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Published: November 7th 2007
Sunset on West Railay
We didn't catch a lot of great sunsets due to the afternoon showers, but this day was killer. This boat is a longtail, the primary mode of transportation around these parts.The flight to Bangkok was pretty uneventful. The food was already better, we left Pakistan as the country was beginning to disintegrate, and we even got a movie about Creationism. It was sort of like being in Kansas, only with quotes from the Koran instead of the Bible. Same same, but different.
My other funny / sad experience on the plane was with two completely covered women standing in line at the bathrooms (all empty as far as I could tell). Now I'm patient, but I wasn't going to sit there all day waiting for them to figure out how bathrooms work. Opening one of the doors to show them it was empty inside, they looked grateful. They now understood that the bathroom was empty. However, they still hadn't quite figured out the whole locking deal, because one went in and closed the door most of the way, peeing in the dark while her girlfriend stood guard outside. Maybe it's not as funny as half of the stuff in
Airplane, but in all of my flight hours, never, ever did I see something quite this comical.
Getting off of the plane in this new world
The Peninsula
Tonsai beach is on the left and you can see the 'jungle walk' separating it from West Railay. was mind boggling. The airport is new, with architecture that I'm sure my brother could define in greater detail, but I'll just go with
modern. The people were smiling, friendly. After getting our free 30-day visas and changing a little money (ouch, btw), we were on our way to Khao San Road. For those of you new to Bangkok, I think this infamous neighborhood of Thailand's capitol deserves some description.
Tourists... Yes, I know I'm one too, but do I really want to surround myself with more of them? Reminded at every turn that you aren't having an authentic Thai experience? I suppose the lesson of KS Rd. is that you're having authentic experience, it's just not quite Thailand. This neighborhood is an altogether unique experience unto itself.
Theme Song for Bangkok??? That's easy. One Night In Bangkok (from Chess if you're mom or Mary Kate, my college roommate... or from the radio if you're the right age to know random 80s pop music).
Everything a tourist could want is here.... cheap, cheap clothes for sale (I bought a bathing suit), Western food (Burger King, Starbucks, and Hard Rock Cafe), tour operators, guest houses, money changers, bars,
Diego
Diego, from South America, was one of our first friends on Tonsai. He always had this smile on his face, never wore bug spray, and had the best accent. I constantly wanted to ask him to say 'and the best way to clean the kitchen' (sorry, inside joke). street food, thai massage places, tailors to make you suits and dress clothes you don't need here ... all jumbled around these buddhist temples. Pretty surreal... not a bad experience necessarily, but not really good either.
Later in our trip, I was talking with a Colombian guy about the place, talking about how it's got everything tourists want. As I started my list, he added hookers (with a totally straight face). He didn't really seem like the hooker-using type (although I'm not sure what the look is for someone who pays to party with Thai women (and men). How do you even begin to respond??
On that note, the trans-gender scene here is alive and kicking.... no social stigma to be a guy wearing lipstick, painting their nails... pretty progressive scene here, I guess. Just like Islamabad. Right.
Anyway, I digress. Basically, it's a good launching off point for travel and a good pit stop to catch up for a day or so. We are so excited by the new food choices around us that we spend a full day before we head south to Krabi by night bus. We have ordered pork with almost every meal
Sunset on Tonsai
Philippe and Bernd, a new German friend, no doubt discussing climbing as we pull the rope for the last time that day. so far. Who knew I'd miss pork!?!?
Krabi / Railay Beach... or more accurately, Tonsai Beach Our night bus pulled into Krabi at about 8 am.... we found a sangthaew (every country has their own name for the same thing, small pickups that serve as the local buses... here, it's sangthaew), then another sangthaew to Ao Nang... then I got a pedicure (although the journey to get there is epic, somewhere at the end of this journey I am expecting a BEACH) before we hop the longtail boat to Tonsai. Sort of planes, trains, and automobiles... only buses, sangthaews, and longtails. Didn't take forever, but I do remember thinking 'are we there yet?' at least once.
So Railay Beach is a peninsula made up of several beaches... the primary ones being East and West Railay, and Tonsai... West Railay was the fanciest, with the sunsets and the best beach... East Railay seemed to be the most built up, with the most boat traffic, including tractors pulling platforms to take tourists to the boats during low tide (hard to imagine, I know... just make sure to put wheelie bags next to these folks when you picture it.... yep, we
Thaiwand Wall
Philippe on the Thaiwand Wall. laughed, too).
Tonsai was the least built up, with a good high-tide beach, and cheap bungalows. It is separated from the other beaches by a jungle walk. Rooms are cheap, especially since it's still low season. The hot water and A/C are extra, so for less than $5 US a night we settle on a cute bungalow with a fan, mosquito net, and cold showers.
Now that we're here and settling in....
Climbing, Mangoes and sticky rice, and of course, the Beach We'd heard that there the climbing is so friendly that you can belay from your beach blanket. Well.... talk about short approaches, some of the best climbing is accessed from a ladder in the bar at the beach. It was pretty cool climbing after a long time off. Our legs felt huge after all of our hiking and trekking, and our fingers and arms needed a little time to find their strength again. The limestone routes there are steep, lots of interesting protection - threads (like v threads) through the rock, rows of bolts (leaving you to determine which is the newest and safest for clipping).
