Day 58 - Railay bay

  Railay Beach, Krabi, Thailand
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

To catch our boat trip today, we had to be at the pick-up point on the opposite beach for 09:00, so Katie's alarm was sensibly set for 08:15.

When it went off, we showered, applied some sun cream (there was actually sun coming through the clouds, woo-hoo!), and prepared to leave the room.

The last thing I did before reaching for the door handle was to put on my watch, which said... 09:45!!

We had a bit of a 'Hugh-Grant-at-the-start-of-Four-Weddings-and-a-Funeral' moment, running around swearing and panicking, and then realised that unless we could run to the next beach in minus 50 minutes, we had missed the boat... "and I mean that liderally, mate" ;)

So we walked to the tour agent's office where we booked the ticket, more in hope than expectation, and gave him our sob story.

We asked if we could maybe use a taxi-boat to go to the first island where the boat stopped, so that we could miss the first stop but rejoin the rest of the tour? We both expected him to laugh like Eddie Murphy and shake his head...

To our surprise he said that we COULD do it... but it would cost us 2000 bahts to hire a taxi there. This wasn't very sensible when you consider that the day tour ticket themselves 'only' cost us 1,300 bahts each!

We were devastated, it looked like we had managed to pay for and miss the most expensive boat ride around the best islands in Thailand, something we'd been looking forward to since we left the UK 2 months ago.

The guy in the tour agency then did something truly extraordinary for this island:

He...

Was...

HELPFUL!!!!

This lovely man suggested that we might be able to reschedule the trip for tomorrow, possibly at NO EXTRA COST!

I must admit that at this point I very nearly fainted.

He called the boat company (who weren't impressed as they'd allegedly waited for us for 20 minutes and eventually left with 2 spare seats on their full boat), and he somehow managed to get them to agree to take us tomorrow for no extra charge.

Katie & I were flabbergasted, but very, very grateful.

So with the boat tour now happening tomorrow (thankfully we fly out of Krabi on the mainland at about 9pm, so we just have time to do the tour, pick up our bags, get a boat to the mainland and then a taxi to the airport), we had to find something else to do today.

As the skies had (as usual) clouded over again, we decided to climb up one of the cliffs to a scenic view point, which had been recommended to Katie by someone in the pool yesterday.

She was warned to wear sensible footwear, so we changed into our hiking boots, changed into other (even scruffier) clothes, and off we set...

It took about 10 minutes to walk to the point where we saw some people climbing yesterday, but we were a little unsure when we saw the route up the cliff, which mostly consisted of a very steep climb up the side of the muddy cliff, with a long rope to help you up there!

It was also a bit slippery after all the rain here recently, but we decided to go for it...



The boots and scruffs were a good move because we were soon filthy. It took about 10 minutes to get to the top, and another 15 minutes to find the way to the viewpoint, which did have a great view over the bay, in fact over both bays...



With hindsight I'm not sure that it was such a great idea to take photos when we both looked like absolute sweatbags, but anyway...





We sat there for a few minutes, dripping with sweat after the climb, and then set off to find the 'lagoon' which was apparently up there somewhere...

There were small trails everywhere, and no signs, but eventually we found our way to a rather precarious descent down a very steep and muddy hill. We REALLY hoped the lagoon was down there, but we couldn't see down to the bottom!

This steep slope also had a couple of ropes to help your balance so we abseiled/slipped down the slope, and made it to the bottom without any damage.



We then walked a few more minutes and we could just see the lagoon, which looked lovely but which we could only see a tiny glimpse of.

There were 2 more even steeper descents required to get further down towards the lagoon itself, and they looked pretty dangerous dry, let alone wet, so we decided to turn back. It just wasn't worth taking any chances with another 6 months of travelling ahead of us.

The lagoon was behind these huge palm trees!



It was a bit harder getting back up the slippery slope, but we were soon at the top of the climb back down to our initial start point, so after saying a couple of silent prayers we went over the top and made our way down.



It was certainly an adventure!

One slip could have been disasterous because the only thing below us was sharp rocks. So we were very careful and made it down safely, but we were covered in sweat and mud. Nice.

The tide was out slightly when we got back to the beach, so even Railay East was looking rather nice and it's definitely the poor relation here...



We came back to shower, sorted out a few flights in Oz, had some lunch, and later we're going to try and visit some local caves and then find something else to do to kill some time.

It's nice being able to relax after moving on every day for so many days, it's just a shame that the weather is so crap at the moment. We have everything crossed that the clouds clear tomorrow for our rearranged boat ride, so fingers crossed! ;)

With hindsight it looks like we were lucky that we didn't make the boat trip today because it was very overcast and wouldn't have been much fun.

If you're going to visit tropical islands then you really need some sun, right?

We went back to The Rock for dinner which was again excellent, although I'm not sure the staff could quite believe how much food we consumed! Whatever, we were hungry!

We were the first people there for dinner, and out of habit we took our shoes off at the entrance and left them there. We looked around an hour later and EVERYONE had left their shoes there, following our lead presumably because they thought that was the house rule! Ooops!

Love to you all,


Al & Katie xx