Day 56 - Krabi to Railay bay

  Railay Beach, Krabi, Thailand
Sunday, October 28, 2007

We had a good sleep and a relative lie-in today, getting up at 9am and walking downstairs for some brekkie.

By 9:30 we were packed and sitting in a mini-van taxi to the boat port, to get a 'long tail' boat taxi to the Railay peninsular, on the recommendation of our friend Kirsty, our resident expert in South East Asian beaches!

Getting on the boat was a bit confusing because the driver spoke no English and we no speak no Thai, but eventually we worked out their rather perplexing ticket system and climbed on board with our bags.

It drizzled most of the boat journey, but it had just about stopped by the time we arrived on the east coast of the peninsular.

We jumped off the boat (easier said than done with 2 heavy bags each) and headed to the bungalow that Katie had booked the other day from Ko Pha Ngan. It was quite a long walk along the "beach", which looked more like Thetford Forest. Our first impressions were trees & mud, rather than sun & sand!

Seconds after arriving at our residence of choice, it was soon evident that every single person working in there was an absolute muppet. We had a very painful few minutes trying to confirm our reservation, and then realising that the price of everything was higher than anywhere else we've been recently. It was a real rip-off.

The room itself seems ok value (for a beach), but everything else that they could possibly charge us for, they did (eg 5% for using a credit card, 20 baht to use a safety box, 50 baht for a towel etc etc), but I guess it's a captive market so whatchugonnado?

We have a tv in our bungalow, but it only seems to have 3 channels, which is nice.

I tried to explain this to reception (I need to watch Liverpool v Arsenal live at 11pm tonight!), but they had absolutely no idea what I was trying to say. It honestly took me the thick end of 2 minutes to explain/mime what a television was, and I gave up after nearly giving myself a double hernia trying to communicate the word "broken" in true Basil Fawlty style! Give me strength...

Some things are just not worth getting annoyed about so we stuffed our valuables in the safety box and went off to inspect the beaches.

The east coast of Railay where we're staying is not particularly attractive, it has nice scenery around it (mountains, trees etc), but as I said earlier there's no sand, just mud & swamp. 

When we arrived it was also high tide, so we couldn't really see what was underneath the lovely blue/green sea. However, the tide's now out and it's noticeably less attractive.

Fortunately the west coast of the bay is much nicer, with a nice long beach and soft white sand, lined with plenty of hotels/resorts which aren't too much of an eyesore.

A really nice little beach called Phan Ngang can be accessed via a wooden 'walkway', next to some large cliffs at the other end of the east beach.

It's a pleasant walk and a lovely beach, very picturesque and much quieter than the main west side, aaaaaiiiiiit... ('Ali F' throws Staines gang sign at PC, everyone looks worried).

 

 

Sadly by the time we got to the main west beach it was raining again, so on went the waterproofs and off we went to find somewhere for lunch... after a few photos, natch!





Everywhere on the west beach was really expensive and looked pretty basic, so we walked back to our side and found a nice place near the middle of the peninsula called "The Rock".

Miraculously, this bar/restaurant was situated next to... a big rock. Or technically a cliff, to be pedantic.

It was quite a scenic area, with some people rock-climbing up the cliff itself, and the coast with its moored boats was just visible, very nice. Oh, and they did great prawn crackers!



Here was the view out to sea, with "the rock" on the right side of the shot...



After a really nice lunch we went back to the room, where Katie had a kip while I went off to find somewhere to watch the game tonight.

I found another great little place up in the hills called the "Stone Bar", so after we got changed we walked down there to have a few cocktails.
 
It had a good vibe, and we had the whole place to ourselves, so I thrashed Katie at Connect 4 (she was useless), and then we went back down to the beach for dinner.

Check out the concentration levels below, Katie is playing pink counters!



The cocktails were really tasty, so we indulged in a few before dinner, as you do. I'm guessing you don't see many people in Liverpool shirts drinking banana daiquiries?

 

We walked down to the east coast restaurant area for dinner, where I had one of the most random things I've ever had in my life, a "green chicken curry pizza"!! Surprisingly it was absolutely delicious, particularly when washed down with a couple of beers and followed by a few cheeky games of pool.

Katie went for grilled shark for her main, which was AMAZING, and some nice green veggies in an oyster sauce. Lushorama.

I convinced Katie that we should have a nightcap in a lively bar opposite, which was staffed by some rastafarian Thais (interesting...), and which was bizarely split into 50% cocktail bar and 50% snooker club! 

There was a full size snooker table surrounded by locals who could hardly see over it, located right next to a small but noisy bar packed with young backpackers.

The bar was full of loud, drunk Aussies dancing to the Chilli Peppers and House of Pain, while the snooker was without a doubt the lowest standard that I have ever witnessed in my life. They were even worse than Ste! (Well....)

We joined the bar at about 10pm, when the 6 players involved were trying to pot the green ball... 

An HOUR and a few white russians later we left the bar and they had yet to pot the black! It was so painful that I had to watch the Bond film in the next bar instead! Even Katie was laughing because they were so inept, which is really saying something!

From here we go back to the mainland (Krabi) on Wednesday night, and then onto Singapore, so we only have 3 full days left in Thailand, which is a real shame :(

Sadly our hopes of lounging on the beaches and getting a nice sun tan have been washed away by the rain and blocked out by the clouds, so we'll probably book a boat trip to explore some local islands over the next few days, and hopefully we'll get some nicer weather!

We'll definitely go to Ko Phi Phi, which has one of the nicest beaches in the world, and is an absolute must-see for me, mainly because it was where my good mate H nearly got wiped out (literally) in the Boxing Day tsunami the other year... Clearly I need to visit to pay my respects! Only kidding mate ;)

So I think we'll have another day relaxing here tomorrow, then do a boat trip, and then back to Krabi and on to Singapore for a few days before we fly to Australia!

That's the plan anyway...

Hope all is well with you,


Al & Katie xx