Our bus to Krabi arrived far earlier than expected. Due in at 13:00 we pulled into the bus station at 6:30am! As great news as this was the hostel would not let us check in until 14:00pm so we had to find things to do. Thankfully this was a more social hostel, as social as the hostels will be in off peak season, and we soon found ourselves some fellow British friends. We were convinced to join them on a small hike up to Tiger Cave Temple. The name comes from years of believe that tigers used to free roam the area and even produced paw prints into the set concrete. From the number of dogs chilling below the temple and the size of the prints we guessed otherwise.

The climb up to the temple consists of 1,267 steps and takes on average 40 minutes to scale. The viewpoint is 309 meters above the starting point adorned with a large golden Buddha and a ‘Buddha’s footprint’. Temple respect still applies and bare feet is mandatory as well as covering up for the women. I suggested Robin and I transition for the day to get away with shorts but that was not ‘respectful to Buddha’ so I settled for saving the trousers until the end of the hike right before the temple flooring starts. The panoramic view was worth it. People had left offerings to the temple in the form of bracelets, coins, food and drink.

What goes up must come down! Our descent was quicker and more manageable than the way up and we even treated ourselves to a fresh lime and lychee smoothie at the base. We smashed the time average with an ascent of 35 mins and decent of 30 mins.

On returning to the hostel we have been roped into an Ao Nang pub crawl. So time for a nap and some street food before our night ahead.

-M