A genuine lazy start today, 10:00 am, not our usual lazy start and we still start cycling by 8:30. Today only being 20 km from Ao Nang one tourist town to Krabi another tourist town (but still manages to be nice).

We follow the beachfront of Ao Nang for a while, everywhere is a hive of activity setting up stalls ready for the big holiday weekend celebrating New Year. Of course there are still McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Holiday Inn etc along with several hundred massage parlour and tattoo shops (studios?).

The tide was out exposing quite a lot of mud as it is still old mangrove swamp even though the mangroves are long gone. The beach is still photogenic though.

From here we move inland and very quickly the whole feel changes within 2 to 3 kms as the shops along the road are now Thai, and very few western faces to be seen.

After 10 km we were treated to a beautiful rural section when we turned of the main road. Almost zero traffic through palm and rubber tree plantations with towering steep sided limestone hills to each side.

It was all over too soon as we cycled into Krabi and the Siri Krabi Hostel where we are stopping tonight. The room is excellent its only flaw being no outside window. After pondering a while we decided to stop another night here in Krabi, tomorrow being New Years Eve. We will have to swap rooms, but luckily they had availabiliy, many hotels are already full.

Right outside the hostel is a large market area which was packed with food, clothes and gift type stalls along with a stage for some live music. This was just being set up when we arrived but fully open when we walked out looking for food.

We purchased from the market some very nice food, including banana pancakes with Nutella and spent some time sitting listening to a young girl play a mixture of Western and Thai songs, she way quite good. To finish the day the heavens opened and it poured with rain leaving us a little damp.

The Strava route today.