World Tour - 2013

[ by Stian ]

It seems like most of my friends, and everybody else as well, have been to Thailand at one point or another, so it was about time that I would get the pleasure to experience this favorite holiday destination of many as well :) Thailand is not only famous for beautiful beaches and cheap food and alcohol, but it is as well one of the very few countries that never has been colonized by any western country. Therefore, Thailand has kept a lot of it's traditional culture, as well as it's cultural places. The whole country is packed with temples of all kinds, both old and new – and one will find peace in Buddhas wherever one chooses to go.

Arriving Krabi Airport

Our first destination was set for Krabi. At the airport we were met by Kenneths uncle and aunt, Thorbjørn and Tove, who are the proud owners of a house here, and as well by Keo, the neighbor and a very good friend of the two. I and Kenneth had been invited to stay with his family while in Krabi even before our departure so we were grateful for this kind gesture. When we met them at the airport it turned out that we would be joined by more members of Kenneth's family, 'cause shortly after our arrival we had the arrival of Thorbjørn's cousins Norunn and Kirsti as well as Norunn's husband Rune. It even happen so that Kirsti is the mother of a former colleague of mine, Even. The world is indeed a small place. Later the same evening we would be joined by Kenneth's cousin Vibeke and her boyfriend Jason as well. So all together we would be a group of 9 people, though only 6 of us would be staying at the house of Kenneth's uncle.

Ao Nang

It actually turned out that Thorbjørn and Tove lived quite far into the bush, close to a place call Ban Nai Sai, and that they spent most of their time at the holiday destination of Ao Nang, but still in the Krabi province though. We did not actually get to see Krabi Town at all while we were here, but we were told that there is really not much to see either, so we didn't miss anything. The first impressions of Ao Nang was ok, though it was obvious that this place rely a lot on tourism, and then especially on tourists from the Scandinavian countries. There were tailor-shops everywhere and they all had stickers of the Nordic countries flags only on display on the front. We also learned that there is a very rapid increase of Russian tourists to this place as well. Ao Nang beach is the most popular tourist destination just outside of Krabi, and the beach sure would turn out to be a nice one.

We headed straight for Ao Nang as the rest of the people would be accommodated here. We then had lunch at a local restaurant before I and Kenneth got a ride to the house by Keo, while Thorbjørn and Tove went to the airport to pick up their daughter and her man. The house was very nice so it was all set for a few calm and relaxing days in Thailand. Before our arrival we had decided that Thailand would be the place where to relax so we had to take advantage of this now then.

Impressions of the bunch:)

The first impression of the people in our group was very good and it did turn out in the end as well that it was a very nice mix of people. Everybody got along well. But then again, both I and Kenneth have always had an ease for getting along with elderly women, haha;) It always help as well to have good neighbors who speak the local language, and also to have access to a pretty nice share of alcohol as well.

Day at the Beach

The second day we spent most of the afternoon at the beach. We did not have any plans at all other than to relax, to go swimming and to get a massage. Since Thorbjørn and Tove has been regularly vacating here for several months every year they have had gotten to know a lot of people, so Tove advised us carefully who we should purchase products from, since the beach is crowded with pushy salespeople. They also knew the people at one of the massage-stands very well so if we chose to get a massage we were told we would get a discount, but only at this one particular stand. Of course we took advantage of this opportunity and we ended up getting an hour of oil massage for only 200 Thai Baht each, that is only 40 NOK!!!! Wow, in Norway one hour of massage would at least cost 1000 NOK, if not even more.

Exploring Ao Nang

Kenneth's uncle and aunt decided to leave for home but I and Kenneth wanted to check out the area and to try to find a tour we could attend the following day, which we eventually did find. We did though get a problem finding a ride back to the «bush» since the taxis were very expensive for Thai standards and that no one seemed to know where we were living at. We requested to rent a motorbike for a day as well, since we would need to get to town early next morning to catch our tour, but we were not allowed to rent a motorbike since we did not bring our passports – and passports were the only deposits they were willing to accept. They required us to leave the passports in their possession so that they knew for SURE that we would be returning with the motorbike, and not be stealing it. So we were forced to find a taxi – and it cost us 600 Baht to get back to the house. That is around 120 NOK which is pretty expensive for Thailand... but the people in Ao Nang KNOW that they can charge foreigners with these prices since they know we are «loaded» with money... well well. So the taxi guy first took us in his Tuk Tuk to his house, were he changed to his car and even brought his wife and son along before driving us back to Ban Nai Sai. According to Thorbjørn it seems like that the Thai people are terrified of the dark and that they are totally depended of the extra pair of eyes to see... strange. Well well.

