January 30 – Today was a day spent cruising the island on our scooters, snorkelling and boogie boarding. In the evening we went back to our favourite restaurant one last time and then hit up the market in the village where the boys blew off some steam at the bouncy houses again. Danika wasn’t feeling great so she stayed back in the air conditioned room to read.
January 31 – The kids said goodbye to their boogie boards and gave them to one of the employees at the resort. We were tired of hauling them around and didn’t think we would use them much more. We boarded our long tail boat at the resort and it took us to meet the ferry that would take us to Krabi town.
Once we arrived in Krabi, a taxi took us to our hotel (hostel). This was one of the nicer rooms we stayed at in Thailand. We then toured the town to find a market to eat at. Here we found a delicious stall to eat at and other stands with the cheapest fruit shakes yet. We bought our bus tickets to Bangkok then headed back to the hotel to cool off for a bit before going out again for the night. While walking around the town we were offered a long tail boat tour for a good price so we hopped on in. We went to an island Khao Khanabnam to see the caves. There was a large sign with scientists names and the dates they discovered the bones of a giant human and a large serpent in the caves. We were wondering what was happening because surely we would have heard of this but they had posted all the dates and scientists names. When we got to the bones a lady had jumped over the railing and knocked on the skull to tell us it was plastic. We found out later that it was one of many art installations around Krabi. We then got to go through the mangroves via boat. We saw the floating villages and then a stop at a fish market.
Our original plan was to bus to Bangkok on Feb 1 so we booked our hotel for three days. We connected with a relative of Shawn’s, Albert Vermette, that lives outside of Bangkok. He told us that there was toxic smog and schools were closed down for six days. We cancelled our hotel and decided to change our bus stop and got off two hours earlier at Hua Hin where they would meet us when we arrive on Feb 2.
February 1 – We got up and went to find breakfast. Not all the stalls at the market were open yet so we picked up a few snacks for the bus ride ahead. We settled for breakfast at a restaurant instead and later walked to a plaza. We then went back to the hostel and paid some more money to stay in our room a little longer. The kids did some homework while we waited for the shuttle to get us.
The shuttle took us to the bus depot and we waited almost two hours before it showed up. We got talking to another couple and they wanted to line up early to make sure they got good seats on the bus. We decided to do the same and ended up getting good seats at the front of the bus. After travelling for two hours our bus stops and some luggage is getting taken off the bus and we could see ours was also taken off. Some people were getting off the bus so we decided to look into what was happening. It turns out we were to switch buses. Our good seats were not so great anymore as we were the last ones on the new bus and we ended up having to sit in single seats, except Gabe and Shawn because a lady asked a backpacker to move to a different seat so they could sit together. This was a smaller bus and so uncomfortable especially since we had to ride it for 7 hours touching the stranger next to us. – Renelle
Lew Crew Adventures 