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Published: August 15th 2006
Saturday 5th August Laura - Got up at lunch time and caught a longtail boat to Railay beach. The journey was along a wide estuary, surrounded by jungle rocks and sandy islands, with craggy islands up ahead in the distance. It was a really nice boat ride. It took about 45 minutes and the views from the boat just got better and better as we went along.
Railay beach consists of beaches that lie on the east and west side of an island. They are surrounded by huge rocky peaks that have many caves inside and that are also covered in jungle. It was very picturesque, and more like what I had pictured Thailand to look like in my mind.
We left Holmsy to look after the bags and searched the beaches for somewhere nice and cheap to stay. We were intending on going to a smaller beach, just off the East Railay beach, where all the backpackers stay. This plan was soon put to rest however when we saw that it was high tide and we wouldn't be able to wade across to the other beach with our backpacks. We could have got a boat across the
50 metre stretch but they were charging ridiculous prices for this luxury.
We eventually found a nice triple room for 200 baht on the East beach. The beach itself on this side isn't the nicest as it's quite muddy, but it's only a 5 minute walk to the sandier East beach, or 15 minutes to the very lovely Pranang beach. The east side has a more chilled out atmosphere than the west side anyway, which is full of rich families staying in their 5 star resorts.
Me and Paul had a quick dip in our resort's swimming pool, before we all popped next door for some food. We shouldn't have bothered. Our waiter was the rudest waiter I think I have ever encountered. My conversation with him went a bit like this (bare in mind that he couldn't even be bothered to look at me for the entire conversation and was standing with his arms crossed):
"Er excuse me, does the fried squid come with a sauce?"
"Yes"
"Okay. What sauce is it?"
"Chilli"
"Okay, would it be possible to have some mayonnaise instead please?"
"No"
"Oh okay... Erm sorry, but what is prawn tempura?"
"Vegetables"
(underneath
the prawn tempura on the menu was vegetable tempura, so I highly doubt this explaination was accurate)
Usually I would just assume that something had got lost in translation but he spoke very good english. I think he was just trying to be as awkward as possible. I gave up after this and decided not to order anything. Paul ordered a sandwhich, and guess what was inside it? Mayonnaise. In case your interested the place was called Diamond Cave restaurant. Seriously don't bother with it. The food wasn't even good.
After Paul and Holmsy had eaten I got a very nice Thai pancake from a very friendly hawker and we went for a stroll along the East beach.
In the evening we watched X-Men 3 in a cafe and then went for a few drinks in a couple of bars. The first bar we went in had an interesting selection of music consisting of Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Gwen Stefani, Beyonce, Black Eyed Peas.... You get the picture. It was GREAT. We did amuse ourselves trying to guess the next artist and by watching a very depressing family who didn't talk to
each other all evening, and the teenage daughter stormed out towards the end.
The next bar actually played some music which we could bear to listen to, so we had a few more cocktails there and got quite drunk. The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly when some middle aged American guy (wearing a sequined cap, turned slightly to the left) approached us and started telling us about how much he loved Railay. We soon found out that he was about to DJ so we thought we'd put in a few requests. He didn't have any music we actually liked (no Pixies or Futureheads) so we started joking around asking for Black Eyed Peas and Gwen Stefani. He was sorry to say he didn't have any of their stuff but did add that BEP (we have affectionately named Black Eyed Peas 'BEP') lyrics were "amazing". He informed us that the stuff he was about to play consisted of "bad ass hiphop" and "old school trance" and assured us we wouldn't have heard of any of it as he was from San Fransisco "where music is produced!!!". We were intrigued...
Eventually Mr Sequins started DJing, entertaining us with "bad
ass hiphop/old school trance" such as Snoop Dog, Dr Dre, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Basement Jaxx!!! Still dissapointed by the lack of our favourite band BEP I went up to the DJ box to request a bit of "my humps my humps my humps" to which he replied "I'm about to drop the bomb so it's time to rocket Laura". This comment kept us amused for the rest of the night. What a legend.
Sunday 6th August Laura - We got up late and hungover. We walked over to Pranang beach and took a few photos of the very pretty rocky islands that lie just off the beach. We watched a really amazing rock climber inside one of the caves off the beach and laughed at a (very obviously English) girl, who was wearing white plastic Aviator sunglasses while jumping around in the sea with her boyfriend. She wasn't quite as amusing though as a pair of teenage girls who deemed it necessary to walk around the family beach topless.
After that we walked to Diamond Cave (the actual cave, not the horrible restaurant) and walked through it. It was very big and had really amazing
stalactites, which were dripping with water. When we'd got to the end of the cave the lights went out suddenly and it was pitch black. We all laughed but were secretly all very scared of the prospect of walking back through the spider and bat ridden cave in the dark. To our relief the lights came back off and when we got out the ticket guy laughed and appologised. As Paul said, if he had that job he'd amuse himself by turning the lights off to scare people too.
We walked to East beach to watch the sunset, Paul almost walking staright into a funnel web spider on the way. We had dinner and watched "Cellular", which was totally totally rubbish. I honestly think I could write a better script. We found it hard to believe that there were people in the bar who were enjoying it, and not just in an ironic way.
