Thailand

Dec 27, Christi writes:

After some cave exploration and avoiding the treacherous sea urchins, and swimming in the nice, warm water, H and I laid out on the sand, grubbed on some spring rolls and yummy barbecued corn, and to my delight, we saw some monkeys on the island!

Throughout my 4-hour monkey-watching excursion, I witnessed many acts that followed: Monkeys stealing corn and Coke from unassuming tourists; monkeys digging through the trash for food; an older monkey abusing a little monkey for taking food from the tourists while he was standing nearby (apparently the smaller monkeys had to scamper away and yield to a larger monkey each time food was available); a monkey ravaging another monkey (yes, sexually); a mama monkey with her newborn strapped underneath; a monkey pinching a lady (H witnessed this one), etc,etc

In my earlier observations, I thought these monkeys to be so cute and I really wanted to take one home as a pet. Of course, nearing the end of all that's happened within their monkey society, I understood that they are in the wild after all, and they should probably continue to remain where they are.

In between my monkey-watching habit, I engage in one of my and H's favorite pasttimes-- hooker-gazing! These ones managed to score a nice trip out with their farangs.

...okay, back to the monkeys...

Then the most amazing monkey-sighting of all--this mama monkey and her wee monkey strapped underneath!

In addition to all this, I also saw a monkey doing the nasty with another monkey, succeeds for about 5 minutes (typical monkey) before the female (male?) monkey underneath him runs off. Sorry, no pictures to show for this one.

After Phang Nga Bay, we longtail boated it back to Ao Nang, had pizza and Coke at our guesthouse, and back upstairs to our rooftop 'penthouse' to shower. After that, I knocked out for a couple of hours while H went all around town trying to figure a way for us to get out of Krabi. The poor thing was searching for flights for hours! No one would give him the number to any of the airports or teach him how to use a Thai cellphone. All the travel agencies wanted us to book our flights through them, charging us from $75 to even $150 USD (double the price!) for a one-way back to Bangkok. All over the island, the internet was down, and even 'Poppa'-- our guesthouse manager--refused to help H call the Krabi airport. Finally, one of the travel agents gave Hassan the airport number, and even offered her cellphone to call them! How nice...

H: well my long and agonizing part of the story begins when we got back from the beach. we resigned ourselves to another all night bus ride back to bangkok but comforted ourselves that we would at least take the bus all night and just sleep on it. however, we found out the bad news....the bus departed Krabi at 4 in the afternoon and arrived in Bangkok at 5 in the morning!!! unacceptable. so we inquired about flights. the cheapest we found was 75 bucks! i knew flights were actually closer to 50 so we said no again. we headed back to our shanty to iron out the plans...
once there we realized how tired we were (more like Christi realized how tired she was) and she decided to sleep. more determined than every i told her to go to bed and i would take care of the flight.

i head downstairs and ask a couple of travel agencies. sure enough they all quote me increasingly higher prices! i decide to look myself on the internet, but sure enough, the internet is down on the WHOLE FREAKING ISLAND!!!! i am determined however and go to pretty much every travel agency and internet cafe trying to get some progress.....but to no avail.
finally my fortunes changed at a little spot aaaall the way back almost where we first landed at ao nang. this lady told me she couldnt book a flight but SHE WOULD GIVE ME THE PHONE NUMBER for 1-2 go airlines! eureka!!! with new found hope i race out not realizing just how big a quagmire i had wandered into.
now thai phones arent quite like american phones. the number for the airline is 1126. how can 4 digits be a phone nubmer is beyond me, but i digress.
i head down to the public phone booth and try to call...nothing. i kid you not, EVERY phone booth was non-operational. i go to 7-11 to try to get a phone card for the ONE booth that i finally found operational and language barriers aside, the 7-11 workers were complete a-holes! finally they pushed me to slam my hand on the counter, cuss, and storm out.
i had a number, money, and an increasing desire to not spend one second more in krabi than i had to...yet it seemed christi and i would be stuck forever.
suddenly i realize that i DID have a phone. nan's cell phone! i head back to the slanty shanty like a bolt.
arriving there i see christi snoozing away (not helping my increasing frustration). i sneak in, take the cell phone and try the number on my way downstairs....the number doesnt work.

i go to the front counter of our hovel, i mean hotel, and try to get the locals to help. i ask a lady for help and she calls her father over, since he was well versed in english. i show him the phone and the number, explain our situation, and he refuses to help! he says he cant book a flight for me. i tell him i dont want him to do that, i just want him to show me how to use the phone. he still refuses and says if i want travel help i have to go to an agency. i almost want to shake (kill) him at this point. i show him the phone and the number and tell him to just show me how to use it. he says absolutely not! i almost became an international murderer right there.
i walk off...
i am going from one agency to another and none of them of course, want to help me book a flight on my own. FINALLY i see a poster with small type "dial 1114+1126 for provinces outside of bangkok"...a point the first woman failed to mention. i dial furiously knowing my luck had finally changed.
not so.....not only had flights all been filled, but the woman refused to give me any numbers for any other airline. apparently helpful locals is a term applied loosely. i keep walking up and down the main strip (which i had now done for the 5th time)trying to blow off steam and find a number for some other airline.
out of pure desperation i try one last travel agency and i see they have brochures for the airlines! i ask for the one for nok airlines (which has a phone number) and another for air-china-something-or-other-express. i call nok airlines ready right there to book everything....

they dont fly out of krabi for another month.

contemplating hari-kiri at this point and finally believing there is a god because this had to be part of a twisted sit-com...

BUT, they do give me the phone number for all the other airlines. long story short, i call air-china-something or other and get 2 tickets for 60 bucks.

was it worth the 30 bucks total savings for the both of us (the first place was 75 each, remember?)? i have to tell myself that it was.

i had wasted more than 2 hours but at least i now know how to use the thai cell phone system.

Finally, after booking a flight (for $60 each) to Bangkok for tomorrow afternoon (we couldn't imagine taking another gruesome 15-hour bus ride back!), we went downstairs for dinner. After that, we went walking around Ao Nang for our last night, and as we were shopping around, H sees one of the many lizards in Ao Nang, hanging out by the sign of the store window. "How much for that?" he asks the salesguy, pointing to the lizard. "Free", he says, then proceeds to step on a chair to take the lizard down for Hassan. At this point, H and I are both yelling at the guy "No, no, we don't want it! We're just kidding!" I told H he has got to stop joking around with the Thais.

We ended the evening by hitting a bar, shooting pool (we were the best ones!) and playing Jenga, then walking the streets of Ao Nang some more.