Introduction to Thailand – crossing the border from Malaysia. Satun to Krabi

In Krabi town

We took a ferry from Langkawi early in the morning and as soon as we got to Thailand we noticed the difference from Malaysia straight away. First of all, you have to be a lot more weary of people trying to scam you, as we noticed firstly, when the toilet lady tried to short-change Jemma and secondly, when the bus company taking us to Krabi tried to get us to exchange our Malaysian currency with them for an appalling rate. We also noticed that the people seem a lot more lively and open and that the transport system is, well, unlike anything we have come across in the world so far. You basically book a ticket with a travel agent to go to your destination, but you have no idea when or how you will arrive, you just have to put your faith in the people taking you (who often speak very little English) that they will get you to where you want to be. They put a little sticker on you saying the name of your destination and you get carted from one bus to another, on and off of boats, and sometimes, if you don't ask, you may end up being left behind or shifted onto the wrong bus. So this started from the ferry port at Satun, where we were herded onto a little open van, with our rucksacks on top, and taken down a dusty road, to another bus station, where we were told to get off and were then ushered onto another, bigger, but very crowded bus. 

We got seats, but there were people standing an sitting in the aisles, with one woman at one point attempting to change a baby's nappy in the aisle. We had no idea how long the journey would be. The tavel agent in Malaysia had told us 5 hours total for ferry and bus, but as we had now gone past the 5 hours mark, we resigned ourselves to not knowing how long it would take. A few hours later, we finally stopped and lots of people got off, instructions were shouted in Thai that we didn't understand, so we go off too.

What the first bus looked like

 There was then a bit of confusion, with people getting on different buses, but I asked a woman, and showed her my sticker that I had on saying Krabi, and we got on another, less crowded bus. We hoped it would be our last bus and thankfully it was. We arrived in Krabi about 2 hours later and were dropped at a taxi rank in the middle of nowhere, where we had no choice but to pay the taxi driver the asking price to take us to our hotel (£4, which is actually quite a lot for Asia). We told him the name and address of the hotel we had found in Lonely Planet but he dropped us off instead outside his friends hotel and told us it was a very nice hotel. Before we had had chance to realise that this was not the hotel we had asked for, he had driven off and we then had to walk around looking for a hotel. After a while of wandering, we found what looked like an excellent deal – an upmarket hotel, for £5 each, with air con, TV, bathroom etc. It looked lovely. We checked in, relaxed, had a shower and then went out for tea. I did notice a few ants on the bed, but thought a few of them must have come in when we opened the door. We went to the night markets for tea, and when we got back, we noticed that the ants were everywhere. There was an infestation. It was only for one night, so we decided to just grin and bare it but to tell the woman in reception. We went down to tell her and she offered us some spray to kill them with. We didn’t think this was much of a solution so said no. Jemma went back up to the room and I tried to go on the internet in the lobby. I was down there for a while trying to fix our computer that had broken. At about 10pm, Jemma came down saying that it wasn't just ants in the room, she had seen two big cockroaches. I was so glad I hadn’t seen this! I googled the hotel and found lots of similar complaints from past guests, including one who said they had moved out and got a partial re-fund. We went to the desk and asked for the same. She gave us about 10% back, we accepted it, packed our bags and got out of there as fast as we could. Luckily Jemma had earlier spotted a nicer hotel just down the road that had a vacancy. It was slightly more expensive, but it was absolute heaven – one of the nicest hotels we have stayed in on this trip – Orange Tree Inn. It was so nice and we were so revealed to be out of the other flea pit. We relaxed in the room and had a brilliant nights sleep – probably the best I have had on the whole trip.

Our amazing new hotel - exactly as pictured on the advert outside

The next day, we didn't have much planned. We had thought about doing a day trip to Phi Phi island but the reviews online didn’t look good so we thought we'd save it for when we were in Phuket (our next destination). We had a lazy day and ended up taking a little long boat trip up the river to see the mangroves and some ancient caves where they found the remains of early human beings. We walked around Krabi – which doesn't have much to see, other than some monkey traffic lights and a big statue of a crab. At night we had our first Thai curry, which was my first ever Thai curry, and consequently I have now decided I prefer Thai to Indian – it is so creamy and tasty. We booked another night in our lovely hotel and booked tickets through them to go to Phuket the next day to meet up with Jemma's friend Amber from work, who has been travelling around Thailand as long as she can remember and is a Thailand expert. So far my impression of Thailand was that it was a lot more hectic than Malaysia, but the people seem more open and it definitely has more infrastructure, is cleaner and more modern. It also has a lot more Western tourists and you therefore need to be on your guard more with regard to scams. 

Our first longboat trip around Krabi



More Photos of Thailand so far: Thailand photos