In an effort to use the day like a tourist and not get heat exhaustion again, we got up at 11 and then spent a few hours by the pool. This hotel has really impressed me considering we are paying so little per night. Its exceptionally clean, the girls on the desk are super welcoming and helpful, a view, a pool, the food and drink is great and while more expensive than a corner shack kitchen, its not tourist gouging.
I’d very happily recommend the Aonang Dugong hotel to anyone coming to Krabi. Forget staying in Railay, its nice in a resort I’m sure, but there is more nightlife, shops, bars, massage places (more on that later) and restaurants here in Aonang. Its not on the beach, but its like 5 mins walk and set back from the road so its a little quieter too.
It was actually a little cooler today too, owing to a stronger breeze. And as its our last day and we explored Railay yesterday, we explored Aonang today. We walked up the beach towards one of the towering limestone cliffs. Right at the end was a collection of shrines and bamboo walkway heading up the rocks and around to another resort. We didn’t need to go around there so just enjoyed walking back, watching people sunbath and play in the waves. They were a bit bigger today and a few people were surfing.
One of the objectives of our walk was to find me a barber. We found one and after a short wait, she went to work. Maybe its the asian style or a language barrier, but I’m not super impressed with the result. Shes helpfully accentuated my male pattern baldness.
I was happy for the shorter hair at our next stop; Kiren Kitchen for some more indian that made me sweat. Well, I had Indian, and the same dish again because it was so good last time. Aimi had another Thai classic – Tomyum soup. It had a few too many mushrooms in it for me, but she liked it.
However my baldy-ness became very noticeable when I went and sat in the Coffee Club cafe. The air conditioning in here was great and meant I could concentrate, but pretty soon I was cold around the ears… well I suppose I’d better get used to it.
After a few hours of work for me and a movie length siesta for Aimi, the sun had set and it was cool enough to venture out again. To this point I’d not had a Thai massage. I’d been holding out for Tonsai as I remember getting one on the beach and it being really cheap. But that was all gone and this would be my last chance. We chose a place that also did manicure and pedicures so Aimi could have… whatever that entails, done to her while I had a massage.
Firstly we had a good laugh because they wash your feet and mine barely fit in the bowl. Then they give you clean slippers to wear to walk thru the shop centre parlour to the massage zone room beds. These were about 6 sizes too small. It looked like I was wearing childs shoes, barely my toes fit in and my heels hung completely off the back.
My torturer masseuse then asked me to strip all clothes off apart from my underwear and put them in a box. This was when I nearly lost my shit with the giggles as I realised I was a 6ft 2in bulky man, standing awkwardly alone waiting for my diminutive thai torturer masseuse in just my bright orange and yellow dinosaur pants. I elected to sit crossed legs and wait.
When she came back I was lay on my front with my legs hanging off the end of the mat on the floor. She then rubbed and pounded and neaded me for a while. But whenever she got to a certain point on my lower right back, I went completely ridged and tense with the giggles again. Seems I have a giggly button back there.
Other than those notable moments, it was very pleasant. I think my body and muscles are not used to being massaged so I’m tense and stiff. I imagine if I spent a week here getting 2 massages a day, I’d be as floppy as a kitten on ketamine.
Aimi said she had a good time too and showed me some deep red nails as proof. They looked lovely. Apparently that took an hour.
Walking up the street we hadn’t planned to make a night of it, but were sucked into a side street by a promo person. This street initially was lined with kitchen shacks selling everything from fried chicken, to spring rolls, to pancakes, to full pad thai meals. It all smelt delicious but we were quickly ushered on to the bars beyond, all crowded around with Thai gogo girls looking to enhance your good time.
We kept following the promo guy and got our 100b big Chang beers at a bar with a pool table pumping out dance music. It was great! We stayed here for 2 games to let Aimi show me just how bad she was at pool. We’ve played before but for some reason today she was shockingly bad. Maybe whatever took an hour to do with her hands, affected her pool shooting skills. Then we started to play darts but 1 beer in and she was a fucking liability so we sacked that off in favour of beer pong.
Its been a long time since I’ve played beer pong, but I used to be quite good. However Aimi, immediately, sunk 2 balls in cups on her first go! I had my work cut out for me, but after chasing many pingpong balls across the floor,I managed to win. I dont think alcohol and hand-eye coordination is Aimi’s strong suit. Luckily shes got plenty of others that I love.
Like her love for animals. In the sightly quieter bar next door there were 3 puppies laying on the floor. They looked exhausted and dopey and almost certainly had fleas and the start of mange. The western guy sitting at the table said someone had abandoned them in town and so he’d picked them up and brought them with him just today. They had water but looked in a sorry state. It was heart breaking to tickle and scratch them and see how excited they got with some attention knowing there was nothing we could do for them. It was a bit of a downer.
After the games and to escape the puppies, we head out of the honeytrap cul-de-sac and found a busy bar with some good dance music. Here we could sit and play uno with some more drinks. This was tricky because the coloured flashing lights basically meant the card colours were changing moment to moment. It was fun bouncing and singing along to the music while playing disco-uno.
Now quite drunk we finished the night with a feast. Aimi, even in her inebriated state made the good point that we didn’t want anything that has been sitting in a cart all day. Especially because we are travelling all day tomorrow and dont want to have to keep running off to the loo. So we cowardly but tactically opted for Macdonald’s. Yep, there is a Macdonald’s out here and it’s way better than in the UK.