Near-Death Experiences in Krabi and Phuket (Happy New Year 2023)
New Year's Eve was a blast. We walked along the main street of Krabi, where everyone was partying like there was no tomorrow, and went out for dinner. A live band played a selection of American rock songs from the 20th and 21st centuries. We weren't initially planning on staying out until midnight, but once dinner stretched past 11:30 PM, I convinced everyone that it would be a total waste to go back to the hotel and sleep through midnight.
The street was packed with people. It seemed like there was a different party in front of every other shop along the street. At one, a bunch of girls were dancing while some random guy handed out 100-baht banknotes to as many people as possible. At another, a car's sound system blasted out a crazy Thai dance tune, the title of which translates to "Do You Miss Each Other on a Rainy Day?" (Jenny used Shazam to find it and has not stopped talking about it for the past 24 hours).
As midnight approached, everyone headed for the beach. Lights filled the sky. I initially thought the lights were drones, but the lights turned out to be countless paper lanterns floating in the air. Jenny bought a lantern for 100 baht and we lit and released it, an act which supposedly brings good luck.
Midnight came and so did the fireworks. Giant professional-sized fireworks lit by amateurs. Surely nothing could go wrong with this, right? Not ten minutes into the new year, someone managed to light a giant firework that failed to fly into the sky before exploding all around us. We took this as our cue to go home before the party got even crazier.
The next morning, we checked out of the hotel in Krabi and waited for the van to come pick us up and take us to the speedboat that would take us across the bay to Phuket. When the van arrived, it was not a van at all; it was a Songthaew, which is basically a big truck adapted for passenger service. It was full of backpackers. Of course, we were the only schmucks on the thing with a full load of luggage. We also were sure we were going to die, as the songthaew has no seatbelts to speak of.
Once the songthaew arrived at the pier, we discovered that the aforementioned speedboat was basically a floating songthaew into which we were to be packed like sardines for the one-hour journey to Phuket. In retrospect, it would have been safer and easier to hire a driver to drive us all the way around the bay.
Our final destination for this leg of the trip was a city called Patong. This place is wild. It's a tourist town like Krabi, but on a way larger scale. It feels like the city depicted in Blade Runner: there are wall to wall people and traffic for miles in every direction, and the two somehow coexist with few traffic fatalities.
We walked around tonight because Jenny wanted to find a tailor to make her a custom winter coat. Once the tailor was located and the order placed, we went home in a tuk-tuk, which is like the songthaew but on a tinier scale. Riding in one is only a mildly terrifying experience.