Eat and drink in Krabi

Thai cuisine has always been our family’s favourite cuisine. This is also one of the reasons why we favour Thailand as one of our top choices of traveling destinations.

As mentioned in my previous Krabi traveling post, in this episode I will cover the story of the food that we savoured in this little Southern Province of Thailand.

During our stay in Krabi, most of our lunch meals, if not covered by the day tour operators, were decided by exploring the local street food along our lodging area in Ao Anang. We would simply sit down and ate as and when we came across some street food that looked palatable.

Among those street food Ray and I favoured the most was the BBQ chicken! It wasn’t KFC, but it was still finger-licking good! If BBQ is not your cup of tea, then Banana pancake is another “must eat” not to be missed in Krabi!

Krabi’s night market was another great place to taste their local street food. Similar to other Thailand tourist spots, Krabi also had a walking street night bazaar which operated in the evening of Friday-Sunday in Krabi town.

Krabi town is located more than half an hour driving distance from Ao Anang beach. We went on a Friday night taking their public bus transport, essentially a bigger version of Tuk Tuk. I was a bit disappointed as the Krabi town walking street night bazaar was much smaller in scale than what we experienced in ChiangMai and Bangkok.

In Ao Anang beach area, there were lots of Thai and Western restaurants. Authentic Thai Cuisine and Western food were easily available. We also noticed many locals in Krabi were Muslims, hence halal food was just as common. Many of the Thai restaurants were operated by Muslim owners. This explained why so many Malay Muslim tourists from Malaysia liked to visit Krabi.

The following were some of the Thai authentic rice meals we ate.

May I introduce a beverage to quench your thirst in Krabi? My number one choice definitely was their fruit shakes! Sorry, to those who thought it might be beer

During our time in Krabi, other than plain drinking water, we simply tried out every flavor of fruit shakes available.

Basically we just shake, shake, shake away our thirst with all sorts of fresh fruit smoothies that we could find, Mango, mixed fruits, strawberry, coconut, dragon fruit… The top rated shake to both the father and son was still their forever loved banana shake while my pick was mixed fruits which varied from stall to stall, a combination of any mixture of fresh fruits they had on hand upon order made.

So, remember if you happen to travel to Krabi, after the spicy Thai food, as the Taylor Swift’s song goes "Shake It Off" to shake the heat away!

So, remember if you happen to travel to Krabi, after the spicy Thai food, just like what Taylor Swift song "Shake It Off" to shake the heat away !

Sea Sand Sun @ Krabi, Thailand

 

Since Ray started schooling, we could only plan our annual family trip to coincide with his long school break. It has become kind of a family tradition to have at least one island trip per year. Last December we picked Krabi, Thailand as our destination.

Shared in the following are the highlights of the trip.

We started our action in the water on day 2 of our trip with a full day Island hopping itinerary covering 4 island - Phranang , Chicken, Tup and Poda Islands

The Tup Island has its own unique phenomenon commonly referred to by the locals as Talay Waek which means divided sea. During high tide, the island is divided into 2 islands, 400metres apart. At the peak of low tide, a sandbank emerges to connect the two islands together allowing you to walk across freely between the two islands on a strip of sandbar seemingly dividing the sea to two.

Well, I must say that Krabi may not have as white, as fine sandy beaches and as good snorkeling spots as compared with other islands we visited in the past such as Koh Lipe, Thailand and the Peninsular Malaysia East Coast Islands, but Krabi still has its own attractions.

On day 3, we had an inaugural experience with a new water sport – kayaking. It was the first experience for Ray and myself. Later, Ray rated this kayaking experience at Ao Thalan as his most fun and enjoyable activity out of all the activities we had in Krabi.

After a full morning of kayaking, we were taken for an hour elephant trekking through a rubber estate rather than a jungle as stated in the tour brochure.

Our final destination was the Tiger Cave temple. So, you might think we did not have enough of wild animal that we went for another close encounter with the tigers again? Sorry, your guess never come close.

The hidden attraction lies behind this temple façade, is a total of 1,237 steps to the summit of the mountain temple where you get to have a magnificent panoramic view of Krabi town.

We counted the steps as we were going up the strenuous flight of stairs. It was actually 1260 steps. After about of 25 minutes of hike, Ray made it to the top first.

Panoramic view over Krabi from Tiger Cave Temple.

After the tiring climb, up and down, we were delighted to have a great dip in a natural Mineral Hot Spring Waterfall.

We ended our final fresh water activity at the famous crystal pool or Emerald pool. The pool was located 1.4KM from the entrance of the park. We got to enjoy the lush foliage of the forest and fresh air along this trail.

The pool to me was overrated. I found the pool as merely a cloudy green color pool with overly crowded tourists in it. This was also due to the not so right timing we visited on that day. It was a Thai public holiday and we only arrived after lunch when the tour group crowds had already built up.

To enjoy the claimed crystal Emerald pool view, it was advisable to go in the early morning when the water of the pool is still and the sediment in the pool is not yet kicked up by swimmers to cloud the water.

While Ray was having his fun time in the pool, I decided to venture further to discover the legendary Blue pool which was another 15minutes trek away from the Emeral pool. Less people visited this pool as no swimming was allowed there due to the many quick sands in that pool.

This blue pool lived up to its name, the water was crystal clear that one could see through to the bottom of the pool.The water was really amazingly blue, like a very clean swimming pool.

The above were some attractions that we covered during our short 4 days 3 nights trip in Krabi.

For the next post, I will share the deliciously authentic Thai food we had in Krabi.