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Other entries in Krabi

Krabi and RaiLay - UPDATED

Our voyage to Thailand from Singapore was pretty straight forward. We left Singapore to KL in Malaysia, and got past the border fairly easily. The ride was pretty smooth (even for those of us with extreme hangover's and no sleep...ahem...Emily....I'm not giving details on that so she can do the explaining). The roads were all in great condition and everything was so clean it was a huge contrast to India...and even Canada in a lot of ways.
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur's bus station and was blasted by the heat. We settled our selves and bags down and I (Hannah) went out exploring the various bus companies to get us across the border into Thailand. We arrived around 4-5ish and couldn't get another bus until 10pm so we had a few hours to kill. We left Lindsay to look after the bags and Emily and I bought the tickets. We were taking our time getting the details on crossing the boarder and platforms etc and were about 20 minutes in total.  When we returned Lindsay was all ready with her bags loaded on her back and demanding that we grab our bags and go quickly. We were a little shocked that the urgency stemming this hasting departure, but apparently it  was due to a personal "peep show" that Lindsay was receiving from the man sitting directly across from her 6 feet away. Apparently right after me and Emily left he placed a briefcase on his lap, whipped IT out and proceeded to pleasure himself while staring directly at Lindsay the whole entire time we were gone.  Since we didn't have any small bills to stuff down his pants or beer to drink (which is usually needed to watch a show like that), we decided it was best  and most safe to spend the 5 hours until our next bus away from the bus station and in particular away from him.  Luckily we ended up coming across a hostel that let us just sit there and watch movies and leave our bags in a locked room for just $2. So after watching a bunch of bootlegged Asian movies we loaded on another bus to the Thai border.
Once in Thailand we again waited for yet another bus to take us up to the East Coast to Krabi. 28 hours after we left Singapore we arrived in Krabi and started our beach vacation. Once in Krabi we needed to decide which island to stay on. Railay was close and had spectacular beaches and scenery (in particular it's Karst structures) so we decided that we would base ourselves there until we met up with our friends Melissa and Brad in a few days.  To get to Krabi we took a long boat to the island (it's really a peninsula) with a group of American's we meet. We ended up bartering a better price than the American's for the boat and promised our captain to keep it a secret from them, then made our way to RaiLay. Once there we dropped our bags on the beach and went searching for a bungalow to stay in. Since the American's were there for a short vacation to rockclimb and we were on a budget holiday they took the AC room with TV. While we took a quant little bamboo hut with a fan which was up an enormous flight of steep stairs but had a great breeze and cheap food which was served to us by a Transvestite (there is a whole Tranny sub-culture here in Thailand). RaiLay had been hit hard by the tsunami and many hostels on the side that we stayed at were still rebuilding, but other than that it was the only noticeable affect of the tsunami.
The next few days were filled of getting sunburned then tanned on the beach, making friends with our neighbours from the south, Bob, Thersea and Jenn.  Bob, who just happened to own his own rock climbing gym in Philadelphia offered to let us use his equipment and instruct us for free. It just so happened that our first day at the beach I stepped on a sea urchin which can be quite painful especially when you can't get them out of your feet (....just see the picture). Walking let alone rockclimbing was painful so I didn't partake although I really wanted to.  The beaches were beyond beautiful as well as the caves and rock formations. They even had an entire cave where there was a shrine devoted to fertility and wooden penis carvings were placed there for good fertility. We ended up signing up for a snorkeling tour which lasted until after sunset because we were starting to get bored of the beach.  We toured 7 islands which were surrounded by tones of coral and fish and even swam with at least a dozen black tail sharks that just dart right by you, which made Emily scream more than once. We were given bananas and were allowed to feed the fish while swimming and you ended up getting swarmed by them. This as well as jumping off the top of the boat I only did, the other girls just sat and watched.  It finished with a swim through a cave, a beautiful sunset, the daily migration of hundreds of fruit bats (which have a wing span of 1-2 feet and have bodies the size of Chihuahuas), a large buffet seafood dinner and a night swim with the bioluminescence.
We woke up the next day excited for the arrival of Brad and Melissa and showed them around the island and  basically just chilled on the beach rented some sea kayaks and went splunking in a cave. We saw a really intense Thai Boxing fight (where a guy actually got knocked out by a kick) 3 feet away from us and a cobra show with a snake charmer. A few days later we left RaiLay towards Ko Phi Phi.

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