Thailand day 8: Krabi

Sunday, December 23rd

While sad to leave the beauty of the island, overall I was glad to get out of frat party hell and took the first ferry at 9am, arriving back to Krabi at 11am. I took a sawngthaew (group taxi) to the city center and wandered around looking for my hostel.

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I wanted to visit the Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, 24km outside of town. I asked at my hostel about getting a taxi and they suggested hiring a moped. That sounded great, so for less than $7 I was all set. I ate a nice Thai lunch and took off to find the park around 2pm. On my LP map it looked very straightforward, but it was not to be. I went back and forth several times and then looked down at my fuel gage and found it below 'E' and I was in the middle of nowhere. The next 15 minutes were tense as I hoped to find a gas station before I ran out of gas. Thankfully, it worked out. After asking several places about finding the park and taking several more searches, I gave up and returned to the hostel. There, the guy pulled out a map and showed me! Why didn't he do that before when I was asking him about it?! Oh well, you win some and you lose some. In any case, I did enjoy seeing the beautiful scenery -- craggy limestone mountains draped with green trees and riding the moped was fun (except that 15 minute stretch where I visualized being stranded and eaten by tigers).

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When I found out where the park was, it was already 5pm, so going at that point was out of the question. So I decided to find a western-facing beach, Ao Nang, to watch the sunset, and I was not disappointed. It was the 3rd time I watched the sunset (something I only seem to do while on vacation) and was the most colorful. Then I returned to Krabi and had the best Pad Thai I think I've ever had. Mmmmm...