Thailand: Railay

Scott & I at the airport

Goodbyes and flights went smoothly (and my pack only weighed 14 kg!) and Scott and I arrived at Krabi airport on Monday afternoon. The first thing that hit us was the thundery humid heat which feels like you are trying to breathe through a doona! The second thing which stood out about Krabi was the awesome silhouettes of craggy karsts against the horizon; they are strange shaped limestone lumps, tall and humped, striking up in clusters in an otherwise flat terrain. They're covered in dark green foliage apart from when the cliff-faces drop vertical and the rock is pockmarked with caves, it looks like there used to be huge rock bubbles which burst and left honeycomb holes behind.

I like them because they're strange and mysterious, Scott likes them because he thinks he is James Bond (Man with the Golden Gun was filmed around this coast.)

We made our way by taxi and longtail boat to Railay, a skinny peninsula hanging off the Krabi coast. It's attached to the mainland but feels like an island because the mountains completely block access to it, so all arrivals and deliveries are made by longtail boat. We waded in off the boat to West Railay beach which is a beautiful wide white sand bay (it's the expensive 'sunset' side) and followed a skinny inland track to get across to the cheaper East 'sunrise' beach where we stayed. The east beach is a smelly, mangrovey beach but it has all the cheap bars and food stalls and it's only 15 mins walk to pretty much anywhere on Railay.

Our first whole day at Railay we decided to go exploring up the east beach- we started following signs to 'view point' and 'lagoon' cos they sounded nice. Walking through Railay is so easy compared to other parts of Thailand, someone might half-heartedly say 'hullo, you come back tonight?' to their bar, but there's no taxis, pingpong shows or anything else to be spruiked in your face. The most we had to worry about was dodging fruit that monkeys were dropping out of trees!


The signs to lagoon and viewpoint suddenly pointed straight up a clay cliff/ hill, and we weren't sure how to climb it until we spotted a skinny rope hanging down amongst the vines! If I'd known, I would have worn runners and shorts not thongs and a dress! But we scrambled up and were rewarded with a postcard view over Railay- can see both beaches. Next was the lagoon, this time we had to climb down the inside of the hill, hanging off ropes and vines and rocks on the steep bits. We caught a glimpse of the bright green lagoon and were determined to get down there, it involved some unofficial vertical rockclimbing down a couple of drops! I ditched my sunnies and big nikon camera in order to just concentrate on my hands! 2 other aussies made it down with us, some other tourists weren't keen to do the climbing.

The lagoon was magical, it was something straight out of a movie... Bright green, surrounded by cliffs, echoing every word. The climb up was tricky cos now we had slimy wet feet covered in red clay, and slipped off our thongs on every step. So I wore my thongs pushed up my arms, camera slung over my back and we made it back to the top and then down to where we started, sweatier than we'd ever been in our lives and looking like we'd just rolled around in red clay. It was amazing!

Another highlight of Railay was actual rockclimbing on the beach with a thai guide called 'Noo'. we did a couple of 15 metre climbs and a 25 metre climb! We were on limestone cliffs at the top of east beach, I took my little olympus tough digital camera up in my back pocket and took pics of the view from the top. It was so hot, the chalk just melted off my hands every minute. Scott got to lead-belay Noo up as he set the top-rope for the rest of us, and Noo belayed us (Scott and I, and a french couple). I freaked out the first couple of time I looked down at Noo because he was sitting on the sand, both hands off the rope, rolling cigarettes but then I remembered he was using a gri-gri belay device which locks by itself (freaky when I'm used to ATC belay devices!)

Railay nightlife was very quiet, not many tourists, we had a couple of cheap cocktails lying on bamboo mats on east beach. Our bungalow air con was pretty much non-existant so to cool down we had a freezing shower everytime we came back into the bungalow and stood in front of the fan til we cooled down, and kept a wet flannel in the freezer! It got a bit expensive though, so after 3 nights we decided to go to Krabi town for a couple of cheap days before the expensiveness of Phi Phi!