Railay, Krabi Province

Hello Everyone,

So... Since we last left off, Briana and I spent 4 more nights in Koh Phangan. We really enjoyed the Island, we ended up staying in the norther part of the island that is more low key and not as touristy, However, it was very easy for us to take a taxi in to Haad Rin (which is where the action and night life was happening). So it really gave us the best of both worlds. Unfortunately all the pictures from Koh Phangan and the full moon party are on Briana's camera. At some point I will have to do a post using her pictures. I would love to share with you the pictures from the beach that we stayed on.


After 5 nights in Koh Phangan, the weather started to take a turn for the worst as the much anticipated monsoon season arrived for the Thai east coast. So Briana and I left and made way for the west coast where the weather is hot and sunny. Our journey was long but very manageable. First we took a 3 hour ferry from Koh Phangan to Surat Thani, from there we took a 2 hour bus ride into Krabi Town. When we arrived it was thunderstorming, we have never seen so many or such big rain drops in our lives. The annoying part was that we booked a hotel in Krabi Town ahead of time but when we got dropped off they told us that they were full and could not sleep us! So we ended up wandering around in the pouring rain trying to find somewhere to sleep. Within seconds we were drenched.

We only spent one night in Krabi Town and headed toward a peninsula called Railay, only reachable by boat. It took us 45min on a Thai style long boat to reach the beaches of Railay. Immediately, we were able to tell that we were going to love it here. The landscape was breathing taking, and was mainly composed of dense jungle, massive limestone escarpments and gorgeous beaches.

One of the 3 main beaches in Railay, as you can see its a pretty unique landscape. All very shallow clear blue water.

  Below: Really cool fish we saw swimming over the island that you can see in the picture above.

 The Island has heaps of monkeys. You see them as often as you would see squirrels back home, and they tend to hang out in large social groups. The neat part about Railay is that although we are in close proximity to a bunch of beaches we are actually staying in the jungle. Not one of the many animal sounds coming from the bush are fimiliar in any way. Bri and I were woken up to the sounds of screaming monkeys haha. Not to mention papaya, mango and banana trees are the norm and there are tons of pineapple bushes too. Im pretty sure we have even seen a few grapefruit trees. I suppose all I am trying to say is that we have a been to few places in Thailand so far and this by far the most unique.

A group of monkeys playing cards in the trees

A family of monkeys walking home with us from the beach

We caught this fellow red handed stealing our left over smoothie

The next day Briana and I had booked a day long boat tour in which a sail boat took us to a couple different islands for rock climbing and then we had lunch on a remote beach and from there we went to a pretty neat island for snorkelling. I think we both agree that, that was one of our favourite days yet.

The rock climbing wasn't conventional rock climbing. It is called "Deep Solo". The idea is that you do not use a harness or rope, you free climb and when you get as high as you desire you simply jump off the side of the rock face. In essence its a cliff jumping and rock climbing hybrid.

hanging out on the sail boat

Briana climbing up to over 10metres (click to enlarge)

she looks like a pro

flipping off the rock ledge

The remote beach where we ate our lunch

 

 

 

 

 Below: the photos were taken  from far, but the following pictures are a bunch of sequential photos of myself jumping off a rock face that was over 15 metres high. In order to get that high I had to climb the stalactite that you can see below. ...(you click to enlarge the images)

I am at the top crouching really low getting ready for takeoff

 

 

 splash!

Briana made sure her outfit matched the fish ;)

not sure if you can tell from the photo but the coral is a vibrant green and orange

relaxing day on the sail boat

a random dude feeding the fish out of his mouth

our friend Hermit

beautiful sunset on the boat

 Overall, its been an amazing time in Railay. We still cannot get over what a fun time we had on the sail boat and solo climbing. We are spending one more night here before we head off to the Phi Phi Islands. Some of you may know those islands from the movie set of "The Beach" and one of the old school James Bond flicks.
 Anyways,  I will post again soon! and I hope everyone enjoys the pictures. We have many more and although I posted many pictures it was very hard to choose them from all my other ones.
Take care!