Krabi and Railay

Krabi and Railay

After spending a total of 7 days in Koh Tao, Caleb and I decided to move on.  The nice part that I’ve learned about traveling in Asia is when you want to go someplace, there are travel agents literally every 100ft.  Everyone sells travel packages.  My assumption is the larger companies that actually do the transporting, pay them a commission on everything they sell, so why not try to sell it.  What makes it nice for us is the competition keeps the prices low.  Usually, I’ll visit a couple of these places, tell them where I’m going, then whatever they feed back to me as their “best price”, I cut it in half and begin the drawn out, loud, arms flailing performance I call bargaining.  Typically I have to walk away a few times, tell them they’re going to put themselves out of business at these prices, before I finally agree to pay them what they ask after their original amount has been greatly reduced.  My favorite part of all of this is arguing, feeling like I won, they were defeated and the look on their face when after 10 minutes of intense multi lingual debate to save maybe a few dollars, I pull out a giant wad of cash that could have paid for it 20 times over.  No matter what language people speak, you without a doubt know the “I hate you” face.  Have to have those little victories!

Caleb and I bought a package that included a 6-hour boat right from 11pm to 5am followed by a 4-hour bus ride to the town of Krabi (cr-ah-bee).  Krabi is a central jump off point to many of the islands on Thailand’s western side as we were currently on the east side of the country.  We said goodbye to many of our newly made friends in Koh Tao and headed for the ferry terminal.  It was night now, around 10:30 and we walked up the gatekeeper of the ferry world.  Here was this guy, glum look on his face, playing what looked like solitaire and chain-smoking intensely under a dim flickering dock light.  I told him where we we’re headed, he looked at our tickets and pointed to which ship would ferry us to our next destination with a slight smirk on his face.  I turned around and stared at what looked to be a giant barge that perhaps once/or still transported tons of refuse. 

We climbed aboard the ship and moved into the interior.  The inside passenger section was nothing more than a giant square, dimly lit, metal room that contained rows of steel bunk beds that appeared to have been salvaged from a federal prison.  I climbed to my assigned bed, unloaded my backpack and thanks to my travel partner’s years long issues with insomnia, took a prescription sleeping pill and slipped out of consciousness.  

Like clockwork, I awoke to the sound of the massive engines revving in reverse as the captain slowed the boat as we neared the dock on mainland Thailand at 5:00 AM.  We loaded up our gear and walked off the ship, headed for a small mini mart a short walk away where we were instructed to wait for a van.  It was still dark out as the group of 40 of us from the ship awaited our next piece of transportation.  Within 30 minutes, small passenger vans began arriving with the driver yelling out just the name of the destination where he was headed.  We waited only a few minutes until we heard Krabi.  We handed the short Thai driver our backpacks and watched him load them on the roof of the vehicle with the others before strapping them securely down and covering them tightly with a tarp.  

We climbed into the van that held 10 people and began the 4-hour trek from one side of the country to the other.  The van was a little cramped but surprisingly well air-conditioned.   Within 20 minutes we had navigated the side roads and made it onto Thailand’s main high system, which shockingly, was amazing.  Large wide roads of extremely smooth blacktop provided us with an almost no trafficked path to the west and our driver took advantage of it.  From my seat, 3 rows back I couldn’t actually see the speedometer but I felt as though we were traveling rather quickly so I asked Caleb, who was sitting directly behind him to peer over his shoulder.  The speeds ranged from 145-155 kilometers per hour, the higher end of that figure when he was passing.  For those that don’t have a conversion calculator handy, that’s EFFICIENT transportation at 87-95MPH!

As a quick side note, the cost for the 6-hour boat ride plus the 4-hour van ride was $18 US.  Sooooo cheap.

We arrived in the port town of Krabi a full 40 minutes ahead of schedule thanks to our formula one driver.  A quick bite of food and we were headed to the waters edge in search of a long boat taxi to take us to Railay Beach, a peninsula of land located a 30 minutes boat ride away that had been highly recommended by Brendan and Helena.  After a little negotiating, we we’re soon cruising through inland waterways on our way to Railay.  About halfway through the boat ride, you realize why people come to places like this as we could start to see the several thousand foot tall limestone formations rising from the sea.  They were brilliant, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in person. 

We soon arrived at our destination and started combing the beach for ample accommodations.  The third place we checked had a sufficient price point and clean rooms so we reserved it for two nights.   We placed our belongings inside and headed out in search of the days activities.

