Krabi @ 14/11/2009

Rise and up~

We had a full day of activities on the second day. Sea kayak in the morning, follow by elephant ride in the jungle in the afternoon.

The tour was booked seperately by my boss from one of the local tour agent. So, could see the difference on the transportation. This was our ride for the whole day. All 12 of us had to squeeze into the back where there were only two row of benches. I thought it was meant for 10 pax only, we were packed like sardin in a can.

After a 45min ride, we arrived at the kayak spot - Tha Lane Bay (Ao Thalane), west of Krabi town. There were many tourists getting ready and lining up for their kayak. We didn't know that you can get wet kayaking eventhough you don't go inside the water. The splashing from all the paddling can easily wet your entire bum. Damn!

Couldn't do much, guess we just had to walk around with wet underwear the whole day. Got our paddles; no life vest for me, thank you. Waiting for my turn.

We had no idea we had got ourselves into a 3 hours sea kayak tour~ All excited and full of energy in the beginning.

We had to paddle through a not so narrow passgeway between two cliffs. Nice scenery all the way..

Paddle and more paddle.. We had no idea where we were going.

The water got murkier as we paddled further.. These are mangrove trees. This place has one of the best mangrove bay.

The water level was low as we got to the river area. At some point, the guys had to get down to push the kayak as we were all stuck in the mud. Our guide pratically had to drag our kayak forward.

Everyone was exhausted at this point after had to struggle over the mud for 30min.

We were very proud to know that we had paddle for 15km~!! No joke~!! What a torture!

What could be the better reward to ourselves than to have lunch after such hard work? Lunch was included in the package. Sweet and sour fish?

Stir fried vegetables and chicken in Thai sauce.

With all our wet bums, hopped onto the big tuk tuk again, headed toward "Nosey Parker" elephant sanctuary some distance away.

This would be an hour elephant ride through the jungle, across the little stream, up and down some muddy and slippery (I don't know if the elephant thought the same though) path.

Our elephant was a female named Delta~ So sweet~

Other team with their ride from a distance.. the elephants were munching!

After a day of hard work, they clocked out around 4pm and went for their bath in the stream.

They seemed to enjoy it very much! They looked so adorable here. And.. my bum was still wet!

Finally, we got to clean our wet bum and changed into some dry underwear. We decided to go Krabi town, heard that there's a night market, good place to check out the local action. First, have some decent dinner. We stopped that this restaurant, can't recall the name now.

Nice set up, very intimate, good place for the locals to go on a date kinda restaurant. However.. the waitresses here are hopeless with english, we had problem ordering, there were only one english menu. We had to point and gave a thumb up gesture and they just nodded.

Spicy chicken soup, strong taste, like hell lot of pepper in there.

Garoupa fish fillet in light soy sauce. Very delicious.

I didn't eat a full stomach at the restaurant, was saving some space for the night market stroll. We had a couple of hours to spend there. In fact, one hour is more than enough. There are main food stalls, some vendors selling local made products such as bags, paintings, trinklets, paintings, etc. There's a center stage in the middle of the market where local talents can show off their performance.

This lady was selling something look like ice-cream potong but made of soft drinks!?

These looked like keputat..

Deep fried baby crab, I bought a tray, very crispy, not too tough at all.

Local BBQ, seafood or mini sausages.

Local sweet treats, little crispy pancakes with whip cream and sprinkled with chocolate or shredded sweet coconut.

On the way back, I went across the street to see what the food stalls were selling on the other side. Hey, the last stall was selling port trotter rice~!! I've seen some website about this dish, swore I must try it when I came to Krabi. So, I had one rice pack with roasted pork to bring back hotel for supper, hahaha!

I wasn't disappointed at all~ Look at this thing~ THB500. It was so delicious, the salted veggie sort of neutralized the fattyness of the pork. The pork trotter meat was very tender, soft, enough fat and skin to make it chewy. The sauce was very nice.