April 2025 — Songkran week out of JB, but the truth I tell friends is simpler: I went to Krabi and Ao Nang and came back convinced I am a pirate. Not cosplay — posture. Long-tail boat spray on the face, islands swapped like cards, Andaman wind in the teeth, a Burmese guy who wanted Thingyan and booked Thailand instead, still shameless enough to laugh at himself on the bow.
Krabi Town: river and crab
Krabi Town before the beach resorts — chaiya roti breakfast, morning market, then the giant red crab statue at the Krabi River promenade, claws raised over mud-brown water and long-tail boats lined like a fleet at rest. Tourists pose; locals walk past like it's furniture. I stood there long enough to feel the province's joke: of course the mascot is absurd and proud — of course the river wants you to think in nautical metaphors.
I'm a pirate (long-tail, islands, Moken)
The feeling started on the first long-tail boat — wooden hull, motor coughing at the stern, prow lifting when the chop hit, driver barefoot and unimpressed while I gripped the rail like a man who had forgotten water could move. That is pirate enough for a software engineer: no map discipline, only spray, hat wrong way round, laptop safe in the dry bag at the hotel.
I spent days hopping islands — Railay, Phra Nang, the limestone siblings that rise out of the Andaman like teeth. Each crossing was a small raid: negotiate fare, jump from wet sand, climb rope ladders where tourists queue, eat something grilled, leave before the tide mood shifts. Ao Nang as home port; the islands as afternoon loot — views, burns, cheap beer, silence on the return leg when the engine drone became prayer.
On one run I spoke with Moken people — sea nomads of the Andaman, the ones who read currents the way I read ticket queues. I am Burmese from the mainland; they are water-born. We met in the awkward middle of tourism: their history compressed into a conversation at a pier, my questions clumsy, their answers gentle. They spoke of lives that follow fish and monsoon, of land as something you visit, not own. I listened like a pirate who had forgotten the sea could have elders — ashamed of my resort key, grateful for their patience.
I was not a real pirate. I was a remote worker playing one between standups — salt in the hair, sunburn on the neck, the ridiculous joy of choosing which rock to circle next. But the identity stuck: I'm a pirate, I texted Malvin. He sent back a skull emoji and asked if I had insurance.
Ao Nang: swordfish and Railay
Ao Nang's main strip ends at the beach and the swordfish statue — silver arch over sand, Andaman behind it, scooters parked in a line. Long-tail boats and limestone cliffs, taco shops and tour desks, hotel Wi‑Fi passing a speed test before I earned the longtail to Railay — Phra Nang Cave beach, climbers chalked on walls, sunset on sand. Weekday standups from the balcony; weekend legs on rock. Limestone stacks in the haze looked like melancholy hills — the kind Gorillaz sang from, the kind you climb in headphones when home is a country you cannot reach for a festival.
Songkran — the ghost of Thingyan
Songkran in April was the reason for the timing — water barrels on pickup beds, kids with supersoakers, elders blessed with gentle bowls at doorways between the chaos. Ao Nang and Krabi Town both went loud: laughter in the street, chalk paste on cheeks, respect at temple steps between splashes. I kept electronics dry, spirit wet, filed no drama — only photos and a quiet gladness that Thailand still knows how to reset a year with water.
But I am Burmese, and April in my blood is Thingyan — Yangon streets turned rivers, pandals blasting MTV, pickled tea and kinship, the whole country exhaling together. I could not get that. I was on the wrong passport side of the map, remote-employed in JB, settling for Thailand's cousin festival like a consolation prize that still made me cry a little behind sunglasses.
Gorillaz had already named the mood on On Melancholy Hill: if you can't get what you want, but you can get me — not the lyric exactly, but the bargain my chest made. I wanted Thingyan. I got Songkran: the ghost of Thingyan, same water theology, different flag, same ache. Pickup-truck barrels instead of pandals; Thai chalk instead of Burmese jokes; strangers splashing me kindly while memory splashed back toward Mandalay and a boyhood I had not visited in years.
I did not resent Songkran. I accepted it the way you accept a stand-in who means well — wet shirt, open palm, blessing bowl at the temple step, then back to the hotel to dry and dial into a standup as if April had not just tried to baptise me twice. The ghost was enough. Almost.
Between work and water
Mornings I tested Wi‑Fi before the beach; afternoons I let Songkran win or the long-tail win, whichever called louder. Krabi Town markets sold fruit I could not name; Ao Nang sold convenience. The province is honest about what it is — limestone theatre, tourist strip, pirate fantasy for foreigners who need the sea to forgive them for keyboards.
Back to base
The flight south was short; the return to JB shorter still. Krabi closed as April's postcard — crab, swordfish, islands hopped, Moken voices remembered, Songkran and the ghost of Thingyan, a pirate who never fired a shot and still felt transformed by salt. The desk in Johor waited like a bookmark.