There Is No Bus To Ao Nang

The next day Thorbjørn gave us a ride to Ban Nai Sai, where we were supposed to catch the bus to Ao Nang. He dropped us off by something that did function as a bus, but it turned out to be a school bus for Muslim girls, so when I asked if this was the bus to Ao Nang an adult woman waved franticly in front of me and shouted «no no no bus». We tried to ask around but almost no one spoke English here, so Thorbjørn was forced to give us a ride the whole way.

Beautiful Beautiful Morning

When in town we had an hour to spare before getting picked up for the tour. The beauty and the tranquility of the abandoned beach, and the light from the sun which just had risen this early morning was amazing. I really can understand why places like this become peoples favorite destinations, though it's too bad how this perfect image is ruined when all the tourists pack together on the beach alongside pushy and rude salespeople during the rest of the day, but well well...

4-in-1 Tour

The tour we had signed up for included 4 sights. The first part would be Elephant-riding, then a visit to the «famous» Tiger Cave Temple before we would be heading for a swim at natural hot pools, and then lunch, before our last stop which would be at an emerald pool for another swim.

Riding The Elephant

Riding the Elephant was a very nice experience. At first we did find our guide a bit rude – that is the guy that was riding the elephant with us. We had been assigned a fairly young female elephant to ride, we were told. Obviously 35 years in the Elephant world is very young. It didn't seem that she was completely used to having people riding her so she stopped several times during the track and got her focus centered somewhere else. Our guide then hit the elephant in the head, and the sound of the beat was hard and hollow – not a good sound to be honest. I don't know much about elephants though, only that they have been used as «house-animals» and servants for many many years, and they need to be tamed before they can be one – so I guess it's not worse than taming a dog? Or? I and Kenneth sat in a proper seat, but suddenly the guide jumped off the elephant and asked me if I wanted to ride it across the neck, like the guides did. I seized the opportunity and did climb out of my safe seat and found myself a position as comfortable as possible on her neck. I have to say that feeling the hard, rubber-like skin with the very stiff hair against my naked leg wasn't the best, but I did manage well without feeling uncomfortable. So it was a good experience and I think I have gotten a new found love for elephants, 'cause they sure are some of the sweetest animals alive:)

Tiger Cave Temple

We then headed for the Tiger Cave Temple. This area consists of several parts: Many smaller temples, some of which still are under construction, a cave, and a mountain with a temple and a massive statue of a Buddha on top. To get to the top of the mountain we had to climb 1 237 steps. Just after arriving we even got to see monkeys in the wild again:) We only had an hour and a half to get up to the top and down again so I immediately found my way up the stairs. It was an extremely hot day so I was sweating like hell on the way up, but I figured it would be best to just get up there as fast as possible and then have more time enjoying the view and the breeze which probably would meet us up there. When at the top level I was amazed by the sight of the Buddha, which is really nice. It is the perfect location for something like this, and even though it's not really possible to compare the two, I did get kinda Machu Picchu feeling when i was standing on the top by the statue:) The complex is not very old though. The top level was completed only a few decades ago, but all these kind of places, no matter how new or old they are, have a significant value in the life of those who are firm believers of Buddha and his teachings.

Swimming In the Hot Pools

We were then taken for a swim at some natural hot pools, which was really really nice. The hot water was streaming from the mountainside an into a colder pool – so enjoying the time in the hot pool first and then sliding down into the colder pool was just wonderful:)

At the Emerald Pool

We then had lunch, which was included in the cost, and it was a nice lunch with rice, chicken, curry and vegetables:) After lunch we headed for the last part of the tour, which was a visit to the Emerald pool – were we were allowed to go for another swim. Our tour guide referred to it as the cold pool, but it was far from cold. It was way hotter than any other normal swimming pool I had been in – so it was really nice as well. At first it was a bit strange, because it was obviously a school nearby and just when I had gotten myself into the pool there were a whole bunch of small kids that came running in their school uniforms and lined up along the poolside. The kids were just standing watching me and the others (white people) swimming and it felt very strange since we did not know if we were the attraction or if it actually was the pool they were admiring. In my head I had this image of us being bait and that they would let loose some kind of shark or something that would eat us all up and that this was some kind of sick entertainment for the kids, haha;) Thankfully this was not the case, but I did feel very on display for a while;)

