Ao Nang and Krabi: Rainy Day Ridiculousness and Market Madness

We woke up to a rather cloudy but welcomingly cool morning with plans to rent a motorbike and head up to a rain forest national park with caves and waterfalls near Krabi Town. As we were finishing our subpar American breakfast buffet, it started pouring rain! Literally, downpouring! It was madness, but we decided to wait it out with the hope that the locals were right: it never rains for more than an hour at this time of year in Thailand. So, luckily, after about two hours the downpour stopped. We decided to rent a bike any way and head up to Krabi town instead of the national park.

About five minutes into the 20 km drive to Krabi, it started pouring again. It was definitely a sort of tropical storm because we stayed warm even though we were soaked! Justin took the brunt of the rain, as he so kindly volunteered to drive, and just my arms (wrapped around his waist) and my shins got wet. We decided to stop for lunch when we thought we were getting close to our destination, ate our cheapest meal yet in Thailand, and pulled out a map to orient ourselves. We realized we had already driven through most of Krabi Town! But we were really close to the Krabi River, so we biked there in the much lighter rain. We drove around town, found it pretty empty and boring (it seemed like there weren’t even any Thai locals out and about after it had stopped raining), and stumbled across the Thailand Authority of Tourism (TAT) office. We decided it would be handy to have a few maps that were actually decipherable, so we picked them up.

We continued to wander about town and drove by a market setting up. According to our map, this was the well-known Krabi night market. We decided to park our bike, walk the street to find a bathroom, and come back in about 45 minutes. We walked for awhile before seeing a sign that said BEER/ COFFEE/ TOILET: exactly what we were looking for. This place turned out to be equal parts coffee shop, bar, bathroom, pool hall, gym, and pottery shop, and we were the only customers there. Pretty entertaining, and we couldn’t turn down the cheap beer and free toilets.

We wandered back to the market, and started to walk around when we noticed something glaringly obvious: we were the only non-Thai people in the whole place. And it was only 4. This was not the night market! We are still not sure where we were for this market, but it was really neat to see the bustling non-tourist market after the ghost town of downtown Krabi! The market can be described as half farmers market with fresh fruit and Thai food and half flea market with used clothes and cheap knockoffs, all with a loud Thai radio station blaring in the background. Everyone was a bit skeptical of how these crazy tourists had found their hidden market, but warmed up to us when they all realized that we had just stumbled on it! It was definitely a taste of traditional Thailand that we both loved and can’t wait to see more of. It was spectacular to see the locals in action and doing what they would normally do without the constant drone of drunken tourists.

On the way back to Ao Nang, we got lost. Big surprise, seeing as we had no idea where we were to start with! But we eventually found our way home without any rain and any incidents. I actually braved driving the motorbike and had a great time with it, but it was a good thing there weren’t any other people on the road! Once we got back to civilization, Justin drove us to the hotel and we headed toward a beach front restaurant with a drink in hand. Once again, our waiter was a lady boy in disguise/hiding/training: he had on makeup, tight silk pants, a flower “do dad” in his hair (as Justin says), and lots of jewelry to compliment his practiced feminine walk. We are used to this spectacle by now, but still find it so funny!