Sparkly Krabs

This week I have mostly been trying to get these ramblings up to date so this isn't really this week, but a few weeks ago. And that week I was mostly in Krabi where amongst other things Reidy and I got engaged, as an added bonus it was to each other. Overcome by the place and moment you ask? No I reply it was carefully orchestrated and made considerably easier by being in New York the week before to find a ring as the slim pickings in Singapore make Michael Hill's work seem top quality.
Apart from getting all engaged and stuff and sitting on the beach and eating bum stinging Thai food and staring transfixed at midgets we also welcomed in the Buddhist New Year of 2549. Celebrating this amongst other things involves getting very very wet. I am not entirely sure when festivities began or ended but it was mayhem on the streets that made returning our motorcycle an adventure in itself as the whole loop around the area we were staying became a congested and sodden one way system. So we did the only thing possible and stopped to eat some more sensational seafood.
Krabi suffered some tsunami related damage and we ate lunch one day at the beach where it hit and it is pretty weird walking out on the mudflats of a place that was the scene of such destruction some 16 months ago. The place we were eating at had some photos of the day and we were sitting in a place that had been swamped some 200 metres from where the beach is. But the thing that I was most curious about was how the two old ladies that ran the place survived. They had to stand on tippy toes to get our plates off the table and were constantly freaking me out by just appearing nearby and giggling or talking in a strange high pitched voice. I wanted to take them home and use them as umpalumpas but I am told that would have been a little insensitive. Not so in Manila where there is a bar named the Hobbit House that employs only dwarves and midgets, and apparently has very nice food and great live music.
We had an adventerous trip out to the islands in a longtail boat. Firstly we nearly started a dockside brawl between boat touts that was only settled by tossing a coin. Then the victorious boat driver's boat wouldn't start so the other tout came back and started getting pushy so we just ignored him and took the first boat we saw. The skipper had no idea what we were after and I think was getting ready for lunch when we approached him. He and his mate dropped us off and then started to take off again, so we explained with much shouting and waving that he was to saty. They seemed to understand so we went for a snorkel and came back to spot our boat heading back to the mainland.
The skipper's mate was still on the beach and seemed genuinely pleased to see us and genuinely surprised when we all yelled at him at once for doing exactly the opposite to what we had agreed. He finally seemed to understand that we weren't happy that his mate had buggered off with all of our valuables on board, and called him back. We paid him half of what we owed him, went for lunch and then began to fret how we would actually get back to the mainland. We eventually made it back via 2 other boats and one other island stop that cost us 3 times the original price. Ironically both boats had other people's valaubles in them, so perhaps it is an acceptable part of longtail boat chatering in Krabi. Here's some more photies of Krabi in all its glory, the one with the boat in it wasn't our boat, it wasn't there long enough to have its photo taken. But it is where the drama unfolded.