Krappy Krabi

For our first long weekend we booked a trip down south to Krabi. In order to do this, we had the option of taking an overnight bus/train or flying. Considering both the bus and train options meant sleeping in the upright position for nine hours, we opted for the quick and easy hour long flight to Krabi. Flights here are very cheap compared to home-most domestic flights you can find for $60 or cheaper for a round trip. When I say quick- it was literally like as soon as we took off and reached the proper altitude, we began descending because at that point we were only about twenty minutes from the Krabi airport. I wish, however, that our trip to the airport went this smoothly. It started out great, took my first motorbike taxi from our townhouse to the BTS sky train in order to beat after school traffic. This worked wonders, got there in fifteen minutes compared to a possible forty. From there we rode the sky train all the way to the last stop and then caught another motorbike taxi from there for the home stretch to the airport due to the once again inescapable Thailand traffic. This was a bit of a struggle considering there were four of us trying to get to the same place. Since there was dead stop traffic at the time, the motorbike taxis wouldn't take us unless we payed 300 baht each (typically the motorbike taxi is a flat rate of 100 baht). On a time crunch, we said fuck it and paid the extra money to avoid missing our six o'clock flight. At this point it was almost five o'clock and our check-in for our flight was at 5:25pm so we were really pushing it. Abby and I shared a motorbike taxi (still each paying 300 baht -__-) which got us to the airport in less than thirty minutes. However, this meant we had to separate from Jill. Although the motorbike taxis are amazing at getting places quickly, their downfall is that we all have to separate from the group and hope we all make it to the same place. I thought that Jill and the other girl we traveled to Krabi with would share the next motorbike taxi, which gave me some relief, however this did not happen. As Abby and I arrived at the airport past our check in time, we were unable to use the self-service machines to print our tickets so we had to wait in line and get them. Meanwhile, the other girl we were traveling with zoomed past us because she checked in online already so she just had to go straight to security (I tried to do this earlier but I struggled with my stupid apple ID). Freaking out, I called Jill about a hundred times on every app I could think of. It just so happened that her phone was low on data and she wasn't receiving any of my calls or messages. Stressed about missing our flight I decided to run down to international gates to see if she was on the wrong end of the airport. I couldn't find her anywhere so I decided to run back and check if she showed up while I was gone. Luckily, she was there when I got back (thank god) but I didn't have time to slow down as we ran to security and then ran to our gate. I must have ran two miles through that airport and we only barely made our flight. It was like a scene out of a movie, as we turned the corner they were about to close the doors to the plane but let us on anyway. So that was all a nightmare but at least we got a workout out of it before we drank our health away for the long weekend :)

I wish I could say that making it to the plane on time was the end of our panic, but when we got to the Krabi airport, we met more American's on the ride to our hostel. They were from a different program than us so we all shared stories. They were staying in the same hostel as us. Or so we thought...our reservations didn't book due to the website we used and of course that hostel was all booked up for the weekend so we were forced to find another hostel (in the pouring rain). This was easy though considering 80% of Krabi is hostels. Unfortunately for us, it was raining all weekend in the south which was a total bummer but we still managed to make the best of our trip. The rain meant more drinking and more massages so we really couldn't complain about that. The massages there were unreal, right on the beach and super cheap. I got a full body hour long oil massage and a free manicure for 250 baht, or $7 and I added on a half hour facial for another $6. This was by far the highlight of my trip to Krabi. During the nights, we would start drinking at this little makeshift bar called, Fin. I loved this bar- it made us feel like we were in Hawaii with the band singing American classics behind us and the margaritas flowing. After that we would go to the hostel we were supposed to stay at called Slumber Party, which is famous for being one of the biggest party hostels around and then from there we would go down towards the beach more where some more bars and clubs were. On our last day there, the sun came out for a little while so Abby and I decided to take advantage of it and rent a kayak for a half hour and explore the caves. We chickened out on actually going into the one cave we did find but it was still beautiful. The limestone rocks that bulge straight up from the crystal blue water are so much more beautiful up close. Thinking back now, this trip had a lot of unexpected bumps in the road, but I think that’s what makes traveling here with my best friends so worth it. This is all still very new to me, so being able to problem solve on the go in a foreign country has been a great learning experience and I now look at these complications as accomplishments because we all still managed to make the most of our first long weekend in the South of Thailand despite the bumps.