Railay beach is divided into two sides with East Railay being the more budget friendly, younger, bars everywhere side, and West Railay, the much nicer beach, high end resorts up to $5,000 a night type of place.  The beautiful part is that they’re only 5 minutes on foot away from each other.  We headed over to West Railay and began walking down the beach, people watching, taking pictures of the scenery and poking into different shops who all had different activities you could sign up for.  Railay itself is world famous for its rock climbing due to the fact the you can climb very high cliffs but be right next to the ocean and it attracts thrill seekers from around the globe.  

Caleb and I found an operation that would take us out the next day about an hour away on a longboat to a place called Chicken Island where we’d not only go rock climbing up these vertical cliffs, but it enabled us to not have to use safety ropes since the cliffs overhung the water and honestly, who wants to be restrained!!!!

After a low key evening and pleasant night sleep, we met up at the rendezvous point for or rocking climbing/cliff jumping adventure.  We boarded a boat at 10 am with 7 other people from Finland, Austria, and a couple other EU countries.  The boat ride was great, flat calm and breathtaking sights.  We arrived at the first climbing spot and waited as our Australian guide swam over and clipped a ladder onto a piece of rope dangling from a cliff overhang near the water.   He gave us the green light to go climbing so one by one people leapt off the boat and headed to the cliff.  This first sight would allow you to climb up and jump off varying heights up to about 40 ft.  Now I think of myself as a relatively strong young man but climbing vertical rock faces with small handholds proved to be as they say, difficult.  In two attempts at this location, I made it up the ladder, which is the most difficult part mind you, then about 5 or so feet higher before both times, losing my grip and falling end over end landing ever so awkwardly in the water. 

Normally, this small defeat wouldn’t bother me.  It didn’t bother me when Caleb seemed to scale multiple routes on the cliff face with ease before actually entering the water on his own terms, however, what did bother me was the fact the 5ft tall, 110 pound chick from Finland who I’d chatted up on the ride over scaled the wall effortlessly MULTIPLE times who then proceeded to say how exciting and fun that was for her first time EVER CLIMBING A ROCK!

We pulled into a nice beach nearby when everyone was done climbing for a prepared lunch that included a cold piece of chicken on a ball of rice that we ate with our hands.  We explored around a few caves and caverns in the area before heading back to our second and final climbing spot.  This next place was amazing.  The overhang itself was 20 feet from the waters surface, the transition from the ladder to the rock face was extremely difficult our guide explained.  

Everyone on the boat was within about 4 years of my age.  Two of the guys from Austria were experienced climbers and what they did and could do in front of us, was seriously impressive.  This particular spot allowed willing adventurists to climb up to 30 meters or nearly 100 feet above the water surface before jumping from the cliff face onto a giant stalagmite.  Thinking about watching this Austrian kid doing it again makes my hands sweat typing it.  

After everyone was exhausted and soar from climbing around 4pm, we headed back to Railay where the group of us chose a restaurant and bar to meet at after we all showered.  It ended up being Caleb, myself the two Austrians Jonas and Funkhowzer and the two Finnish girls for dinner.  All of them spoke great English so conversation was a breeze.  The two Austrians had just completed their undergraduate studies in pre-med and were on a 2 week rock climbing trip before they started medical school.  They we’re absolutely hilarious and told us a lot about Austrian life and culture.  Their voices and accents sounded just like the bad guy in Inglorious Bastards. 

At one point the topic of conversation turned to Schnitzel’s (sneetch-sul), all kinds of Schnitzels, what makes Schnitzel’s bad verse good.  I could care less about Schnitzels but when they said it in their accents, it made me nearly wet my pants.  They taught be the wonderful term Schnitzel boy.  They said, laughing (imagine in accent) “yes, yes, zee schnitzel boy, the one where vee put zee schnitzel around his neck so dat zee dog play with him” followed by more laughs, followed by back and forth “Jonas, you v-were zee schnitzel boy”, “no Funkhowzer you v-were zee schnitzel boy!!!”.  Priceless.

We squared up the bill and headed to a bar since the Finnish girls really wanted to dance and the Austrians really wanted to drink.  I spent the next few hours swing dancing to hip-hop/electronic music with the Finns until it looked as though we had all been swimming.  At 4 am, and I said my goodbyes, wished everyone safe travels and headed for the sack.  Another amazing day behind me!