A Thai Christmas & New Year

Been Cheated? Goodnight.

At the usual time we had breakfast. Well, Jackie had coffee, a slice of watermelon & pineapple each & a mouthful of scrambled egg! The waiter kept laughing at us for some reason, maybe it was my Rockhopper Penguin hairdo or the fact that Jackie turned out to be wearing her vest top inside out.

We then went back to the room to skilfully pack our rucksacks for the journey home. At 11.15am we checked out of the Clean Beach Resort & sat in reception to await the arrival of our ‘private’ transport, due at midday.

At 11.45am, a local wandered into reception & enquired if we waiting for transport to Krabi. After showing him our ticket we loaded up the rucksacks into the back of the minibus, thanked the man we booked the trip through, who insisted on shaking our hands, then spread out across the seats. It seemed like good value in upgrading to ‘private’ for the paltry additional sum of £2.50 each!

However we didn’t go anywhere, it turned out that we were sharing our ‘private’ minibus with 2 others who were in the restaurant having breakfast. Ten minutes later they appeared & we were off, speeding towards Krabi Airport.

But no, we stopped several times until there were 12 passengers on board & all the seats taken. We were cursing Mr Trip Organiser who when we said “Goodbye”, must have been laughing that he had ripped us off. Stupid Farangs!

The minibus journey was actually ok. We were the first stop & at 2.40pm, we disembarked at Krabi Domestic Terminal. We were the only occupants of the minivan getting off here & needless to say our rucksacks were at the bottom of a pile crammed in from floor to ceiling.

Check in at the airport was straight forward & we tested security, who failed, because we sneaked through a bottle of moisturising oil in our hand luggage. Then whilst waiting in the departure lounge the heavens opened & there was a torrential downpour. This was the first rain we had actually seen on this trip. Maybe it is another omen!

The flight onThai Smile Airways was fine apart from the chinless balding Yank sat next to us who was a bit excitable & kept shouting to his mates behind in a very irritating squeaky voice.

We took a public taxi to our hotel, Bangkok Panda House, which was actually a hostel, but in a gated community. Jackie booked it. David the owner, who is half Malaysian, half Chinese, took us up to our family room. To our horror we discovered that we had a shared bathroom with 2 double rooms.

We dumped our rucksacks & went back down to see David for a calming beer, but he had run out. He suggested we go to the 7-11 not much more than a quarter of a mile away on Thanon King Kaeo, which is a busy dual carriageway. He offered us the use of his motorcycle, but told us we would have to drive the wrong way up the dual carriageway, so we should go slow!

We politely declined his kind offer & walked, doing our best not to antagonise the packs of stray dogs. At one point in the there were 5 dogs in front of us & 5 dogs behind us. In 7-11, we bought 6 large bottles of Chang, which was probably way too much. We then returned to Panda House where David was keen to demonstrate his culinary skills to us.

David insisted we have his homemade Chinese dumplings, both steamed & fried, containing pork, fermented duck egg & other things & an array of spices. We had a total of 20, all of which were very nice. David was very passionate about his food & insisted we try his homemade sauces & we even tried raw fermented duck egg that had the texture of cheese. It was all an education.

During the cooking process & dinner we got to say hello to some of the other residents of Panda House who were all sharing a mixed dorm. There was an old bald bloke covered in tattoos that was permanently looking at his phone in one hand, whilst zapping mossies with an electrified tennis racquet in the other. Then there was a skinny girl who walked in & had a chat, who had gone out that day in effectively a white string vest. Then there were 2 young blokes, who had apparently tried to share a single bed & finally another young lad who later that night came out in a pair of long johns & asked us to keep the noise down. Who said we were too old to party!!

We were having a nice time chatting to David, when our 1st floor neighbours returned from a night out at the Bangkok Ladyboy Show. They were a Chinese mum, dad, son & daughter-in-law. Dad joined us at our table & insisted we join him for a pot of tea. It was made in the traditional way, the first brew thrown away to clean the leaves. Mum, son & daughter-in-law sat at another table & drank coke.

They seemed a nice family & were able to have half a conversation with them through David. Dad giggled a lot & loudly, which caused the request to quieten down. We discovered they were from Jiuzhaigou in western China, which is just a 3 hour flight away. They were keen to show us on google maps where it was & the images looked stunning.

It was their 1st time in Thailand & they had stayed in this hostel for the entire week, which is really bizarre because it takes an hour to get into Bangkok city centre.

At 11.45pm, the wife & youngsters went to bed, we then turned in not long after midnight. We then had to sit in our room, whilst the Chinese were showering in our communal bathroom, waiting for one to finish so we could use the loo & clean our teeth. Their showering continued until 12.45am.

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