Thailand Day 3

December 1, 2012 - Ao Nang, Krabi, Thailand

We woke up at the same time as the sunrise this morning.  It was quite beautiful and I could see most of it from bed, once the curtains were wide open.  We didn't have to be anywhere until 9:30 so I just relaxed and struggled to find decent Internet.

At 9:30 was the welcome brunch for the wedding guests.  The activities leading up to the day were optional but since we didn't know the area - we were all for meeting everyone and doing what the group did (and Donna, the bride, graciously included us in everything).  We took a tuk-tuk (a motorcycle like taxi) down to Ao-Nang Villas for about 30BHT each ($1).  The Villas were gorgeous! An obvious difference from the motel we were staying at up the road.  Breakfast buffet was great and this was the first introduction to most of the guests!  Everyone was so nice.

The front of Ao-Nang Villas - the beloved King's photo is everywhere! 

After brunch, Michele & I decided to switch hotels.  It ended up costing us a little more out of pocket but it was worth the upgrade.  We settled in to the new hotel with a view of the pool.  --->

We were getting hungry again so we ventured out and came to this Indian/Thai/Italian restaurant nearby (this is pretty common especially in tourist areas, to have multiple types of food).  I had a beer and tikka masala and Michele had pad thai.  It was very tasty!

Yummy Tikka Masala and garlic naan

Our view from lunch, you can see a tuk-tuk behind the motorcycles

We did some exploring of Ao-Nang after lunch.  Walked down to see the Long Tail boats (water taxis), had a nice beach massage at our hotel, laid on the beach & explored our hotel grounds.

I tried to make friends but they were scaredy-cats!

I didn't want to go to bed early again so I made plans to meet up with some of the guests for dinner and drinks.  Little did I know what I was getting myself in to!  A few of the guests had already found Krabi's "Red Light District" which consisted of one small street with a dozen tiny bars.  Girls (and lady-boys, some more obvious than others) would stand out front and try to entice you to come in.  If you were male and alone they would physically entice you by touching and grabbing.   The night before they had settled at the Popcorn Bar so that's where we headed again (and would become our regular hangout the rest of the week).  

We drank, chatted, played Connect 4 (all the bars have games like this) and people watched.  This red light district was pretty mild in comparison to the rest of Thailand, but super fun.  Slowly people started headed home until it was just me, Ashleigh and Jeff (husband and wife).  Ashleigh and i had totally hit it off since we discovered we had matching cherry tattoos!  We talked the night away.  At one point this young drunk Russian guy came over to us and started talking.  He had ulterior motives (had a bet with his buddies he could get me to buy him a drink) but was super funny and super drunk so we all talked to him awhile.  He kept gushing over how pretty Ashleigh was.  We called his equally drunk friends over (6 of them total, men and women) and did a round of Vodka shots with them.  Then the one we called Russian Cowboy whipped out his harmonica and serenaded us. So random and so funny. 

Ashleigh and the Russian Cowboy - whose dream was to visit the USA, buy a Harley and drive up Route 66

We shut down the red light district around 3am.  It was dark...just our bar open for us!  We stumbled back to the hotel and decided we weren't tired yet.  So I went back to their room and we continued the party on their balcony.  We drank and talked until the sun rose!  Which will have to be the start of my next blog since it's the next day!  :-)