Krabi

Krabi is really the most brilliant of places. I bet you've never even heard of it, and that's a good thing too. Its a province in Southern Thailand, for starters; and is serviced by the nicest small international airport you'll find, replete with Thai Television with scary sitcoms. As a direct result of you and me and pretty much most people never having heard of it, its nowhere near as croweded as Phuket, Pattaya, Tioman, or any of the other said beach places in vicinity of Small Island Nation. The closest you'll have come to hearing about it is watching a movie called "The Beach", where Leonardo De Caprio prances about on said beaches and eventually has a whole lot of people die around him. Krabi is exactly like that, except without the dead people.

I had the privilege of vacationing there for around three days last week, even every moment was worth it. The beaches were some of the best I've ever seen, and while I do not have an accurate gauge of comparison not having been to a lot of them, were really visually stunning. Stretches of white sand banks, blue and aquamarine lagoons, and amazing cliffs and rock structures that come out of nowhere.

Most of the beaches are on small islands and can only be reached by boat, so getting on a speedboat package is a great idea to check all of them out. But I don't want to drone on like some lonely planet review, so I'll move on to more fun things.

Thailand is the only place in the world where you'll find Ronald McDonald standing up. Not only is he standing up, he's doing namaste (folding his hands) to greet people entering. And here's the best bit about Thailand that I've seen so far: its got the friendliest people east of India. Friendly people serving you is a real change from Small Island Nation, where delivery men tell you that you're a spoilt rich bastard because you didn't show up to collect your stuff two hours before you actually told them to be there. In short, returning to a place where customer is king, and haggling for useless things is fun is a nice break from being told that $34.50 is the best price you're going to get, and that you can fuck off if that doesn't suit you.

Punjabi's are everywhere. At dinner, we stop by an Italian-Thai Restaurant (yes there are such things, wood pizza and green curry on the same menu, go figure) run by a German fellow. The guy serving us was from Jalandhar, gladly took our order in Punjabi, and translated it into Thai for the Chef. There's thus created a basic rule of globalization. No matter what the organization, at what level of management, and what country you're in, you'll find a guy from Jalandhar who's missing home and thinks you're from Bombay.

I love traveling. The further you go, the closer you are to home.