Krabi.

I'm down in Krabi on a huge beach and have decided that I'm officially sick of the beach. I got a pretty bad sunburn on our snorkel trip yesterday, so I think I'm going to head up north again soon.

It's rather ironic that I got a bad sunburn, as my friend Dora had gotten one and I was lecturing her on "proper suncreen use, including reapplication" then a couple hours later I'm just as burnt as she is.

I had an absolutely hellish trip down here. I took a night ferry from Ko Tao, which was just about as bad as being on some sort of immigrant boat. There was just the bottom floor of the boat with tiny sleeping mats of suspect cleanliness packed in on both sides. I'm pretty sure that I was being bitten by fleas all night. but the best part was in the middle of the night, all of a sudden, there's a big crash and the boat stops, some girl starts screaming and everybody is jumping up. Turns out we had hit a fishing boat (no one was hurt and no boats sank). Then the police came and whatever they were doing took about an hour, it was kind of entertaining once we realized we weren't going to sink.

I found out after that from my mat-neighbor that night ferries sink on a semi-regular basis.

Then we arrive in Suret Thani at 5:30 am and it's still dark out. So there's people to meet everyone at the ferry and herd us into various minivans. So we stop at a "bus station" and wait there for a 1/2 hour. Then they load us into the back of pick up trucks and then dropped off everyone except me and this German guy at another "bus station". Then they drive us out to this other deserted bus station and drop us off, and there's no one around. I'm glad I wasn't by myself as I would have totally started freaking out. Around 6:30 other people started to show up then at 7 our real minivan to Krabi came and we loaded onto it and made it here.

It's extremely humid down here with no breeze and no shade. My room is kind of a shithole. But I think I'll try to go out to Ko Phi Phi today then go on a sea kayak trip tomorrow, and hopefully see monkeys in the wild (and no, I will not be using any flash photography).

Some British girls I met on Ko Tao are supposed to be arriving here tomorrow, but I don't think I'm going to wait around to hang out with them. It's back up north for me, as I've decided to do a side trip to Laos.