Thailand tourist tips: Krabi

I can't believe that i am just now figuring this place out after nearly 3 years of living here. The other week I decided to skip Phuket because my friend who lives there is out of town and instead went down to Krabi for the first time since I moved here years ago. I gotta say, I am impressed, that is for sure.

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Krabi is very different from nearby Phuket in that there are lot less people that live there as far as I can tell. The roads are almost empty and the few beaches that I visited were almost completely devoid of visitors as well. This has a lot to do with Covid of course, but that may change soon as it seems as though the government is revisiting and eliminating their decisions to have restrictions. Let's hope they do get rid of them soon.

In the meantime, I think that I actually prefer Krabi over Phuket aside from one really major thing: Waves. I like to bodysurf and boogie-board and there are zero waves anywhere in Krabi because it is not exposed to the open ocean. The upside of this is that there is pretty amazing snorkeling right off the beach instead of needing to go on a boat tour miles out to sea.

I don't know what these little guys are called but they are basically everywhere. No danger of them going extinct any time soon!

Krabi also has, at least for now, some really awesome deals on accommodation. I realize that this comes at the hand of the people suffering for customers but if they are offering the prices, I'm going to take advantage of it. I staying near the beach in the beach town of Ao Nang in an air con room with one big bed. Pretty luxury by my standards actually and it was under $20 a night and included breakfast that I was too hungover to take part in for all but one of the days I was there.

There's a downside though. The main beach at Ao Nang was small and almost seemed dirty. After a bit of roaming around I found out that the trick here is that if you are looking at the beach in Ao Nang, turn left and walk a few hundred meters. Once you get down that way a bit the beach opens up and is a lot cleaner. Don't go too far though because there is a really disgusting runoff from behind the businesses that runs into the sea.

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I don't know how they get away with this and it smells awful. If you stay away from that one area though, the water is crystal clear.... for now. I don't know how long that runoff area has been there but I guess the ocean must do a good job of cleaning whatever the hell it is that is in that water.

Ok, now I am starting to sound like I am knocking it but understand this: Thailand just in a general sense isn't a very environmentally aware country and all of it is pretty dirty and polluted. So this isn't really a surprise.

The best part about Krabi was that you could easily rent a motorbike and whisk away to a bunch of different places including some mountain trails and temples that I don't think you could get to otherwise. When I rented the bike the guy had a ton of suggestions for where I might like to go, and for the most part, he was correct.

The ease of getting around on a motorbike in Krabi as opposed to Chiang Mai or Phuket is immense. There is almost nobody on the roads even though the roads are quite small.

So if you find yourself in Thailand and hadn't considered Krabi, I think you should. There were still some busy bars here and there but for the most part I really felt like I had the place to myself if I wanted it and it was also very easy to meet locals.

For now, all the businesses seem to be in really heavy competition with one another for the few customers that exist so there are some great values to be had. I can't comment one what will happen to these prices if the country opens back up fully. I would imagine they will go up dramatically.

Oh, one downside. It is painfully hot in Krabi but that has a lot to do with it being hot season right now and everywhere is hot. I just noticed the really heavy humidity while I was doing some hiking. I looked like I had been swimming afterwards even though there wasn't even any water on the trip.