We met loads of cool people - making
Proof of God?
Condensed milk could make anything taste good! Calories, sure... but don't knock it til you've tried it! friends from all over. Germany, Canada, Australia, South America, Norway, and check this out - Telluride and Crested Butte! It seems like we're not the only winter-seasoned employees taking a beach vacation before the season picks up! It made for some great climbing days, which culminated in Philippe red pointing his last project - 7a 'Babes in Thailand,' which I think he really wanted to get if only for the route's name!
The coffee was excellent, well that is if you got 'real coffee' and doused it with condensed milk (yum), which we did every morning. Our daily coffees with refills cost more than our room each night, but it was our luxury and ritual. Yo (the 'real coffee' maker) gave me a Thai name (turns out that Rachel is difficult to pronounce in every country we visited). 'mele,' which was Thai for sweet smell. I found this ironic since my showers were being cut back on account of the cold water and my hair was only being washed when the dried salt water threatened to turn my hair to one big dreadlock.
Although the food all over was good, our favorite food came from the food stall
Kitten Thirty
Luisa was no doubt speaking German to this Thai kid working in the restaurant.... everyone there adopted the kids, no matter which language they spoke. set up just off of the beach... any kind of meat you want on a stick with some fabulous Thai sauce... my favorite was the hot dog on a stick, Philippe's was the unidentified seafood. They also did this Thai pancake with banana, chocolate, and condensed milk (yum), and best yet.... mangoes and sticky rice. Anyone planning to eat at our house this winter will get to participate as I try to recreate each of these, including hot dogs on a stick.
We found a place near our bungalow with bbc world in the morning and bad movies at night (my definition of bad: you get excited because Terminator 3 is playing). I actually heard myself one night explain that 'the co-pilot
is flying the plane again, but he's only got one arm now, after the last snake attack. The pilot? Oh, he died a long time ago from a snake bite followed by a heart attack.' Name That Movie!! As an added bonus, the restaurant had several kittens, which was a big hit with the kids (several of the folks we met were traveling with young children)!
The beach was also cool... especially our beach at high
Future Thai boxers
We found these guys practicing while we took a walk around Ranong.... I'm pretty sure any of these kids could kick serious ass, but they smiled the smiles you can only find in the shadow of a Buddhist temple. tide. For all you homeschoolers out there.... I learned that the tides (both high and low) are stronger at full and new moons. You couldn't even get around part of our beach at the highest tides, it was that noticeable. You could rent kayaks, take a boat out to go deep water soloing, go scuba and snorkeling for the day... can't say we did any of these once we got caught up with climbing, but they're there for our next trip!
Best Visa Run ever As our time wound down and our free 30-day visas were close to expiring, we decided to make a Burma run on our way back north to Bangkok. Two bus rides, a couple of trips in cars, and a long tail.... I can't quite explain why it was so much fun, nothing really happened. I think maybe that we can relax and enjoy ourselves more when we don't have high expectations. The trip was a chore of sorts, so any fun we had in the process was bonus.
All the fun we had riding boats and buses, seeing Burma (for about 20 minutes),and laughing at tourists (a huge group of Germans on a
Visa Run longtail traffic
This is about all we saw of Burma. On another note, the long-tail parking situation is pretty entertaining... total lack of regard for personal property (fender benders are expected, I don't think I've said 'coming in hot' more times in a single day). visa run, who were all bundled up in lifejackets and ponchos, sticking out like tourists... then we realized we were on a rickety boat without lifejackets... and we started wondering if the laugh was on us). My theme song for this journey across international waters was 'Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat' (from Guys and Dolls for everyone out there besides my family). Philippe was really excited when I kept singing it for him.
That reminds me... we played a ton of Trivial Pursuit at the beach, and with my musical theater knowledge (pink) and Philippe's knowledge of, well, a bunch of stuff, but especially Geography (blue)... so Team Trivial Pursuit at our house when we get back. So anyway... Our epic bus ride back to Bangkok ended abruptly when the operator woke us and asked us where we wanted to be dropped off... we answered 'the bus station.' That started the full-on laughing throughout the entire bus, which hadn't made any real noise since we'd boarded 11 hours earlier (except for the chick we think was on speed in front of us, but she wasn't really talking so much as just twitching... constantly). Did I say laughing?
Cobra Wall climbing
Cobra Wall was a cool low-tide venue, with afternoon shade, too! Belly laughing. Boy, do the Thais know how to laugh. I thought to myself 'what a funny thing to laugh at... the
bus station? I mean we are in fact, on a bus... seems reasonable.'
For some reason we never quite determined, our Bangkok-bound bus wasn't actually going to the Bangkok bus station. After the driver and his buddies finally stopped laughing, they figured out we were gringos headed to Khao San Road and got us a taxi before they left us on the side of the road. So, all in all, we provided some humor to tired bus drivers and passengers, and we got where we needed to go. All good.
Fun adventure, for sure. But that said, I'm glad we made it to Bangkok (finally) armed with a new 30-day Thai visa that will last until we leave for Cambodia next week. Now all we have to do is clean up and try to get rid of the mildew on everything before Philippe's parents show up tomorrow!
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Austin
non-member comment
Wow - Killer place
Can't get much better than climbing, beach, bar, and bbc within an arms reach!