We ended our beach time in Krabi, mostly because it allowed us to break up our travels to our next destination – Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Ironically, Krabi does not have a beach. Nonetheless, it is a hub for tourism as it’s cheap to stay here and it’s centrally located so you can easily do day trips to different islands.

It was in Krabi that we had our first experience with Thailand’s night markets. Krabi has two different ones and we visited both. The first one we went to was along the river. This one was smaller and mainly about enjoying a seafood dinner. Different stands displayed their catches of the day; you pick out what looks good and they cook it to order for you. We got a plate full of prawns and some sort of white fish.

The second night market was in the middle of town and much bigger. There were all sorts of food options and arts & crafts for sale as well. We ate different preparations of chicken and pork, Jay was happy to find a gyro stand, and I was happy to find corn – fresh from the cob. For desert, Jay had the infamous mango sticky rice.

I had a Thai pancake. We’d had the pancakes before as they are for sale all over the place. They make them in about a hundred different varieties from sweet to savory. Probably the most popular is banana and chocolate, which is what I ordered at the market. They make the dough ahead of time, so it only takes about a minute for them to each pancake to order. The making of a Thai pancake…

We sat down at one of the tables in front of the live entertainment stage to eat our dessert. The live entertainment was different locals getting on stage to perform a song…I think it may have been karaoke night, but it was slightly better than the typical karaoke. Note the “Long Live the King” phrase on the stage banner. You see this saying everywhere, along with huge posters of the king in all sorts of places. The king is highly regarded and loved by the Thai people. He has reigned since 1946, making him the world’s longest serving head of state.

For our one full day in Krabi, we did a day trip that went to four different islands. The first stop was Phranang Beach in Railay. It’s known as the climbers’ beach as it’s the place to go for rock climbing. You may not be able to see it in this picture, but this was a popular spot and a bunch of folks were rock climbing in this wall.

For me, the coolest part of the place was all the caves. We roamed around and explored them.

We also saw a “food truck” – long tail boat style.

From Railey, we went to three other islands. One of them was Chicken Island, an island shaped like a chicken. This was the main snorkeling stop for the day.

Our last stop was to Tub Island (Koh Tap), which has two sides connected by a sand bar. It started raining pretty hard while we were here, so we weren’t able to get a good photo, inserting a stock photo here. The bigger island in the background (Koh Poda) is where we ate lunch.

This day officially wrapped up the “beach time” portion of our travels. It doesn’t quite feel like the Christmas season when you’re traveling around beaches in Southern Thailand. So I was super excited when we were walking around Krabi at night and found a restaurant full of Thai people singing Christmas songs. I could hardly believe my ears, considering over 90% Thais are Buddhists. As we stopped to listen, of all songs, they just happened to be singing one of my all-time favorites – “Silent Night”. And so there, in the middle of a bustling neighborhood in Southern Thailand, it finally started to feel like Christmas.