Krabi Town

I arrived in Krabi Town and decided to do the usual “walk until you find a hotel you like” process. It seems to work better than booking online most places since you can ask to see a room first, and sometimes negotiate or find a better price than was listed online. You’ll also find many establishments that aren’t online at all, which usually have lower prices anyways. I walked around until I happened upon a happening hostel, centrally located, and booked it for the $7 they wanted. After looking it up on hostelworld, turns out it was the highest rated one there.

After hanging out for a bit, and posting a blog post 🙂 I went to the night market and ate half of everything I bought before throwing it out. You just never know what you’re eating, and after being sick I was trying to be cautious about what I was eating… but not really.

One of the main attractions in Krabi Town is the Tiger Cave temple.  It’s 1,237 of the steepest stairs you’ve ever seen, up to a Buddhist temple/statue. People at the hostel were all groaning about it, so I decided I would do it the next morning, before it got too hot. Let me take you on the interesting journey I had that day… It gets a bit detailed, with superfluous photos, so feel free to just skip to the end.

At the bottom are the easy steps, but you have to get past all the monkeys first:

They number some of the poles so you know what step number you’re on. The pitch of the stairs vary, but most the time they are straight up:

At last, I made it to the top, sweaty as ever…

The views were great up there, and the temple was cool too:

You can have a look at the all the other photos I took too.

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After climbing back down, I went to check out the other attraction at this site – the caves/forests. Important side note – there was absolutely no one else doing this trail, which you’d think was a good thing, but as I’ll tell you, it made me skeptical, and scared at times. More stairs at the beginning discouraged me from starting it, but I figured I since was here, may as well do it.

The beginning of the trail has a bunch of places were monks seemed to live, next to the limestone cave walls. I followed the signs for the trail and came upon the first cave (sorry it’s blurry):

Under the light on the left of the picture you can see a light switch. I had to turn one of these on to be able to see. No one was around me, but I continued on…

I entered this cave and  was walking around it, when I just barely walked into this spider web:

It’s one of the biggest spiders I’ve seen, probably bigger than my hand (and also one of the biggest spider webs I’ve seen.) I didn’t scream for this guy, but he sure got my heart pumping as I dodged it…

Back into the open, calmed, I went on to the next cave. This is the one I had to turn the lights on for. Making my way to the back, there was a small opening you could crawl through that led into a smaller chamber/cave. There was a light in there that I had just turned on, but I still took a moment to think, “hmm… nobody around, nobody knows I’m here, enormous spiders at the last cave – what could possibly be in this cold, dank room that I’ve just illuminated?” I shook off the “what-ifs” and clambered through the small hole, half expecting bats to fly out at me. Once in, I quickly scanned my surroundings and was pleasantly surprised. Just a bit of water dripping on a cloth:

Snapped a few photos and decided to leave after I saw one of these guys:

I crawled back through the opening I came in through:

Feeling accomplished and satisfied with the amount of caving I’d done alone, I strolled out of the cave and saw this guy lurking in the distance (just a stray dog I believe, but a bit creepy in the dark):

Okay, that was all the caves on the path, no more creepiness to be had. I walked a bit more on the trail and saw a sign… wait, what?

I haven’t made it to THE cave yet? Alright, let’s do this. On to the cave, which turned out to just be an overhang, thank goodness:

On the trail again, dogged another one of those spiders (picture didn’t turn out, but here).  This time I let out some type of noise, not sure what it was, but it startled something in the bushes nearby. At this point things the lack of people was becoming more apparent. I knew the trail was a loop though, so I had to make it through. Earlier on in the trail, I passed by some construction workers who I asked where the cave was, and they just pointed, smiled, chucked to themselves and went back to working. It was comforting to hear their saws going while I walked. The trail got less maintained and trees denser, with many fallen in the trail you had to crawl over. “Is this the trail?” I thought to myself.  I had made it to the “big tree” which was labeled on the map, so I knew I was on the right track:

I ran into numerous spiderwebs, climbed over many fallen trees, and trekked through some muddy trails, and saw some large trees:

Eventually I made it to this bridge, which I was so happy to have found (it marked the point where the loop joined back up with the original trail.)

I was happy to make it back to my pink scooter and go get some food!

The rest of the day it started to rain like no other. I decided to go get my foot x-rayed since it had been bugging me for over a month, just to make sure it wasn’t broken. That was an interesting experience – they sent me from building to building filling out different forms, talking to different doctors etc. but eventually the doc told me no worries, healthy foot, just some tendonitis. I was worried that the costs would be pretty expensive like it is in the states for healthcare, but turns out the xray only cost 440 Baht, which is like $14! Good to have the peace of mind I’m not traveling on a broken foot.

I finished my night off with one of my favorite street vendor items in Asia: a potato on a stick.  They take a potato, and slice it in one long slice and then spread it apart, put it on a skewer and fry it. Then they put some seasoning on it (hot & spicy!) and then you experience the deliciousness that it is. This is all one connected potato – it’s a spiral:

 

All the photos are here