll towns along the way vs going along the freeway.  So instead of the short 2 hour ride were were expecting we hunker down for a much longer time – the one saving grace is that we all have seats vs the people standing.

After a 10 hour journey (that is only about 5h including the ferry if you go direct) we finally arrive at our destination, and after getting our bags stowed away in our rooms we grab a bite to eat and call it a night.

For anyone who is interested I have posted a few GPS tracks of some of the ground we have covered while here – you can look at the maps here

We spent our last 2 days on Ko Samui going at a little slower pace.  We are moving on to Krabi on the 11th and needed to do some research for transportation and a place to stay, so with that on the agenda, we set off for breakfast.  One of the staff at the hotel turned out to be a great source of information, and he told us that there is a store called The Big C that has free internet (we have been paying for access from here, and the performance is not fantastic), with this info inhand, we headed out after breakfast for a little shopping and some free WiFi.

The Big C is sort of like a Target or a Fred Meyer maybe but it also has some ‘common’ areas where other merchants have stores and booths setup so I guess like a cross between a Fred Meyer and a mall.  They have a food court, and that is where the free WiFi is – it is easy to figure this out, because the place has a bunch of people (mostly tourists) all sporting their laptops 🙂  We spent a few hours here doing some work, and some research on our next location, and then went shopping for some snacks for the road, and a look around the mall.  One of the booths in the mall area was a big tank where you could put your feet in and have these little fish eat the dead skin off your feet – it was bizarre to watch as hundreds of these little fish attached themselves to your feet and needless to say we only watched and did not partake.

For our last full day we got up for a late start and decided to see if we could find a car and driver to take us around the island.  We have been here for a handful of days now, and have not really seen much beyond our hotel and Chewang Beach.  It would be a shame to come this far and not see at least a little more of the island, so off we go to one of the ‘travel agents’ to book a car.

We are really glad we did this, as our guide turns out to be really good, and there was a lot of interesting things to see.  He takes us to the highlights of the island, and at each stop he provides some background about the place and answers any sort of questions we come up with.

We stop to see several beaches – Lamai, Mae Nam, Bo Phut, Nathon, and also a couple of temples.  Normally I would have passed on more temples thinking I had seen enough already, but each of these seems to have something new or different to make it worth while.

The first temple we stop at has the mummified body of a monk in a sitting position enclosed in a glass room.  Apparently the monk was quite well known in Samui, and his last requests included a wish to be posed sitting up and available to the people.  It looks a little creepy, but how often do you get to see a real mummy.

The other temple we visit has a large Buddha statue and is up on a hill overlooking the north end of the island.  The view was impressive, but the thing that made this temple different were the monks that were at the bottom of the shrine.  They are collecting donations for additional temple buildings and maintenance, and so we make a small donation and get to place our names on another tile to be used on the structure.  In addition each of us receives a blessing from a monk and a hand-made braided (Sai Sin) bracelet for good luck.

We also stop at one of the waterfalls on the island – we had wanted to see one while we were on Phuket, but were told that because it had been so dry lately the waterfall was not much to see.  So we were pleasantly surprised with what was in store for us here.  After a very short walk up through the foliage it opens into a little river with a 100+ foot rock wall at one end with water streaming down and a nice pool at the bottom.  Rachael and Jackie thought ahead enough to bring their swimsuits and were able to enjoy a refreshing dip in the cool water and we sat for a few minutes and just enjoyed the surroundings.

We end the day back at our hotel for a dinner in the restaurant, and then it is off to our rooms to get packed up and ready for tomorrow morning.  We are leaving at 8am for our journey to Krabi.

We managed to get ourselves settled into our new place in Ko Samui and spent the first day just relaxing around the pool here – I was able to find a deck chair that was in the WiFi service area, and got a bunch of work done while the kids splashed around in the pool.  Then after a fairly productive day I decided it was high time to treat myself to another massage 🙂 – my count is now up to 3, well short of my targeted 1 per day of vacation here.

We are staying at Chewang Beach on Ko Samui, which is the busiest of the beaches here.  There are plenty of bars and night clubs and markets here, so this is clearly where all the people looking for action come.  It is a little more active than the pace we had come to enjoy back in Phuket, but we managed to get ourselves into a hotel back from the beach that is away from most of the craziness.  The hotel (Nova Samui Resort) is a little older, but well maintained and the staff is very friendly and helpful – on our arrival they gave us a choice between 3 regular rooms and 3 rooms in sort of a private ‘house’ (the rooms are not connected, but there are no other rooms or people in the house, so it is basically all ours) – we took the private house, and have a nice terrace to sit on in the morning to get a little work done and/or get our day started.

