After four days in Thailand, it was time to move on to our next destination.  We wanted to spend some time in the southern part of the country, and had originally booked a few days on the island of Koh Samui.

Then we realized that Koh Samui’s monsoon season runs a month later than the rest of the country, so we changed our plans and rebooked to the other side of the isthmus, where it was much less likely to be raining.

We caught an early Grab to the Bangkok airport, and then a plane to the city of Krabi, where…

…it was absolutely pouring rain, and would be for the next two days straight.  Also there’s gorillas wearing human clothes on the traffic lights for some reason. (Only at this intersection, to be sure.)

So we went looking for something to do in Krabi in the rain, and ended up at a museum of beads.

The bead exhibit was interesting, and probably killed half an hour.  There was also art on display by some local artists.

Also a dinosaur wearing a hat.

I sort of wonder if it’s friends with the gorillas.

From there, we squelched back into town and had our first pad Thai of the trip at a food stall in the local market.  Forgot to take a picture of it though.  That’s OK, because not only would this not be our last pad Thai of the trip, it wouldn’t even be our last one that day.

Upon returning to our room, we started searching for other things to do of an evening in Krabi when the heavens have opened up, and we decided to book a cooking class.  Now, we already had a cooking class scheduled for later in the trip, which we’ll get to in due course, but that one was focused on specifically northern Thai food, and was unlikely to have much overlap with the sort of class that you can book the day of.

I don’t want to knock this class too much – it was cheap and cheerful, we met some nice folks, and we made some Pad Thai.  What’s not to like?

We each made a curry, a stir fry, a noodle dish, and an appetizer all of which were quite tasty.  The host clearly does this exact script three times a day, eight days a week, and had it absolutely down pat… until someone asked a question not on his script.  He also had an unfortunate habit of referring to mushroom powder as “happy powder.”

The food was delicious, but it all felt very Disneyland.  Also, although the class was supposed to include transport, they called us in advance to let us know that due to traffic and the weather, we should just get a taxi and they would reimburse us.  Except once we got there, no one actually AT the class could follow what we were saying when we asked about the reimbursement.  So that was a bit weird.

Still, delicious Thai food, and it beat the hell out of sitting in our room listening to the rain. After getting back to our hotel, we put on our raincoats and headed out to check out the night market.  We didn’t remember to take any pictures of the night market, but it was bright and cheerful and smelled amazing.

We DID take a picture of this crab statue, which was very dramatic in the spotlights.