Krabi

The first time I noted Krabi was on a nice magazine, with nice photos. A paradise, no other words can describe the place full of sandy white beaches and no one around you.

Because of that during my adventure in 2000 I already had Krabi on my priority list of places to be visited.

Definitely I was not wrong, and despite my point and shoot camera bought in Pattaya you can find here some nice image of Krabi, but believe me there is no photo or pictures that can really mach the place.

Krabi is a southern province on Thailand’s Andaman seaboard with perhaps the country’s oldest history of continued settlement.
After dating stone tools, ancient colored pictures, beads, pottery and skeletal remains found in the province’s many cliffs and caves, it is thought that Krabi has been home to homo sapiens since the period 35,000 b.C.

The nature around Krabi is marvelous but I have no idea how long it will survive to the tourism and to the never endless exploiting.
The landscape is characterized by steep, limestone headland cliffs along its shoreline and by limestone towers both offshore from the headlands and inland along its alluvial plains.
The coastal karst towers rise directly out of the shallow waters or emerge from mangrove tidal flat.
Some of these masses are elongated along the northeast-southwest direction and often have vertical cliff faces along their margins.
The elevations of the peak cluster towers range from about 240 to 400 meters above mean sea level.
This morphology supports the argument that the shape of tower karst is controlled mainly by lithologic factors rather than climatic factors. Sea level changes have in fact influenced strongly the karst development.

Krabi’s population includes Buddhists, Thai-Chinese, Moken (sea gypsies) and Muslims, which form a majority in the rural areas. Krabi however, has been little affected by the Muslim militant insurgency that has plagued other southern provinces of Thailand since 2003 and its population lives in peace and harmony.
Outside of the provincial town, the rural folk speak with a thick Southern dialect which is difficult for even other Thais to understand.
Traditionally Krabi’s inhabitants were mainly engaged in works related to agriculture, for the province is rich in rubber, palm oil, and oranges.

In recent years tourism has become an important source of income.
All the main beaches are already packed with guesthouses, hotels, resorts and various restaurants.
Luckily there are not yet big buildings and nothing, by law, can be raised more then a coconut tree.

Posted on December 15, 2000

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