Back in Ao Nang we had to wait for Thorbjørn to pick us up. We had dinner at a very nice restaurant right next to the beach and I had a fried chicken-pineapple-rice that was served in an actual pineapple, haha;) Just gotta love it. Of course Kenneth made the comment that when he saw it on the menu he «KNEW» that I would be ordering it – like if I am THAT predictable – haha;)

Living Life:)

Back at the house Thorbjørn and Tove were the perfect and kindest hosts ever serving us whatever we liked of soda, beer, snacks and even gin and tonics. So we were living a very good life now, though we could have been without all the mosquito. We even got in touch with the husband of Keo, namely the famous Mr Dengh. We were specially interested in getting in touch with him since both I and Kenneth wanted to have new tattoos. I wanted a new tattoo, as well as getting my old one fixed. So after having had discussions with him he called some friends that he thought could be able to come over to the house and tattoo us there. Though they were not available, but when we were to head for Phuket we could get our tattoos there for a really good price, we were told.

A Muslim Get-Together:)

The next day we did absolutely nothing, and this was also the first and so far only day I did not spend ANY money at all – HOORAY! We spent the whole day at the house, which was very nice. There was a reason for this though. This particular day Thorbjørn and Tove had invited the whole village to come over for a food fest. That is they had arranged so that people from the village came to their property and prepared the food for everyone, while they then paid for all of it. Since Ao Nang and Krabi is a very Muslim area most of the over 100 guests that dropped by were Muslims. The food had also been prepared by Muslims, in the correct way. We were served goat curry, and by tradition the goat had been killed the same morning. We also got served Thai food and soups and so on... so it was good, but the curry was TOO hot for me and I had a sweat-shocking experience and had to find refugee in my bedroom with the aircondition on for a while to cool down – haha;) Of course the locals thought this was hilarious so they made a comment out of it by laughing at me;)

Religious sidenote: Funny thing about Thailand is that almost 98% of the population is Buddhists we were told, but in the region of Krabi and Phuket the vast majority, almost as many as 95%, are Muslims, we were told.

Wednesday: No Happy Ending Today

Then Wednesday was suddenly upon us, not that I care, since it's still Saturday in my world. But it was another day at the beach and another day for massage. This time I had requested a man to give me the massage since I have never actually had a massage by a man before. I was excited to figure out if there would be an actual difference between a man and a woman doing it – and YES! It was soooooo much better!!! He was really good, and at times I was worried that it would be too good – haha. Though he was a professional, so no happy ending for me in sight there;) haha

At the Muslim Market

On the way back home we dropped by the Muslim market for getting ingredients for dinner later that night. There were so much new stuff and exciting stuff at the market and we felt we HAD to try everything. It didn't help that the food almost didn't cost anything either. So we got a whole buffét of wonderful courses for almost nothing. Gotta love Thailand that way:)

Heading For Phuket / Wat Suwankuha Temple

The next day we were to go to Phuket, or more exactly Patong, which is the most famous beach-suburb just outside of Phuket town. Thorbjørn had arranged for a private taxi for the all of us for a fairly good price through friends. We were then free to dispose the ride as we wanted., and on the way to Phuket we dropped by Wat Suwankuha Temple, which is a Buddhist temple with a reclining Buddha. At this place we were once again introduced to the funny monkeys and this time there were very very eager to get a hold of whatever we were holding on to. Both Vibeke and Jason got monkeys climbing all over them – which was fun, but I was still trying to avoid them since you never know if they will bite you. We actually got to know that Vibeke's son once did get bitten by a monkey and then needed hospitalization. So it's better to be safe than sorry.

Patong: Food, tailor and tattoo.

When in Patong we checked in at an ok'ish establishment were the owners were friends of Kenneth's uncle and aunt. Then we headed for the beach, and even for a tailor cause some in the group was getting themselves new suits tailored. Kenneth even ended up with an tailored west which was very nice. I and Kenneth were told that Mr Dengh's friend would come to Patong from Phuket and tattoo us in the evening, but of course time is relative here so even though we were to meet this guy at 7pm he was not there until 9pm. He took us to a tattoo shop were he obviously knew the artists and it was arranged for us to come back the next day for our tattoos. We were told that the work we wanted to have done would not take very long time, my old tattoo would take 3 hours to fix maximum and Kenneth's new tattoo should not take more than an hour to do. So we were told to both come back at 1pm the next day.

