Today we are on the move again, this time to Krabi. We pack up again and head of to the bus station. Instead of a taxi we ask we arrange a lift with a guy who was delivering stock to the hotel. His mode of transport was a motorbike and sidecar (sort of). The sidecar was a metal frame used to carry goods with a seat (flat piece of metal) on one side to sit on. This seemed to be the usual way to transport anything, and lots of these had been made into mobile stalls selling anything, most were food stalls or fruit sellers. They went round hotels selling stuff to staff and guests, after which they would set up on the road side or by the beach. The ride was a bit bumpy but quite adequate for our needs. The bus station was a strip of sand where a very old bus waited at the end of the beach road. The bus then didn’t stop but instead crawled along the beach road while people jumped on it before crossing the island to Phuket town. The back doors of another bus were open and inside sat a man playing a banjo. Waiting for a bus we were pestered by people asking us to take a private minivan to Krabi and that it would only cost 2500 baht (45 pounds) which we declined. The bus trip was uneventful and even though we had only been in Phuket for a few days we where both ready to move on from the expensive tourist trap of Patong. Arriving at the bus station we just had time to get a bottle of water and some fried rice for lunch before we got on the mini bus for Krabi. The bus was only 400 baht, strange as the people on the beach road in Patong had told us it was 2000.
The trip was breathtakingly beautiful. The landscape was so green, palm trees banana trees and rubber trees everywhere. Getting closer to Krabi we started to see the huge rock formations covered in vegetation, rising vertically from the ground and falling as quickly. We passed the beach where the James bond film ‘man with the golden gun’ was filmed. I began to realise that even though the living standard here was low I could imagine living here. I wonder what it would be like waking and opening a window with a view of all this, breathing in the freshest of air on a warm sunny day. We arrived at the bus station and it started raining, and by the end of our taxi ride to the resort it was a full blown tropical storm.
The resort we were staying at proved to be really pretty and friendly. It had only cost £8 for the night but it was a series of little bungalows in beautiful gardens so we got a whole bungalow with 3 little beds a bathroom and a front porch. After all the travelling we just couldn’t face the mighty storm outside to explore the town so we ate a lovely meal of sweet and sour thai veg in the resort restaurant and booked our trip to PhiPhi for tomorrow then got an early night.