Am I Corn or Kale?

Krabi feels different than other places in Thailand. For one, there are ample, walkable sidewalks — along one particularly long stretch by the river, there are even ramps for wheelchair users, albeit they are very steep (possibly more than 45 degrees) and would arguably be more dangerous than regular steps. Secondly, there are parks — you know, with grass and places to sit so people can watch the water or have a picnic. Not least, the city is dotted with bizarre statues: a giant crab near the pier, a golden saber tooth tiger over a city map, and what can only be a Neanderthal holding street lights.

The area where we are staying has a touristy feel to it (e.g. there are pizza places nearby), which is not surprising as Krabi is a common departure point for day trips to paradisiacal islands and caves; the latter are particularly abundant throughout this province. On our first night here we walked leisurely around the town, settling at an open air food court where we gorged on desserts and noodles dishes.

The next morning we walked several blocks to reach not a Laundromat, but a street washing machine — our clothes and towels were tainted from 10 days in Ko Jum, and the need to do laundry is an inevitable reality check. Norika managed to score a 15-ft piece of string for free at a hardware store, and then devised an intricate clothing line system in our bathroom at the guesthouse. She was very proud of it.

While we waited for the laundry to be done, we had a bizarre breakfast of rice porridge soup (the only thing we actually ordered) that was brought along with deep-fried dough, strange doughy buns filled with who-knows-what, and countless variations of ground pork (pork with mushrooms, pork with quail eggs, pork with seaweed, cabbage pork rolls, and so on). It was an unexpected but ultimately awesome experience; based on how many locals were at this breakfast joint (they closed at 11am), we hit jackpot. It probably helped that we were further from the tourist district.

***

In the afternoon, we took a song taew to the Tiger Cave Temple (Wat Tham Sua), just 5km out of Krabi. The cave temple itself was packed with monks chanting and people waiting in line to get a New Year blessing from the elder monks. We then decided to challenge ourselves and climb all 1237 steps up to the temple on top of the mountain; the first few were a piece of cake, but soon they started looking more like steep Angkor Wat steps. The heat was infernal and our sweating quite profuse. The view from the top was rewarding, though not as much as the cool breeze that graced our soiled selves.

Coming down was a bit easier and a lot faster, though our legs started feeling like jell-o. After a quick break, we took a path toward more caves — these ones featuring only shrines instead of  full temples set up inside of them. All along you could still hear monkeys screeching and monks chanting (there were speakers set up in different parts of the temple complex, so the voices, however distant, were omnipresent). In the end, the path was just a teaser of all the caving Krabi has to offer, but by the end of the patht we felt defeated by both man and nature, and were more than ready to get back to our hotel.

***

April 13th marked the official beginning of Songkran, the Thai New Year/Water Festival. We couldn’t join the celebrations in Krabi because the guesthouse owner thought it would be prudent for us to leave to Surat Thani in the morning rather than in the afternoon, just in case things got too crazy and we missed our train connection from Surat Thani later that night. We were crammed into a song taew with other white tourists and splashed with water here and there as we made our way to a farang-only bus station; we all had colored stickers attached to our chest to instruct the bus company’s workers on what to do with these white masses of walking flesh once they were deposited at the next stop.

Surat Thani was different. There, inside of a slightly less crowded song taew, we got a glimpse of the mass hysteria that takes over the minds of Thai people during Songkran. Little kids and adults alike shot at everyone with water guns, while others sat on the side of the road with huge barrels of cold water, filling up buckets and tossing the contents at cars and people passing by. All the while, everybody is screaming — Norika thinks this is the one time of the year when Thais let their voices cut loose; indeed, it is very uncommon for a Thai person to yell.

Even more excited were those (men, women, kids, everybody) who crammed themselves onto the back of fast-moving pickup trucks, still managing to make room for one or more large barrels of water; riding through town ruthlessly spreading wetness around, we soon learned to watch for these mobile units — not that we could do much to stop our luggage or selves from getting soaked.

Water itself was fine; we became concerned once we saw people dipping their hands into bowls containing a nasty, clay-like mix and spreading it over other individuals’ faces. Even more mischievous was the idea of mixing food coloring into the water — once I saw that, I threw my respectful observation of conservative Thai customs and immediately took off my Spain jersey  to spare it from staining (I had considered myself smart for wearing , as it would dry quicker than any of my other shirts. Clearly I didn‘t know all the rules of the game).

***

Early Wednesday we arrived in Bangkok without a clue about the city’s safety status. The day before, Norika checked the U.S. Consulate recommendations on traveling to Thailand; essentially, it just advertised against excessive stupidity. A couple of Germans we chatted with on the bus to Surat Thani told us Bangkok was “really dangerous right now”, but we figured they knew no better than us. Our responsible plan was to store our luggage at the train station, wander around for a bit, and get a feel of the city’s mood.

To our surprise, Bangkok was eerily quiet. Not only were most businesses closed for the holiday, but it also appeared that the red shirts themselves had magically dispersed after their April 13 deadline for the government to step down. Over the course of several hours, we agreed that it would be safe  to walk toward Khao San Road, which just a few days ago was site of the most political violence Thailand has seen since the early 90s. Luckily for us, this time the only guns around were made of plastic and full of water.

The first time we walked through Khao San we were delightfully soaked in a matter of seconds. The street was packed with both Thais and foreigners, water flying everywhere and random hands rubbing the aforementioned clay slime (we suspect the concoction contains baby powder) over faces, including ours. Purchasing a clunky water gun and then some water to chase after others seemed silly, so instead we simply served as willful targets for those who were really into the whole water fight thing (once again, there are no action shots because our camera is not waterproof; all we could do was — quite literally — soak in the experience). Within a few minutes we felt we had had enough of it and walked a few blocks North to grab a bite, ending up with coconut ice cream served inside of… a coconut. In the meantime, the obscene heat dried our clothes.

The second time we got soaked was on our way back through the Khao San area. We couldn’t avoid it without taking a long detour, and no matter how strategically we moved about, we were eventually detected, wetted, and slimed. It was considerably less glorious than the first time around and made us wish we could retaliate, but at least we still had a ways to go before reaching the train station and being wet wasn‘t all that tragic. We ended up at a seedy market area where we had our last spicy green papaya salad (Som Tum), and then walked into a 7-Eleven in search of a specific brand of iced tea that contains, of all things, wheat. Along with soymilk in juice boxes, this had been our manufactured drink of choice while in Thailand (we did, of course, try each local beer brand once: Chang, Leo, and the famous Singha, all of which, as well as Cambodia’s Angkor beer, were at best mediocre).

On our way out of 7-Eleven, we were ambushed by a single Thai man who cruelly dumped a bucket of cold water on each one of us, soiling our clothes and our bags for the third and final time. At this point, Norika wished she had a power-washing bazooka to teach him a lesson. We had probably been building up to this for a while, but it was precisely at this point that we felt ready to get out of Thailand and move onward with our trip.

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