We managed to co-ordinate our schedule to connect with the Sung family, their kids are part of the same gymnastics team that Rachael is on, and when we found out that they would be in this part of the world visiting some family we thought it would be worth trying to meet up somewhere.  So off we go to meet up with a Woodinville family in the middle of SE Asia – sometimes the world is just a really small place.

So far we have spent the last couple of days just hanging out at the beach and doing some shopping with our friends – the kids have been having a great time with some additional people to play with, and Laurie and I have been able to hang out with other adults and just relax and have some good conversation.  It has been a nice reminder of home and the friends and family we have back there.

Sadly the Sungs had only a couple of days here as they have other stops on their agenda, and after a nice dinner on the beach we have to say our goodbyes until we are able to see them again back in the USA.

We make our way back to our hotel to wind up another great day in paradise and decide to extend our stay here by a couple more days before moving on to the next location.

The plan for the day was to move from Phuket to Koh Samui – this turns out to be a little more complicated than it would seem on the surface.

Turns out there are a limited number of ways for us to actually do this:

1. Fly from Phuket to Koh Samui – there is only one airline in Thailand that does this and we decide that the price of the ticket(s) plus the taxi to the Phuket airport is more than we want to spend.
2. Rent a car and drive yourself – the distance is not all that far (about 4-5 hours) but the cost of renting the car one way is a little excessive, and Mrs. Columbus and I are not yet convinced that driving here with the small people in the car is a wise choice (they drive on the left side of the road here)
3. Hire a private car and driver – this was our leading choice, but it seems that none of the ‘travel agents’ want to sell you that choice.  Certainly there are people with vans that would do this, but finding them seems to require a little more local knowledge than we have acquired.
4. Sign up for the packaged trip – this is conceptually the same as number 3 above but with other people going to the same place in the van/bus with you.

Given our options and costs we decide to do number 4, but in our 2nd lesson of the devil is in the details, we find that it is not exactly as we are expecting….

The journey from Phuket to Koh Samui involves traveling by road from Karon Beach to Donsak where there is a harbor with ferry service that takes you to Koh Samui where presumably you get a taxi to take you to your hotel. Seems simple right… Well the driver shows up to our hotel at 7:40am to pick us up (we are the first pickup) and manages to load all our stuff into his van – this is a feat unto itself as we have a total of nine bags, but he manages to jam them into a space that looks like it will barely fit 4. So off we go to pick up the rest, stopping at another Karon hotel to pick up 2 more people, and then to Kata to fill the last 4 seats. All of these people have had their bags jammed into various nooks and crannies and the van is so full that one of the last people has to ride up front with the driver.

We also learn during all of this that the van will not be going straight to the ferry at Donsak, but rather to Surat Thani where we will be off-loaded and switch to another bus for the trip to the ferry.  Anyway we try to get comfortable and settle in for the 4 hour trip to Surat Thani.  The van is not so packed as to be uncomfortable, but there is not a lot of leg room and stretching out is basically not possible – kinda like riding economy on an airplane.

4 hours later we arrive at Surat Thani we are ushered into a little ‘store’ that is more like a stall in a market and told that we will wait here for the bus to Donsak – it will be there in an hour.  So we settle in to wait, but the shop is hot (not air-conditioned), and the chairs are not all that comfortable so it looks like it will be a long hour.  As it turns out it is not an hour at all, but basically an opportunity for them to sell you more package tours, day trips, return trip, etc. Once everyone has been through the grinder, the bus magically appears (about 30mins) and we climb aboard.  Now this is a real bus, like a touring bus, and it will take us the next 1 hour leg of the trip to the ferry.  The bus is air-conditioned, but not all of it is working properly, and as Mrs. Columbus learns seating location is everything because her air conditioning does not work and the bus starts to get a little stuffy. The kind operator does come back about 3/4 of the way through the trip and realize how warm it is and turns her A/C on for the last few mins of the trip.

We get to the ferry and the crossing is uneventful, and after a bit of confusion and some haggling at the pier we get a taxi to our hotel and we are done for the night.