Still in the South!

Well our plan was to be further North than this at this point, but we sort of got stuck in Krabi! Intentionally because it was such a lovely place. We ended up visiting both Railay Beach and Ao Nang (Nang Beach), which were both lovely. I preferred Railay because there was much more to do though, such as embarking on a seemingly innocent climb to "The Lagoon". It was not innocent. After climbing/scrambling up quite a steep cliff/gully, with the aid of ropes, to a nice little forest walk. This walk stayed "nice' for about 3 minutes, until we found the next part of the journey. Again with the aid of ropes, we had to go down a cliff. Then another cliff. Then another. I found it extremely difficult as I am not a climber, and at first decided to wait at the Top while Caitiln went down. I sat at the top with another girl who didn't want to go down, but eventually we managed to persuade each other to give it another go and we both made it down! When we got to the Lagoon it was quite pretty, but very muddy with quite spiky rocks to swimming wasn't really an option. There was, however, a very nice shelf with lots of sculptures that people had made out of the mud on it!

We intended to go home the next day, but met up with some Americans called Joe, Tony and Sarah and decided to stay a couple of extra days to do some more exploring. We went to Ao Nang, which was really just a long beach, and Caitlin ventured up the 1237 steps to the "Tiger Temple". No tigers, just a lot of steps!

When we finally decided to leave, we had the dilemma of where to go. We decided to try and get to a small village called Ban DanSingkhon where there is a Burmese Orchid Market every Saturday. We thought that this would be a quite an easy journey - we would go to a town called Surat Thani, from there get another bus to Prachoet Khirikhan and then get a song tao to the village. Unfortunetly, it was not this simple. From Krabi we got a bus to a small place called Ban Na Saan (simple because at this point we weren't 100% sure where we wanted to go, and it was one of the few places that we could find both on the map in Lonely Planet and on the ticket...). Not much here but a train station, so the next morning we decided 100% to make our way to Surat Thani. Note to self: Never go there. Never, ever go there. We arrived and tried to get a bus to Prachoet Khirikhan, but the ticket seller was so obviously trying to scam us it was ridiculus. We managed to get the price down from 450B each to 350B each, but that took a very long time and a lot of bantering backwards and forwards. Usually the banter-haggling is quite fun and can be a laugh, but the man selling the tickets was convinced that because we were "farang" we were rich. He got quite heated and shouted at me that "Thai people pay less because they don't have money, white people are all rich so must pay more". I tried to explain to him that I actually live in Thailand and am a volunteer, but he was having none of it. After finally paying for the ticket I had to make quite a fuss to get my 300B change! The bus was supposedly at 6.10pm, so we wandered around the town for a while. At 6.10pm we headed back to where we'd been todl the bus was, only to be taken in a small song tao to another place. Here we waited until 8pm before out bus finally came!! We tried to find out from the driver what time we would be in Prachoet because the bus went all the way to Bangkok, and he glared at us then waves his hand at us to shoo us away! For the first few hours of the journey the bus kept stopping randomly, and finally we pulled over at the side of the road while one of the drivers fiddled with the engine in the back. I went down and politely asked what was wrong, and again the man glared at me then went out and slammed the door! Thankfully when the other driver came back in he was much nicer and said that it was fixed, and off we went. At about 2am we arrived in Prachoet. Or, actually, we didn't... we were dropped off 2km outside the town, despite the driver asking us where we wanted to be dropped off and agreeing to take us to where ther ewere hotels! Finally after about a 1km walk lined with stray dogs we found a hotel and managed to geta few hours sleep before being up at 7.30am to find a way to the Orchid Market.

The Market was actually lovely, and Caitlin and I both bought Pitcher Plants to see if we can keep them alive. If we start to fail we're going to try and give them to Pippa - she likes plants! After the market and a nap at the hotel, I decided to make my way up to a temple on a hill, with 336 steps leading up to it! I managed it and am very proud that I did, and I saw lots of monkeys on the way! On the way back down, I got a bit trapped by the monkeys though... someone had left a bag of food for them and they were swarming onf of the little shelters on the way up the steps, fighting over the food. I decided to wait it out until they had calmed down instead of risking rabies!

One thing I've noticed pretty much immediately is that there is a huge contrast between the South of Thailand and the Northeast, where I am in Na Kae. The feeling that I got in Surathani was that the locals were almost resentful towards farang. I think that this is probably because being near such a tourist filled area they have quite likely had bad experiences with typical farang party goers, but there seems to be a lack of the community spirit which is obvious in Isaan. I haven't yet seen anyone eating outside and having the whole street join them as can often happn in the villaged around Na Kae. As I have now travelled around Isaan a bit, I can say that it's not just in Na Kae that there is a strong sense of community - it really is all over, and the locals wherever we've been in Isaan have been extremely welcoming and impressed that we both speak Thai, even if they haven't met us previously. It's a shame that this has been lost in more southern parts of the country.