Hat Tonsai

---

Hey everyone,

We have arrived in Chiang Mai with fast internet (yes!) so can catch up on our time in Hat Tonsai. Hat Tonsai is an area only accesible by long tail boat. When we arrived we thought, what have we gotten ourselves into. The tide was out and the beach was full of mud. As we walked up most of the places here are super rustic bungalows or a pile of rubbish. However, at night Tonsai is beautiful. Everything has Xmas lights on it and you can't see all of the shanty town in between. There are huge limestone cliffs here (and a ton of climbers too) that seem to go on forever. Fireworks seem to go off every night and the light bounces off the cliffs.

Next door by longtail boat is Railay beach. This place is gorgeous and we spent two days here (thanks for the referral Ali and Steph).

Our place was cool - a jaunt up the mountain so a bit of a hike complete with monkeys, random chickens, and huge spiders. More expensive on this side, costs about $70 a night and the first two nights our a/c didn't work but if that is our biggest worry then we are doing fine.

We did a four island tour to a bunch of places, one of them being Tup Island (I think) which when the tide goes out there is a beautiful sandbar that stretches between three islands so you can just walk across. The water was beautiful too (that is where we took our Xmas shot on the previous blog).

For Christmas eve Ryan and Mike hunted out a place to eat (as we are limited in Tonsai) that had a band, thai dancers, a violin player and a Thai santa. Good job boys. Everything but the kitchen sink. Was a good time. We headed down to the beach for a full moon party on the beach that had three DJs, fire dancers, and had a really cool atmosphere. The beach was packed with people dancing and we had a great time.

On Christmas day we headed to Ao Nang for a bit fo shopping because you know it is Christmas and we should buy ourselves something. We heading back to Tonsai after we went for a BBQ where you can choose shark, huge shrimp, tune, red/white snapper (you get the picture) and they do it on this grill. We phoned out families and was good to hear their voices. I found out my sister was engaged!!! Sorry Kristin announcing it to the world!! After someone was lighting lanterns that lifted up into the sky with a bright amber light. Very cool.

Today we made the trip to Chiang Mai and are pretty tired. The flights don't take long but the layovers and lulls between suck. Plan to check our the temples here AND they have good red wine!! Woohoo.

Will post more pics tomorrow.

---

Comments

[Edward]

Looks like you are having a great time. Thanks for sharing!

[Ali]

long tail driving
The guy who we took a long tail trip with for 3 days in a row from Krabi to Railey (and surrounding beaches) drove with his foot on the rudder and nothing else! I now see there are a few variations to this style of driving:)