5 hours of PAIN

We had originally planned to do a tour this Friday, but we were unfortunately not able to do so since it literally took the whole day to get the tattoos fixed. When we got back to the tattoo studio at 1pm it turned out that they only had the possibility to do two people at the same time, and the main artist was already busy working on an Aussie guy that was getting both his arms and his whole upper chest tattooed. This was a process that took many many many hours a day for many days. He had arrived at 10am and would be worked on until 10 pm this day. So there were therefore only one artist available for me and Kenneth then....

The remaining tattoo artist chose to start off with me. The last time I got myself the tattoo, which was when in Mexico in 2010, it took between 2-3 hours to do, though I have to admit that I have never been very contempt with the final result of it. So this time I was going to just color it all black and then add traditional Norwegian stave-church-pattern. When the tattoo-guy began his work on me it hurt way more than I expected. It hurt especially the places where the skin is very thin, and where there is bone. I realized later that re-doing an old tattoo is always more painful than getting a new one, since a tattoo literally is old scar-tissue and ripping up old scar-tissues are always more painful than ripping up fresh skin. Luckily I was though only to be in the chair for 3 hours maximum – I BELIEVED! In the end I ended up staying 5 hours in the chair – and almost every minute was really painful, but in the end the final result seemed very nice and way better than the previous tattoo:) Though since it took so long to only fix the old one I chose to wait to make additional pattern to it to another time.

Kenneth's turn of pain

Since there was only one available tattoo-guy in the studio, Kenneth had to wait until I was finished before he could start his tattoo. We really did not understand why they had told us both to be at the studio at 1 pm since they already knew that there would only be one guy available to do the both of us, since the Aussie guy already had been pre-booked for many days in a row ahead. Finally it was Kenneth's turn though. Poor guy, cause it was a very painful experience for him as well, haha. His tattoo took 2 hours to finish, which was one more than what they first had presumed, but in the end the result was a good one. Best part of all was that I paid only 6000 Baht for my tattoo, which is about 1150 NOK – about a 5^th of the cost I would have had to pay if having had it done in Norway :-) I did bargain it down from 8000 Baht, but I am not sure if it was so smart to bargain something that is to be added to your body for the rest of your life. Risky business;)

Chinese Lanterns.

After getting our tattoos completed we met up with the group again and then went for Joycelong shopping complex for dinner. After we all went down to the beach were Kenneth and his family had purchased Chinese lanterns which they would lit in honor of Kenneth's grandmother who's birthday fell on this day, though she passed away last year. It was a very nice experience:)

Day of Nothing

The next day was Saturday, and that is an actual Saturday. I chose to do almost nothing this day, since I wanted to take protect and take care of my newly fixed tattoo. I stayed out of the sun and did not go for a swim, so it was a very very hot day. Not being able to go for a swim makes the whole difference in days this hot, so it was a longlasting day.

In the evening I and Kenneth had to leave for Bangkok since we were to meet my friend Sissel, and her friend Marion, from Norway, the next day. We chose to take the VIP nightbus from Phuket, which was a really nice bus – and it was possible to actually get some sleep as well – so at least I was very happy:)

Ao Nang and Phuket experience:)

Ao Nang was a very nice experience, but I have to say that I was put off by many the constant rush of offers by tailors, masseuses and tuk tuk drivers. They really really did not accept a no. I really was not interested in a suit or a massage or a taxi at ANY time. I even experienced ladyboys run into the road grabbing me by my hand trying to drag me into their massage-studio begging me «come for a massage, please, please» - it was really annoying. I also already here started to get tired of having to bargain on the taxi prices. Taxis and tuk tuks are way overpriced. The VIP bus to Bangkok cost almost the same as a taxi-ride within Ao Nang, which is horrendous to be honest. I guess Krabi and Phuket provinces are some of the worst to hang out in though since they are so depended on tourists spending money, but there is a limit for what one can handle. Even though I found both Ao Nang and Patong nice, and fairly cheap, I don't think this is a place I will ever return to cause the constant nagging and rushing is very tiering. But it is way more important to focus on the positive sides of your experience and therefore I can say that I had a really nice time while in Krabi and Phuket... but I wish I would have been able to save some more money... haha;)

Beautiful Ao Nang, Krabi Province, Thailand:)