Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 10 (Crossing the peninsula)

Was longer than we suspected. We were promised to be in Koh Samui at 5.30 pm.
Waiting for a bus to take us to the Krabi bus station a tuk-tuk driver approached me to offer service and, seeing my ticket saying’ Krabi-Surat Thani – Koh Samui: bus + boat’, he grinned, ‘Good luck for you’ and walked away.
In a short while we were brought somewhere near krabi. One has to possess a certain amount of imagination to complete the picture of a lonely hut with 2 tables, several beach-style plastic chairs and a woman selling rice and sandwiches to realize that the shack was the bus station!
To our even greater surprise a modern double decker (with girly pink draped curtains!) appeared from the woods.

We arrived at Surat Thani at 3 pm unable to believe that the feared bus torture lasted so little even with pitiful Thai roads!
Ironically, we didn’t know the torture waited ahead in the boat.
Once we finally got in (after 2-hours wait!) we joked, ‘ Can you imagine to see in the news: A boat crashed and sunk without leaving the pier!’ It screeched so bad and bent inward banging against the pier, I could imagine it to be true!
Banging and screeching went on for more than 2 hours. At 8 pm we were finally in the hotel. Luckily, alive!

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 9 (Ao Nang and Railay Beach)

The Peninsula is even greener than the islands, meaning both land and water. The road cutting into mangrove swamps, followed by selva between the mountains leads to Ao Nang, a small coastal town in the Krabi province. We got there in a colorful wooden songthaew. Its driver was a typical Thai man - short, tanned, with just a couple of hairs sprouting from his upper lip and scarce long hairs right beneath the chin. He first called out desperately for people going to Ao Nang and then stuffed all the white sardines into the truck (the truck’s physical capacity didn’t matter much). An already usual procedure was to stop in the middle of the way and nowhere and trying to figure out where everyone was going. It turned out more than half of the present didn’t have an idea and were immediately kindly provided with suggestions. The fun part though started when English-speaking people pronounced in an oh-so-English way the absolutely not English-sounding place & hotel names and usually got 2 possible answers:’ Eh????’ or ‘ No no!’ The most reassuring was to see the driver recognize your place name and give you an outrageous kind of smiles, with the teeth in his mouth pointing in all directions.
Ao Nang, however, is not a sort of place where you can get lost easily, as it’s virtually (without understatement) two perpendicular roads, one of which runs along the beach. That’s pretty much a typical Thai place.
Coming to Ao Nang, I realized that apparently the only buildings with proper walls can be mostly seen in hotels and 7elevens, while here too, regular Thais apparently live in makeshift(-looking) hovels.
Something different about this town was a new kind of tuk-tuk, which, unlike those in Bangkok and in the North, are normal motorbikes with a sidecar to fit up to 4 people or, if needed easily convertible into a footstall!

The most beautiful beach isn’t exactly in Ao Nang, but on a small peninsula not far away, called Railay Beach. It’s just a 15-minute ride in a longtail boat to reach the western part, lined up with seemingly expensive resorts. From where you can take a kayak to the eastern part and relax on a lovely virgin beach and marvel extraordinary limestone cliffs.

Haeding to Railay Beach

West Railay

Tropical shower

East Railay

CRAB ART

Finally, Ao Nang is without doubt a great place to see the sunset or walk along the monkey path on the side of a mountain right on the beach.