Sunday 19 December 2010

Crabs in Krabi

Sunday 19th December 2010

MP3 track of the day: House of fun - Madness


Weather: Heavy rain in the morning / cloudy and a little sun in the afternoon









Today I left my old hostel and moved to the 'Pac-up' hostel, a five minute walk away, still in the town of Krabi. Changing hostels would save me 100 baht per night (£2 to you and me) and the place was much nicer. Firstly I was in a dorm with others, secondly the showers had shower gel, shampoo and conditioner dispensers free of charge (my hair has never felt so silky smooth) and thirdly the hostel had only just opened and so everything was shinny new. I was staying in the 'English' room … it's not because it's decorated in an English style or anything like that, its because this building used to be a school. The are other rooms called 'Maths', 'IT' etc to keep with the theme … a nice touch I think.


Once checked in I went down stairs to meet a couple from England who I first met in the Cameron Highlands. We decided to have breakfast together and just chat for a while, due to the rain pouring down outside. Also within this time I checked the 'BBC weather' website for Krabi and found out that tomorrow is the only day this week when it's not supposed to rain. I took a deep breathe, went to the hostel reception and decided to book a day trip, for tomorrow, to see the island where they filmed 'The Beach' … that's 1,200 baht down (£24). As I was spending money I went to the bus station and purchased my bus ticket to Khao Lak in three days time. I then headed back to my hostel, as it was still raining, and formed a plan. Matt, the French guy (who has gone to Ko Phi Phi today) went to a beach yesterday where he saw hundreds of crabs; I haven't seen crabs in the wild and so I thought it was worth a look; Johnny (the Aussie I met yesterday) decided to join me.


However before going to the beach lunch was needed; Johnny had gone into town and so me and the English guy from the couple (also called Matt) went next door where I had a fantastic rice dish (can't remember the name of it though).


The weather had cleared by now, Johnny and I headed to the beach by flagging down this sort of mini-van. The actual vehicle was a pick-up truck with two benches in the back and a material cover over the top (a bit like an army transporter truck, just not as posh). It took forty-five minutes to get to the beach; once there the sun had come out and the skies had a hint of blue, there were big giant 'rock mountains' surrounding the beach and it looked lovely. I decided to put some suncream on however, to my horror, I had left it at the hostel. I'm such an idiot, I better not forget it tomorrow on the boat trip. Not caring what I looked like – but caring if I got burnt or not – I opened up my umbrella and we both walked down the beach looking for crabs.


We arrived at one end of the beach where there was a huge crowd gathered around a few trees and some boulders. Venturing further forward we found that monkeys operated with these trees and rocks and it was fun to watch, however I had already seen monkeys at the Batu Cave in Kuala Lumpur so I wasn't that bothered. Johnny, on the other hand, was loving it and even more so when he saw people venturing nearer to the monkeys and having them crawl all over them. Johnny ventured forth so that monkeys could pounce onto him whereas I stayed well back, taking photos.


We spent ages here which I wasn't massively happy about considering I had come to see crabs and not monkeys, however Johnny was really enjoying himself and eventually I prized him away to search the other end of the beach for these crabs. It dawned on us that it was a pretty busy beach with tourists left, right and center; we thought that crabs wouldn't want to be around this area (and looking at some of the huge women in tight bikinis, I didn't want to be here either). We reached the other side of the beach and no crabs; we then decided to ask a few locals which was a little weird asking them if they know of crabs. Most of the shop owners weren't interested as we weren't buying anything; it was at this stage that we met the English couple again as they had hired a scooter and had come to this beach to have a look around. We chatted for a while and, whilst chatting, I eventually found someone who knew what I was talking about and she said that we were at the wrong beach, the beach we wanted was 1km away so it was walkable. The English couple decided to keep shopping for a while but, as they had a scooter, they would catch us up … Johnny and I started walking.


We all arrived at this new beach at the same time and I immediately saw a crab, which was tiny. Apparently there were meant to be hundreds of them and so we trod carefully as we walked further out onto the beach. Eventually we saw hundreds of little wholes in the sand which, unknown to us at the time, each had a crab in them. Once we stood still we could see the crabs emerge from their homes and bring with them a small pile of sand which they would dump around the edge of hole. This process was repeated hundreds of times in which we were able to get some shorts. Johnny was expecting much larger crabs and so he went off to look around this 'new beach' where as I and the English couple just watched the little crabs work … it was pretty amazing.


It was around 5pm when Johnny and I decided to head back to Krabi. Being a Sunday we weren't sure how late public transport ran, so we played it safe and got the first mini-van thing we found. Once back at the hostel I had a lovely shower (using all three different types of free soap … never conditioned my hair before, looks good) before packing my bag for tomorrows boat trip (must remember suncream).


I eventually headed out to the night market to get a quick tea before meeting the English couple for a drink and a game of cards. It's been a very good day, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow, even with the early start.


Toodle Pip!

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