Monday 7th August Laura - We got up and walked over to the East beach to rent a sea kayak. The sea was looking quite choppy but we were determined to paddle out to some of the small islands. The three man
kayak we rented only came with two paddles so I took on the very taxing job of sitting in the middle and shouting directions.
The sea was choppier than we'd anticipated and the wind picked up quite considerably. It took us around 45 minutes to make it around the bay to Pranang beach and when we were about 20 metres from the shore we capsized. It was quite funny and as I had expected us to capsize at some point I was relieved that it had happened close to shore rather than near the rocks. It was a good job we had the sense not to take anything valuable with us.
We weren't sure what to do once we'd swam into shore dragging the kayak behind us. The waves were getting choppier and we were worried about capsizing near the rocks if we tried to paddle back. We'd completely given up on any notion of going anywhere near the rocky islands by this point.
We decided that one of us should walk back to the beach we'd hired it from and ask the vendor if there was any other way of getting it back. I volunteered as
I hadn't had to do any of the paddling and walked over in the soaring heat. The vendor offered a cart to drag it back on but there was no way I'd be able to pull the cart down the narrow stoney path to Pranang beach by myself. So I walked back to Pranang and told the boys that one of them would have to come with me to get the cart.
Fortunately the waves had died down by the time I got back to the boys so they decided to paddle back round, while I walked. They could paddle much easier without the extra weight in the kayak.
We eventually met back up on the East beach and laughed at what a waste of time and money the whole thing had been. We were quite dissapointed as sea kayaking was one of the things we'd been looking forward to doing and it would have been amazing to explore the islands if the sea was calm. Nevermind.
We decided to spend the rest of the day lazing on the beach and raced a storm back to our room when we were all beached out for the day.
Before dinner we walked back to Pranang to watch the sunset, which was really beautiful as the sun was setting behind one of the rocky islands just off shore.
In the evening we began watching 'Scary Movie 4', before realising that it is possibly the worst film to ever be made and it wasn't even ironically funny. Needless to say, we left the cafe before it finished and went for a beer in one of the bars we drank in the other night. There was an entertainment evening going on, consisting of Thai boxing (actully 2 westerners boxing), a cobra show, and a fire show. We stayed for the first 'act', the fire show, but it was embarrassing. The performer kept dropping the flaming batton and almost set fire to the bar. I felt really sorry for him. We left cringeing and had an early night after watching 'Saw' in our room.
Tuesday 8th August Paul - The reason we had an early night was because Laura & I were going rock climbing this morning. Got up and met our really nice guide for the morning (and what turned out to be half of the afternoon
too!) and headed over to the huge limestone cliff faces we would be climbing. Railay is a beautiful place, by far the nicest place in Thailand so far, with lots of towering cliffs everywhere and lovely beaches.
Our guide taught how to tie our ropes properly and how to belay so that we'd be able to do it by ourselves from now on. Anyway he went on up to hook on the ropes and I had to support him from the bottom which was nerve wracking at first, even though he was very very very unlikely to fall.
I was first to climb up and I found it quite easy, except for the top bit which was a little more challenging. The climb was about 25 metres up and the views from the top were incredible! I sat up there for a while before absailing back down. Laura was next up and she got half way up before getting stuck at one bit for a while. Her arms started to hurt so she came back down, slightly annoyed with herself for not making it to the top.
For our 2nd climb our guide took us even higher
up the cliff face. We had to wade through the sea for a while to get to the place at first so it was a very cool climb. I was first to go up and our guide told us that the middle section, which contained a overhang, was very difficult. I was really pleased with myself as I made it up and then all the way to the top without falling off. The view from the top was even better than last time, crystal clear waters and towering cliffs. It was amazing, such a rush!
Laura was quite worried as she hadn't made it to the top of the last one and she didn't want to fail... spurred on by a few onlookers Laura made it all the way to the top and when she got back down she was so happy that she'd done it! I asked her if she saw the amazing views but she said she was so pleased with herself she forgot to look round! Doh!
The 3rd climb was our highest by a long long way. I'd guess it was about 50 - 60 metres high as it was at least half way
up the towering cliffs. It was a difficult climb but I made it all the way to the top and climbed a little further into a lovely little cave where I sat for a couple of minutes and took in the breath taking view.
Laura was next up and even after insisting that she'd never make it, she did and she was so pleased with herself. She wouldn't shut up for about 10 minutes afterwards which made our guide laugh. The final climb was a tricky small one which Laura didn't want to do at first as she didn't want to ruin her good run. But she made it up anyway as did I. Saw a small snake curled up in the rock behind us which our guide told us to stay away from as it could be poisonous....
It was such a great morning and me and Laura were completely knackered that we slumped into a cafe and ate while watching "The Beach" which is a terrible, terrible film. Did a bit of washing before playing a bit of cards and eating our dinner before going to bed early so we'd be up bright and early to get away tomorrow!
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Catherine
non-member comment
Thailand looks fantastic, great piccies. Love the hair Paul, so versitile, so many different ways you can style it! I see you're going for the natural look at the moment. BB final tomorrow, hooray, but then comes X factor! The rock climbing looked a bit hairy, how do those snakes get up there?! Take care x